Final Post of the Semester!

By James Ball.

Keeping it short an sweet today. Here is my final 3DS Max Rigging Showreel and a Post Mortem for Good Measure. ENJOY!

 As always this is Ballzy247 signing out.

GDS230_Herorises Cross Colaberation . . . Also We're 50 Posts Old! . . . Wooo!

By James Ball.

For my cross collaboration this Trimester I helped out Peter Carey from the GDS230 Game Design Class by making a Wizard Tower asset for his game Herorises. The Following is the Process I went through the achieve the final result.

The initial Design/Concept was verified.

Early version of the model, I was told to exaggerate the features more so I did.

Features are now exaggerated and UV Unwrapped.

And the Final Texture is applied.

And the final Model is implemented into the game with added Sparkle, Sparkles!

If I could go back and change up a few things I would fix up the warping on the UV Unwrap and exaggerate the size of the front door/room to match the size of the front door of the other 3 buildings. Besides those 2 little nit pick I'm happy with the final design and the way it was implemented.


P.S. If you would like to view the model you can here https://skfb.ly/Ry9Z

P.P.S.  Happy 50th Blog Post Now lets get to 100.


As always, this is Ballzy247 signing out.

Dilating Iris Eye Rig Tutorial 3DS Max

By James Ball

Dilating Iris Eye Rig Tutorial 3DS MAX 2016 By James Ball.

In this Video You will Learn the Technique of how to make Blend Shapes to make a Dilating Iris and how to make a custom Floating Slider Control for ease of animation.

This Video Tutorial Was made to Aid in the completion of the following LO's For My 2016-T2-ANM230 Unit.

ANM230.LO03 - Research and implement specialization best-practice

ANM230.LO04 - Research and integrate industry-standard techniques and technologies

ANM230.LO05 - Extend upon animation techniques

At the Beginning of this Trimester I was put in charge of the Task of Creating a Flexible and Robust Character Rig For our Groups ANM230 Live Client Project. This meant a Few thing had to happen with the rig. It had to be easy enough to be controlled by not only me, but by the other people in my group as well. Be Flexible; and to potentially be usable be student from other trimesters.

For the first 6 weeks of Trimester, I was focusing on the task of R and D for different types of potential rig element to be used. Because of this, when week 7 started i was hitting the ground running and after 6 days I had a Completed Rig ready for skinning. I had to Wait a Week While We Got the Teddy Bear Design finalized. In the Time Line so far it currently Monday of week 9 and the Skinning and Final Rigging is meant to be done by Wednesday of week 9 so I was starting to stress out a bit because I didn't have a locked off mesh to start skinning to. It's midday and I receive what all of us hope is the final model UV Unwrapped and Ready to Skin and make a start. I then had to Modify The rig's Arms and Legs to Fit with the New Model.

It's the next day now, Tuesday; and at about 2pm I get a Skype/Slack notification telling me that there have been more changes to the Mesh. At this Point I went to a very Dark Place in my Head so I had to sit out side away from the Computer and My Phone and any form of technology and just soak in the afternoon sun while rethinking my life choices. I must of Dozed off at some point Because about an hour later I was woken up by my sister going through the roller door coming home from High School. I finally had an idea about how to fix up the hand without having to re make the IK/FK arm chain once again. so I done that, and Renamed everything appropriately and got the latest version of that Rig Ready for Skinning by 11:30pm that evening where I Promptly saved and made multiple backup of the work file followed closely by going strait to bed. For the next to  days I was Skinning, Stress Testing, Breaking, Remaking and Stress Testing the Rig again till the only way I could break the rig was to stretch the teddy bear to the Height of a 7 story building. On Thursday evening I was finally happy with the Rig and I locked it off And put the final rig in the scene folder.

Do I Look Fat in This!?

This Fiasco with the Rigging for the group project has eaten up the study time I've had for the last couple of week and some. So as a result I have had very little Time to dedicate to my Person Project of the Dinosaur. I had originally planned to have the last couple of weeks to dedicate to  Unwrapping, Texturing and Making a start on Rigging. As it stand Right now, I haven't finished modeling the Dinosaur yet. Close but no cigar. So I have had to rethink what is the most important thing that I want to focus on with this project. The answer was The Rigging and The Character Animation. So now The UV and Texturing will Play second Fiddle to the Rigging and Animation and only be done if I have the Time at the end. If it comes down to it and for some reason I can't get time to animate Then the last resort option is to just focus purely on the rigging like I have for the whole Trimester so far, and Produce a rigging Reel at the end of trimester out of the Teddy Bear Rig I have just made and the Dino Rig When that is Complete.

All I have Left to finish is the head and then this little guy is ready for rigging.

Lastly as a helpful resource for people interested in all aspect of rigging, please Look at the reference list I provided at the end of this Post.

As always, This is Ballzy247 Signing out

Reference

Athias, D. (2013, April 29). Advanced Character Rigging in 3ds Max. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from Pluralsight, http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/1117-Advanced-Character-Rigging-in-3ds-Max#overview

Kumari, S. (2012, August 31). Complete human character rig in 3D studio max, part 1. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/complete-human-character-rig-in-3d-studio-max-part-1--cg-17244

Schorsch, F. (2013, April 17). WhosThisFrank - Rigging Tutorial Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL081B67B15C1A527C

Thomas, C. (2011, July 29). 3DS MAX - CG Academy 8 Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL36593580FC7EC092

Tutorials. Retrieved July 31, 2016, from TrappCG, http://www.traptcg.com/

Tri 5 KPI’s

By James Ball

It’s that time of the Trimester again, so that means this week at Uni we had our Mid Trimester KPI Meetings. The following is my reflection on the work I have achieved thus far and various topics we discussed in the meeting. I Will Put in My Responses for the PKI Below.

STRONG WORK ETHIC

I believe I have achieved Successful Application. I don't feel I'm currently at par with my work ethic of last trimester yet and this comes down to a few factors. (1.) Family stuff, (2.) My biggest contribution to the group project only starting in week 7 and (3.) lack of motivation/preferring to get to bed early and sleep than do homework in the evenings. Regardless of that, I'm still meeting deadlines with the work needed to progress forward.

POSITIVE ATTITUDE

I believe I have achieved Successful Application. I do think I have a Positive attitude most of the time, but group projects always seem to test that for me. In week 6 I was a week ahead of scheduled for on starting the rigging and whenever I would start to do the rigging I would find that there was not enough topology in certain areas or the edge flow was not correct for animation purposes. And then I would have to go back and restart the rigging Process. I now feel I have lost that extra week where I could of been rigging due to people not thinking ahead in the modelling faze.

EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION SKILLS

I believe I have achieved Successful Application. I feel I have achieved this because I haven't missed a single Meeting, whether it is in class, out of class, over Skype Calls or Messages over Skype, Facebook and Slack. I'm always in constant communication with my team mates.

TIME MANAGEMENT SKILLS

I believe I have achieved Successful Application. I feel I have achieved this because I haven't missed a single Meeting, whether it be in class, out of class, over Skype Calls or Messages over Skype, Facebook and Slack. I'm always in constant communication with my team mates.

PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS

I believe I have achieved Masterful Application. From Week one of this Trimester I was put on the Task of Rigging the Main Character for our Group Project and in between then and now I have sunk a lot of my time into R'n'D so when It came time for rigging I wasn't flying blind so to speak.

ACTING AS A TEAM PLAYER

I believe I have achieved Successful Application. I haven't missed a single Meeting, whether it be in class, out of class, over Skype Calls or Messages over Skype, Facebook and Slack. I'm always in constant communication with my team mates. When I couldn't start rigging because the Character mesh wasn't built correctly I notified my team mate strait away and the problem areas got fixed.

SELF CONFIDENCE

I believe I have achieved Successful Application. I've hit a point where If I Need to know something to move forward I would go out and read a book, Go on line go to a lecture and ask what I used to consider being "Dumb Questions". I am also making a conscious effort to not interrupt other people while they're speaking and start listening more.

ABILITY TO ACCEPT AND LEARN FROM CRITICISM

I believe I have achieved Masterful Application. This Trimester I don't recall to much criticism to learn from as of yet so I jump back to the end of last trimester during crunch time for studio 2. There were changes that I was told to Make and I made those changes. Right up to the morning it was due.

FLEXIBILITY / ADAPTABILITY

I believe I have achieved Masterful Application. For my Personal Project This Trimester I was going to experiment with using Mudbox for texturing but since I'm not very fast at 3D modelling I have had to drop that Idea and settle for going with standard texturing in Photoshop.

WORKING WELL UNDER PRESSURE

I believe I have achieved Successful Application. In recent months, I have come to realize that working well under pressure for me isn't necessarily working well under pressure, but what I would call it is working out of Necessity. Basically I've hit a point where If I Need to know something to move forward I would go out and read a book, Go on line go to a lecture and ask what I used to consider to be "Dumb Questions". If you want a different answer then I will repeat what I said above. During crunch time for studio 2, there were changes that I was told to make and I made those changes. Right up to the morning it was due. 

THINGS I NEED TO IMPROVE

In This Latest KPI Meeting There wasn’t much that my lecturer didn’t agree with, which is good to know. The Main KPIs I Focusing on this time are Effective Communication Skills, and Self Confidence. An example I can give of this is for our group project this Trimester, when I couldn't start rigging because the Character mesh wasn't Built correctly. So I notified my team mate strait away and the problem areas got fixed without too much hassle. An area that I still need to improve on in regards to the KPIs above that will get me achieving a Masterful Application; is to simply listening more to the people I am communicating with and to think more about the answers I give them. My Lecture told me that if I can achieve that more and stay at the current standard I’m starting to achieve then I would be on my way to a Masterful Application of the Above KPI’s.

To finish off I’ll leave you with a quick progress update.

The Rig is ready for Skinning, for when the Model is ready.

It may look Broken, but it's not. It's . . . A FEATURE!

OK. As always this is Ballzy247 signing out.

"Don't Eat The Dinosaur Daddy"

By James Ball

This Pasts week, I have Finally Made Some Good Progress on My Personal Project For Uni. If you didn't gather from the title of this post, I am making a little Dinosaur; or more specifically an Eo/Micro-Raptor.

Initial Concept Art/Turnarounds.

I kept on messing up the silhouette of the Micro-Raptor a lot and it took quit a few attempts to get a profile looking Balanced and Believable, but I got there and ended up going with what you see above.

Where I'm at on the Modeling.

Currently What I have to finish on the Modeling is to make the arms and legs. After that is done, I will be UV unwrapping and taking it into Mud-box to sculpt in Detail.

As always This is Ballzy247 signing out.