So, there I am doing some much needed R&D on the main rig (yes, still picking at those bones), and up untill now have been very pleased with the cross over between Maya / Endorphin / Motion Builder. Everyone seems to work well, with one rig servicing all

So, thought that I would have a stab at the new massive agent for some interesting swarmtests.

I stripped out the main hero rig to its core env, fk and ik skeletons. Taking the fk rig as the main massive skeleton, i imported it into Massive

But whats this, a weird and wacky zero pose? Thats not right?? all the rotation values are set to zero, and in all the other apps zero gives a T pose. Yet in Massive it flips his root on his side and face down.

Yep, like endorphin, it appears Massive doesnt like joint orient values. Well, actually it does like them, a little too much. So, i now have to start all over from scratch

When I was on holiday I decided I was going to play with a rig script i found on highend3d.com called abautorig. so, this would have meant a rebuild on the Endorphin rig anyway as well as the Motion Builder set up which the new Arena Optitrack system is going to drive… both for main acting and Massive loops for crowd tests…

Fortunatly, I dont have to stray to far from the maya rig, its pretty much a simple build, but it will impact the endorphin rig a lot, meaning a rebuild (grrrrrr). Still, I reckon I can get that all sorted this week on the train…. hopefully giving me Saturday next week to redo the massive and endorphin rigs

I also found some cool free mocap over at http://accad.osu.edu/research/mocap/mocap_data.htm

Its all bvh, so crappy ass rotational values on all the joints, but mauy have a play with that and get that all retargetd to a simple .ma rig

So, note to myself

strip out all rigs

delete IK rig

unparent legs and spine from root

insert new root make sure ALL the joint orients are set to zero on this isolated joint

re-parent legs and spine

export thuis new skeleton as the new ENV and FK rigs

fk will form basis of mobo, Endorphin and Massive rigs

With abautorig, start to build new rig using recently tweaked skeleton as ref

The rig will have IK / FK switching, but will drive a seperate ENV rig as well as FK rig

The Main Pref node will enable a complete FK rig takeover so that Mocap can be applied as before, just with one attr setting that all out

Dam, I hate restarts, but because I have a potential 30 characters all using the same rig, i have to ensure absolute consistency across the cast. Im a little p*SSed that i had to find out today and lost all of today troubleshooting and looking for workarounds, but i am a firm beleiver that revisions are always better for it!

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Well, had a few spare moments..

Its a minor change that is about to prompt a big change.

I never did like the way the IK controls for the head were set up…. so its time to pop open the hood one more time…

Well, been a busy week. Trying to ensure that I have some time off for myself as well as service Project-Palitoy proved to be a great failure for the “having time for myself” part. I ended up pulling all the parts from last years rig and doing a refine. This was because I know I was going to use this rig for all the characters (as they share the same basic components), so it was best to finalise it now as oppossed to later.

Started of by deciding that before I plonk Atomics head onto a rig, best to revisit the rig and make some changes to AM.

So, did a little bit of a re-sculpt on the uniform fabric, tweaked the UVs a little
Created a new displacement map for that new fabric

Set up a new network with set driven keys in the hypershade that allows me to select hair color (brown or blonde) as well as style (normal or beard).

Cleaned up some stuff from last year.

Revisited the hair system and tweaked. More hair, yet renders faster

Streamlined the uniform so its a little sleaker

Revamped all the render farm!!! Long over due, and ran tests between the blades and the new Dells. The new Dell T3400′s trounce all over the blades, so may see if Dell would like to send a couple more this way

So, no really big changes to see on the out side, but lots going on internally.

I made a few changes to the hero rig as well which means I am now ready to start testing out some Mocap and Facial animation (lip synced or captured)