Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Developing a Character TD Training plan

Hi,

I came up with an idea that I just started today and will try to occasionally be using.  Basically the idea is to use a 15 minute stop watch and jump into learning or trying a new (character modeling/rigging) related idea without any real plan.  My hope is that these short 15 minute sessions will force me to have to use the resources I currently have versus trying to write new long scripts or wasting time thinking about how much work it will take to do something.  Also my hope is that these short 15 minute sessions can grow longer as soon as i get more use to taking risks on new character modeling/rigging ideas i haven't tried but wanted to...

In today's two 15 minute sessions I was able to see

1. how using ref books can support creative expression in a way don't have to remember lots of details if they are already in a book somewhere. instead can have fun with trying out cool shapes or expressing an idea.

2. using existing tools i wrote to try to explore a bigger idea.  i was writing a whole bunch of what if plans for a simple mocap target tool, but in just 15 minutes with a single parent constraint it gave me ideas to possibly tweak a geo building tool i wrote to be able to use motion captured motion.

Below I post all the unorganized images i made along the way of todays two 15 minute sessions, the first session was more expressive, the second more technical (for the second i wrote the auto geo building tool in MEL .. its not an auto rigger maybe it will have some benefits in the future).











because the scale of mocap thingie is so much larger than the custom rigmajig a direct parent constraint causes some issues
by grouping the custom rig control, duplicating the piece of the mocap skeleton and having the duped mocap skeleton moving the grouped rig control (and mocap skeleton driving duped mocap skeleton) it makes the custom rig control not jump around too much.


 still it needs work ... maybe the custom rigs leg can move like the mocap skeleton even if the custom rig's root doesn't move.


cheers,
-Nate