Animation & Simulation

Rigging/Skinning
I will use a combination of  methods to weight paint the zombie character. The one I will use most of the time will be to just manually paint in the weights by eye. This will allow me to cover a large area fast but will cause some smaller issues I will have to fix. I will also paint the weights down to a vertex level. This will be used when I have manually painted the weights but there are some vertices that need to be modified.

I Started from the toes and worked my way up the character. I only painted the weights on one side so that I could copy and past onto the other side.



The foot was a good place to start as it was the easiest to get right, and a nice way to get used to the tools before moving onto more challenging parts.

The skinning went pretty well, I did have some trouble with some areas such as the shoulder and the hip area. I ended up restarting these a number of times until I was satisfied. I will be practicing rigging and skinning more in my free time as it is definitely something I want to be good at.




I didn't have too many issues with the head. i feel that the skinning all came out well, the twist could still be improved but it definitely still works unless pushed to the extreme.

I added some motion capture data to the zombie that I filmed myself.

I did also try rigging and skinning the zombie in Maya, but ended up starting again in 3DS Max after a number of attempts and hours of trying. I have since found out why I was having difficulty, and will return to the fix the issues. AlthoughI didn't finish weight painting the character I did learn to add controllers to the ankles and wrists to allow for easier manipulation when animation. The limbs could be moved in IK and FK.







Ape Face CAT rig



I Started off learning the morphers modifier in 3DS max, and how to create controllers. I then used what I had learned to create a CAT rig bone system for the face that could be moved with a controller that I had created.

I sculpted 5 different expressions from the base ape sculpt that I was given.

This was the base sculpt I was given. Below are the five I created from this base sculpt. I had to make sure that the poly count was exactly the same for all sculpts so that limited to only using the move and smooth brush.

 

To create the facial expressions I looked at real images of gorillas to and tried to emulate the pictures. I didn't try and copy them exactly as this sculpt is blend between ape and human. 

Once I had finished with the expressions I imported them into 3DS Max.

I used the morpher modifier on my Mouth closed version and added all the other sculpts to the list.

I could then hide all of the sculpts apart from my base mouth closed, and move the sliders to changes the face to whichever one I wanted. This is a really good tool, and could be used in many ways. I was able to key frame the this and change the faces easily.

This video shows me manually changing the sliders

This video shows the keyframing of the morpher modifier.

The morpher is a good tool to use, but it lacks the freedom that creating a CAT bone system gives you. The morpher changes through the expressions at exactly the same time. Whereas on a real face there would be slight variations in what moves.

My first attempt at creating a bone set up worked pretty well. The skinning was really good. My first attempt only covered the mouth bones, so I started again and added a few extra so that I could control other parts of the face. I used the reference images I had saved from creating the expressions earlier to help place the bones in positions that would suit the sculpt.

On my second attempt I added bones for the nostril flare, and to the eyebrows. The nostril bones were positioned so that the nose would get wider as it the slider was increased, instead of just lifting the nose up and down. I also angled the eyebrows so that they could create some emotion if I wanted. 

Using what I had learned I created a set of controllers that could manipulate each bone on the face. I placed each controller is the same place as the bones on the face, to make it easier to use. 

I used the reaction manager to create the controller.