Foot Setup

Foot setup is now complete, so here's a quick rundown describing exactly whats happening.
Each toe has an fk joint chain running down it (I could have opted for an IK spline chain, driven by fk but decided this was a little overkill - There's no particular closeup of the feet in any shot). Getting the feet into the right pose is quite important, watching the video's I've noted the positions and shapes they achieve whilst walking and flying.

Each joint is connected at the ankle by three separate joints; which are not for skinning, but will allow toes to rotate downwards independantly. I've set up a "relax" attribute on the foot controller that will control this. I'll create a seperate ankle control for skinning which will have the ik handle attached.

Each joint has a nurbs control curve attached to its shape node using the parent -add -shape command. Took me quite a while to figure out that the shape has to be at the origin, with all its transforms frozen out, history deleted. Otherwise it maintains offset from the origin. We don't want that. This is a really nice processor friendly, Outliner tidy way of doing things (rather than using parent constraints). 

Set driven keys can now be applied simply to pose the feet into walking and flying positions, and speed up the animation process.

Wing Reference

Very useful resource on the workings of a bird-wing. Must note, this video refers to smaller birds, a crane has slightly different physiology to this, but none the less a useful starting point. This has helped me no end decypher whats occuring when the wings tuck under and fold around the top of the body when the bird is grounded.

Looking at the skeleton below and comparing that with the video animation it seems the Crane doesn't have the Humerous bone, just one big Ulna bone. The rest works pretty much the same - the bird wing and human arm are quite similar, they just bend in opposite directions. So i can act out the motion myself and then reverse it; which I did (see below)...

Me Being Bird


Hopefully not the best short film i'll ever make, but just to illustrate the backward nature of a birds wing movement. Once the arms are folded back on each other, they tuck over the back.

Crane - Side View

Side view of finished geo for the crane character. Lots of consideration already going into the neck. Comparing it to a more humanistic bipedal rig - it shares some characteristics; however the neck will need to be treated like the spine, the body i want to keep pretty rigid i the x axis, might break it up with one join in the midde just so it has a little flex for when the wings fold back into walking position, but might not be necessary.

The bird skeleton seems to suggest the whole body is one fused unit - come to think of it, i've eaten  my fair share of chicken off the bone - we've all picked around that huge lump of cartiladge that ends up in the bin - It has no play in it. Just the same here, except a bit longer.

I've also included the outliner and channel box in the snapshot, just to demonstrate the geometry is fully reduced to one piece, named up, grouped accordingley, has its transformations frozen and history deleted. Ready for rigging. 

Joint Placement - Side

One of the most important parts of the rigging process and sadly not well documented in video tutorials. This rig will have plenty of joints down the neck for the bird to move and shake and connected by spline ik that will be driven by fk joint chain. I'm not going to include any stretch or squash - this character is supposedly made from paper, paper doesn't stretch. 

Legs are pretty straight forward, only they bend in the opposite direction to ours, so i'll bear that in mind. I.m also going to add a couple of joints down the talons, so the bird can clutch, but for now I think this will suffice - might go back into it later and tart it up.

The front of the neck is quite a large area to control with the neck chain and will pose problems when weight painting, so what i'm considering is adding some sort of rib joints, with an expression connecting them to their neck parents that staggers their rotation a little - might hold its geometry a bit better this way? This will certainly make the weight painting a lot easier (one thing i've learnt from the toxic boy rig).  

Joint Placement - Front

Front view of the bird, looking at it again, I think the top leg joints need positioning slightly further down where the begin to bulge out. I've tried to show the rig sections that will hold the geometry towards the front of the neck. Wing sections will have two major bones that bisect the geometry and allow them to fold. The top view will illustrate this better.

Joint Placement - Top

I've begun with the wings - they're going to be the most difficult to work correctly. Thinking about typical wing behaviour, and what springs to mind is the way they fold back on themselves and tuck on top of the upper body and an actual wingflap. To save a boatload of time for the animator, I'm going to set up these motions via set driven keys, then they can just use the slider in the channel box rather than animating it every time.

Looking at the above image, i've had to slightly adjust the geometry on the wing, by shortening the second half so when it rotates and conceals itself under the first section it doesn't poke out at the end. I've also lengthened the first section so it will cover enough distance down the back. Looking at Crane reference material, this is quite some way.

I originally (and incorrectly) thought both sections of the wing rotated in the Y axis in the same direction. This is incorrect; the arrows point out the correct direction. In order to set this up using joints I used a chain which involved a three way setup. A chain that travels down the length of the wing and the offshoots that will point the feathers in the right direction.

I've tried to pose the wing in a folded position, but it turned out impossible to correctly position both the feathers and arm independantly as they share the same axis.

My proposed solution is to group each feather chain individually, then parent the group down the original arm joint chain. Now the arm will affect the rotations of the group node, leaving the joints themselves with free rotation values, that can be rotated to get the feather stretch.  

NB.

I've also added an extra shoulder joint to achieve the necessary Z axis elevation - if you look at reference material, the wings lift at this point to tuck the second section beneath it and hug the body. Very important!

Outliner

Outliner, showing exactly what i've done. Each individual feather chain is in it own group. These group nodes are then parented down the hierachy - exactly how a normal joint chain would be, only theres a group node inbetween doing the spadework, leaving the actual joints on zero rotation and can be independantly manipulated for fine tweaking. I've set the rotation mode to Gimbal, so it's an absolute doddle to animate!

Crane Geo TurnTable

Finished turntable of the Crane Geometry, apologies for the quality - must adjust my export settings and speed it up a little. Note to self - current TurnTable set at 800 frames, probably best off nearer 500-600 mark.

I've modeled the tail stretched out, its rest position will squashed together but i'll create a set driven key within the rig that will allow the animator to spread & bunch the tail.

Identifying Problem Areas

Whilst modeling for animation, it's vital to identify key areas that are going to take most of the stick (by which I mean which areas will require the most deformation) when animated, and ensure that there's enough geometry to support it. Failure to do so will cause headaches when it comes to weight painting the verts.

Wings

Wings are very important! I think i've covered the surface areas of the wings by virtue of the very nature of their creation, so that should suffice. Where the wings and body meet is a different story however. The picture left identifies areas that are worrying me at the moment - there's too much of a gap between verts for this area. Fortunately shouldn't be too much of a biggie to rectify. I could just stick an edgeloop in and wire it into where four edges meet, to bring five edges together.

But I don't want to do this. As I discovered with the Toxic Boy geometry, this just creates massive issues when it comes to weight painting it, its best to have four verts coming together are better than five.  So what i'll do is move these verts down and add an extra edgeloop above that will go around the wing. More Geometry where it matters, four sided geo gives better more predictable deformation.

Better Wings

I've gone into that area, added the geometry and given the whole thing a lick with the relax brush. It's beggining to look like something thats going to behave when animated. What is paramount when modeling geometry intended for animation is to make sure the interior angles where verst meet are as broad as possible. I shall further elaborate below.

Further Elaboration

Imagine this were a perfect square and all its edges were perpendicular to each other, that would make each angle 90° to each other. This will equate to a nice even deformation, by which I mean each angle will reduce or expand proportionately and not crease unless moved through extremity.

Trapezoid

Now imagine this is an isolated section in a piece of geometry in a model. In order to follow the contours, the geometry has to be pushed around, angles have to compromised. In this instance two of the angles are 80° and two are 100°. This is ok but not as sturdy as foolhardy as a nice and solid 90° square.

Triangle

Ever since I first switched Maya on the computer, I have always been told "make sure your geometry is is at least four sided" and this quickly became my mantra. But I never fully understood why, but abided by it. A triangle consists of 180°, so the biggest interior angle a triangle point can have is 60° (if it were equalateral). In this instance (imagine it being the corner of an eye) it goes down to a meagre 20°. Not much of an issue when the deformation moves 90° and 70° together, but anything else and you will begin to see sharp edges in the geometry - not so good in an animation (unless its one about Picasso's cubist period).

Pentagon

Inevitably, you are going to get instances where five vertices converge (usually where limbs meet torso's, or where two pieces of geo meet), this is unavoidable, not ideal but tolerable. As the illustration demonstrates an equalateral pentagon consists of five converging edges, separated by 72°.  This amount is probably the smallest angle you'd wish to stretch to avoid those nasty tell-tale lines appearing in your geometry when your character bends over (imagine watching "Finding Nemo" and seeing loads of sharp edges appearing when the fishes start swimming. i don't think so!).

Hexagons's

In a tutorail I saw for Nurbs modeling It said pentagons were ok (by which I mean five converging verts) but not hexagon's. So what's so bad about hexagons? Well if you break it down in terms of angles, an equalateral hexagon will have interior angles of 60°. Going back to the equalateral triangle, it too has interior angles of 60°. So from a Mayan modelers perspective, a hexagon is just as bad as a triangle. Infact it's just six triangles placed side by side - six times worse.

The Golden Rule of Modeling

I think the general rule of thum is keep interior angles between 90° and 72°. Obviously this will be pretty difficult to do by eye (possible scripting opportunity perhaps??), but the experienced modeler would surely be able to develop an eye for it? When it comes to the crunch and you have 5 verts converging, keep the angles as near to 72° as possible, and keep the  joining verts close as possible so it's not spanning too greater distance - if necessary add an extra edge loop in to keep things local. These are the areas that will get the stick when it comes to moving and animating it around and those nasty non-planar edges will begin to appear, like a crack in the very fabric of your workflow!

If you have to use a triangle or angle thats less than 72°, make sure its in an area where its only going to collapse down on itself, and won't be visible when deformed, imagine the geometry performing the animation's its required to do. Still uncertain? Skin it, move it, and try weght paint out the nasty edges and angles; you'll soon discover its impossible! 

Nobody has ever explained why it is imporatant to keep things four sided. It's a very simple principle, if you stick to it, you can't go far wrong!

Personal Statement

From ever since I can remember I have always had an intrinsic love for animation and moving image and used to rush home from school to watch the Cartoons from Warner Brothers, Hannah Barbera, Cosgrove Hall (Count Duckula and Danger Mouse in particular) and whatever Children’s Television had to offer. As I grew older and less susceptible to animations charms I began to focus more heavily on traditional artistic practices but always felt an inkling towards character based design. This interest was reinvigorated by the emergence of CG animation pioneered by industry leaders such as Pixar. I vividly recall sitting in the cinema watching the trailers preceding the film “Edward Scissor Hands” and being blown away by a short animation created in this exciting new medium. This was shortly before “Toy Story” was released – the rest is history.



When I started this course I was undecided which professional route I was to take. Having completed a number of briefs which focused on different aspects of digital media, it soon became apparent to me the natural attraction was pulling me in the direction of the diverse world of 3d animation (this pivotal moment was also swayed by the release of Pixar’s Ratatouille). From then on I deliberated over which aspect of the discipline suited me best and after researching the industry, since concluded that Character Rigging and Technical Direction is the direction I wish to take. It seemed that the most popular routes to take in 3d were either animating or modeling and students tended to shy away from the steep learning curve involved with rigging.


Character rigging involves critical analysis and observation in order to equip a 3d character with the right faculties that are essential for the animator to achieve the best possible performance. It is this technical challenge which I relish the moment. It involves gathering real life information and examples of movement from living creatures and transferring this articulation onto a 3d character. An animator can only extract the performance from the character that the rig allows.


Predominantly the industry caters for two key areas – gaming development and film and television, it is the latter I am interested in working in. I have recently been weighing up my options and currently favoring a move down to London to pursue a career. Once I have gained enough experience, and should the opportunity arise I would ultimately like to ply my trade from across the pond.

Showreel Content

Here's a few experimental pieces that appear on my YouTube account. I intend once graduated to be constantly bolstering my portfolio and try to get it up to this sort of standard. 

Edordo Pili





Victor Vinyals


Another example of successful rigging reel, good us of space changing - ie swapping the axis an object follows, in this case allowing the hand to be planted on the back of the head and follow it. Apparently a really nice feature, animators like. 



Toxic Boy Rig





This is therig I have developed for Dave. Features a bit of squash and stretch and dynamic chains for the ears.

For now, here's a few snippets...

Ribbon Spine



Arm Orient

victor_vinyals_demo from Animator.K on Vimeo.