Creature Design Sketches

Below: some of my concept drawings

Concept sketches for Creature Character. I've started by trying to draw free-form shapes - a technique demonstrated by Nick Pugh in his originality in design series for Gnomon and Feng Zhu in his robot design series. He begins with half a forest of paper on his desk, on which he doodles upon until his arm is totally exercised of design and shape cliches. At this point they're just a set of squiggles. he then goes back through the pile and evaluates the drawings he's made to find interesting shapes that catch his eye.

Once he's amassed a shortlist he then goes in and further renders, defining arms, limbs head etc. He ends up with completely random and original creature drawings. because the creature I'm designing is something microscopic that lives in the carpet, a bit of artistic licence is afforded so I felt this technique was pertinent. The following sketches are what I came up with...

I've gathered some reference material from the Internet, the brief is to create an origami Crane character that will be in-keeping with the rest of the animations oriental theme.

To achieve this look it will have to look like it's been made out of folded paper. I've created a few test renders to achieve this look by generating a uv map for a simple polycube. I've then scanned some patterned origami paper from Ed and some creased paper for an underlying texture. This will require a bit of playing around in photoshop to simulate a folded look. My initial thoughts having evaluated other origami images is to have separate segments of patterned colour juxtaposed against paper to create the illusion it's made from two different surfaces (front and back). Eddies kindly offered to scan in some origami paper samples to try out. The UV map needs to be easily transferable - one scene in the animatic features a number of cranes. I can easily duplicate the model I've made and make minor changes to the geometry, but it would be nice for them to have a variety of textures. I've thought about this issue and concluded that the UV map will have to be chopped up into different segments so the patterns can be over layed in photoshop with ease.

Another thing to consider is how the geometry is going to be layed out. Most origami images are shot from the side because they have little aesthetic interest from a front angle because they are flat and have no volume. TBoth Ed and I agree this model should have volume, so the body and neck section will be more bloated out than the images to make it look more interesting.
Also would be difficult to maintain control over deformations, so a bit of volume in these areas will help when it comes to skinning the character.

Left Giant Crane with lighting effects. Because the crane is made out of paper it will have to have an element of translucency. I've had a quick play with the transparency settings in Maya which gives a uniform transparency. Because paper achieves its translucency through perforation this will be incorporated into the texture.  

Arm Orientation Selection

This set-up allows the animator to control which axis the arm should follow when the torso bends. I did this by using four locators that have an orient constrain influence at the locator at the top of the arm. When the torso joints rotate, the parented locators will rotate accordingly (or not as the case may be). The upp. arm joint will then follow the locator with the weight value of 1.

I also set up an orient attribute on the upp arm - in a rig this would have been set up on the controller - so the animator can dial in the orient axis they wish to follow. Useful for rotating the body whilst maintaining the arms orientation.

Toxic Boy MEL

mel commands utilised during the creation of this rig:                                                                                                                                          


arclen -ch1
Creates the node which acquires information about the spline ik's length to be plugged into a multiply divide node.


CreateNode multiplyDivide;
Creates the Multiply/Divide node.


$Scale = arc Length / original length
$invScale = 1/sqrt ($Scale)
Variable declared to execute volume preservation expression. The first line declares the variable $Scale, which gives the X scale factor of each joint (the same as the multiply divide node, I used the node because it evaluates quicker). 


The second line declares the variable "$invScale", which is 1 divided by the square root of scale.
For example: 
if $Scale = 2 
invScale = 1/ 1.414 
invScale = 0.70 


-This value is then plugged into the scale Y and scale Z of each joint.-


createNode frameCache
The above expression will give a uniform stretch down the spine that doesn't maintain volume, meaning as the spine extends it goes off model. The frame Cache node uses an animation curve to acquire information to plug into the above expression. Now the animator can alter the value of volume at each joint by simply editing the curve and not the expression. Very quick and very useful.

aliasAttr globalScale toxic_body_anim.scaleY;
creates an alias for the name of the attribute in the channel box - in this case the Scale Y attribute was changed to "globalScale".

Orient Joint (Demystified)

I for one have always struggled to understand how this dialogue box works, and when I finally do figure it out, I forget how it works agian.

So to concrete its functionality in user friendly history, here is the instruction manual:

1.) The radio buttons have all the possible sequences of axis to choose from.
2.) The first axis in the sequence will be the one that points down the joint chain (in most cases (apart from mocap which uses the Y axis) this will be the X axis).

3.) The second axis will point in whichever direction you have set the "Second axis world orientation" option to. For example, if it's set to -y, the second axis in the sequence will point in the world orientation of -y.

4.) So the third axis in the sequence will trail along behind and point in the appropriate direction.

This little box has always been one of lifes little mysteries, I hope this settles our differences and we can live in harmony together for ever more.

Skeleton

Image comparison of a human skeleton against that of an ape. Note long arms  and torso in comparison with its short legs, gives the impression, like man, but primitive.

Skull is also longer and pointed, with an over developed jaw.

Skeletal Reference

Walking Human skeleton, as you can see from this image the pelvis connects the back to the hips. The back rotates from the upper pelvis and the hips from the lower, so there are two areas of rotation.

The neck region works independantly of the head and can transform/rotate while the back stays still. Two seperate spline ik's could be used to achieve this locking motion.