Intro to making your rigs hand follow the IKFK in an easy manor

This is a common issue with an easy solution. 

Making a rig to fake fluids

Quick test for a fluid rig system 

The Seedling

Hey everyone,

A few talented artists including myself worked on this character from concept to 3D model to textures  to final rig. I'm happy to show you the Seedling 

Concept By: Brittany Flynn 

Textures By: David Macias 

Color Adjustments By: Sierra Hawkins 

Model and Rig By: Tre Vital

Jointless RFL

Hey everyone, 

I put together a few videos showing how to do a jointless RFL system and get toe bend. I'm starting to understand how to format and order my videos to best help get the information across. One of my instructors gave me some feedback on my last tutorial and it helped me out a lot.

Tiger Rig Complete!

Hey Guys a modeler named GIles Ruscoe created this tiger and let me rig it. It's my first game res model I pushed this far and I'm very happy with the results. Hope you guys like it

Dynamic Fk System (Tutorial)

Hey all, This is a character I modeled and am currently rigging. I'm using him to show off a dynamic FK system. 

Beetle Animation

My friend Zach Gillespie animated the rhino beetle for me. It's a good feeling to see your work come to life. 

Robot Arm in ACTION

Hello everyone,

I was asked by one of my peers to rig a mechanical arm for a game environment. The model is by Luis Perez.  This rig was fun because I could just play with connections. I had a lot of fun rigging it. It took about 2 hours and it is completely scalable which you will see and has a pretty intuitive set up. The video was one I sent with the rigged file to show him how to use it. Hope you guys like what you see. 

The Neck Test

So it worked! I was worried about the neck for the character because I had the idea of it being suspended by several springs and reacting to the movement of the head. This is just the test rig but I'm confident it will hold up in the final. 

Some Screen Shots of The Copper Soldier

Hey all,

This is the Copper Soldier. He is spliced between a concept by Mr. Jake Parker and Hellboy's Golden army robots. I am taking a lot of liberties with this one to really make him my own. I've got some fun things planned for this characters rig. I have been modeling with the rig in mind for the last few projects but this guy presents a few new challenges. Although his model is far from finished I will be posting some rig tests to ensure my theories on how he will move are correct. Hope you guys like what you see.

My beetle is Now Complete. Responsible for all aspects

VSD Blog Post

 This month I dove deeper into lighting. What I really want to show off in the above image is the purple light on the floor. This is called caustics, it's a very appealing effect that does a lot for the shot. After I saw this effect I started thinking of ways that I could incorporate this into characters. To make it look right though there are several aspects from the global rendering options to the light and material that all need to line up so this works.

 This was the very first time I made UV's, created the textures and mapped them onto an object. It really opened my eyes to the whole texturing process and I learned a lot of pro tips and tricks to stream line my work flow. Not only was I shown how to be faster but to work with higher quality for less of a cost.

First Tutorial

Hey all this is the first in many tutorials. This is the most basic thing you can learn. How to set project files. Once you have this down you have 90% or your pipeline organization down. I will show you how to do it and what benefits you get from working within project files. I hope you enjoy it.

3D Blitz 2014

Click the link to see my entry to the Full Sail Sponsored 2014 3D Blitz. The animation was made from scratch in 24 hours. All the characters and assets were modeled, rigged, textured, animated and rendered in that window for the final result.

Had a great time with some of my hardest working peers.

VEF 2 Project

For VEF 2 we were introduced to Maya fluid effects along with Houdini. For the project we were given two days to recreate a fire/smoke effect using this set up in Maya and Houdini. I had a lot of fun playing with maya fluids primarily because the look even before render was really easy on the eyes. Maya's fluid effects are fairly easy to get the hang of as well. We were taught in two stages how to create our simulations and it worked very well. The first stage was how to get the look and shape of the fire or smoke we were going for. We went adjusted the size, speed, direction and several other parameters that make up the general and refined look of our effect. From there we had a second lecture that went into shaders, lights, and textures. 

We were given free range to research anything relating back to VEF. I got my hands on RealFlow and it was amazing. The interface to this software is by far one of the most intuitive I've had the pleasure to work with. I noticed that when i created emitters and geometry into a scene they we automatically aware of each other. There was a no need to create rigid bodies of colliders. This was made possible because of the central hub node. Everything when created is initially plugged into the hub node and is aware of each other. This made your set up much faster and a lot easier to get to simulating.

Vixon Ambient Occlusion

Vixon Colored

Showing off Annabelle's character modeled by me. I didn't use a comp sheet for this character but that being said I did take a few creative liberties.

Annabelle I'm sure you'll pick up on some of the subtleties I've added quicker than most. I hope you like them and it stays true to the character. If you would like to collaborate in the future on other characters just let me know and I'd be happy to work with you again. 

The character will have at least one more pass for polishing but for the most part this is Vixon interpreted into the 3D using Maya.  AO's to come soon.

Vixon-Basic Shaders

Check out the progress my friends. 

Annabelle Leigh Bowie's Original Character: Vixon

A friend of mine attending Digi-Pen drafted up a quick drawing of one of her original characters. You can see more of her stuff here Annabelle's Work.

I'm working towards being a modeler so I asked her if she would like me to take some time to model her character out. I Played with it for a couple hours last night and this is where I'm at thus far.

 For the face you'll notice I'm modeling the character with her eyes shut. I found a tutorial a few weeks ago that went over facial topology he explained that modeling this way is optimal for riggers, check out his tutorial here> Sergi Caballe It is my first time modeling a character like this but it's turning out very well. Save some pinching issues I'll have to smooth later.

 The torso is coming along smoother than I had originally thought. Her top was simple to form but I'm in the process of playing with the tension folds. I haven't really studied cloth before so I'll be doing some research later when the character is fully modeled. I played with the edge flow a little and managed to find a technique that will describe tension, now it's just a matter of knowing where to place it. Next time I post progress I'll play with some shaders too.

Tr_Helmet_FieldTech_2ndPass

I got my first critique from the player studious people yesterday and among them was senior art director Tramell Ray Isaacs. He critiques everyone but it's still pretty cool.

But here is a look at the current Terran Republic Helmet.

PlanetSide 2 Player Studio

SOE is allowing player generated content. Right now I'm heavily focused on their helmet creation.

This is one of my first entries in the early stages still. The forum is usually very active and I just started posting today so I'm looking forward to some good feedback.

This is the Terran Republic faction, field Tech helmet.

Feel free to comment here. However if you'd like to learn more or comment on the player studio forum go here ----> https://forums.station.sony.com/playerstudio/index.php?threads/tt-helmet-field-tech.11500062240/

Thanks all

Ambient Occlusion Renders

Pre textured character in AO. I like the way he turned out. I'm going to say that the face expression is less than desirable but once rigged he should support several expressions and I'll definitely be playing with his face controls.

I'll be rigging this character as well as sending him to the riggers in my school. Together I'm sure we'll come up with some interesting systems to put on this guy. He's UV'd and ready to go.I may shade and light him but I will certainly be doing a turn table.

The beetle is an adapted character that I referenced from http://lysol-jones.deviantart.com/art/JAPANESE-BUG-FIGHTS-Hiro-78073338 This is a deviant art artist named Lysol-Jones. He has an extremely fun art style and I really like a lot of his characters. Go check him out and thanks for viewing my process.

I'm very happy with look of the character and extremely satisfied with his topology. In my character creation class and my production modeling class we learned several things to look for when creating a character for production as far as topology is concerened. 

• Quaded geometry 
• even spacing
• at least three edgeloops in deforming areas 
• no jittering edges/verts 
• proper facial topology e.g eye loops, mouth loop.
• Do NOT model in dynamic poses 
• Use T-pose, A-Pose, or Y-Pose for production models (rigging is made much easier this way)

Recently through this process I also found that squares are great for deforming topology. I've always known that quaded geo was something to always strive for. I also knew that quaded didn't always mean squares. But when Jen told my about facial rigging and explained her history with very clean square geo verses clean quaded geo the difference it made in the rig, I made it a point to ensure all my deforming areas are as squared as possible. 

FULL BODY!!!

So this is the first time the character has been posted fully put together. I really like how he is turning out. I'm in the final polishing stages now. His torso will most likely be going through on more cannon or so but aside from that I'm just going to polish out some pinching in the character and smooth out warps, and I'll be checking that all his topology is as quaded as possible and without non-manifold issues.

I'll be posting his wireframes after the clean up along with an AO pass to show him off. For my first character I'm really happy with how he turned out. I feel I learned a lot in the process and can't wait for him to be rigged and animated.

more to come soon.

Face Retopology

Like I mentioned earlier I'm planing on making this model production ready. For his face to deform properly he'll require specific edge flow. The images in this post show my work flow as I try and reroute his topology.

The top images have the right edge flow to support deformation however I got the result at the cost of losing the design of my original face. In the bottom images I cut the geometry in half and rerouted the one on the right.

The middle image is the rerouted face. I've got a bit of a pinch around the eye loops causing some warping issues. I'll be cleaning that up and polishing the rest of the model as well.

The face

This is the face done with its initial topology.

Torso and outer shell cannons

 Once again these creative decisions come down to a mix of functional design and visual appeal.

In my previous posts I've mentioned I'm working closely with a rigger to get this character production ready. Jen Conley's Rigging page. That is her page and she has been an amazing help with this character from every angle. Several of the design decisions have been a combination of the her ideas and mine.

For the outer shell I decided to to keep it smooth primarily because the type of beetle the character is modeled after has a smoother shell naturally. Also after the character is done and UV'd I can play with bump mapping and see what looks good without gaining geo.

The torso on the bottom left was the one I went with. The panels made for an interesting look with the character in full view (images to come very soon). Without making the character too noisy it looks nice and lends itself well to rigging.

more to come soon

Leg revisions

Fixed the legs up. The images towards the left are what the leg looked like prior.

To the right is a side by side of the old (red) and new(green) leg. The heel area I covered for aesthetic reasons to make his legs feel heavier.

The back of the knee was a deformation issue. The characters leg wasn't bending naturally and the geo kept colliding. The fix works great for the basic rig I put on it. He's definitely coming along.

Working on the legs

For the legs I wanted a solid looking piece that was able to functionally deform. The foot went through a similar and separate process. 

From left to right you will see some of the multiple stages that the leg went through along with the foot. ultimately the foot would have worked in its early stages but the rigger suggested I model the toes to be able to spread. I did that and adjusted the armor plates on top as seen in the last to images of the bottom right. I like her suggestion and feel that it not only with be more functional but it looks a lot better as well.

I'll need to fit the leg and foot together to see how they feel.  

First Critique from the rigging department

Had to change up the elbow area. The character needs to be able to deform without inter penetration.

The Upper half of the Rhino beetle

1st production post of the beetle character I'm putting together. For his creation I started in Zbrush to rough out the core of the character. I really didn't spend too much time in ZBrush. After I got it I went into Maya and resurfaced it and cleaned the mesh. The arm you see on the right was created in Maya. the base of the arm up until the forearm were pretty straight forward. When I got to the larger hand part of the arm I had to do a bit of problem solving. I considered fleshing this piece out in Zbrush as well. However I ultimately used a technique I picked up in CDC (Character Design and Creation). my Instructor Marcus Scarsella uses a cylinder and plays with the input options to accommodate the number of fingers down the line on a human hand. I did something similar and played with it in the Orthographic views till I landed where I wanted. So I was able to get the shape and the topology I wanted in single go.

I'm really enjoying the process for this guy. It is my first character I'm doing without any tutorials and I'm learning a lot.

This is the Bugsy Character Full Sail provides that I mentioned in my previous post. The image has his orthographic, his wire frame and his rig. The character may seem simple but his design was carefully constructed. The character was built to be unisex thus allowing the animator to give Bugsy whatever personality they want. My class was shown some animations of students before us and some of our instructors work with the character and it's crazy how well Bugsy lends itself to multiple personalities and gender roles. The character I'm creating should compliment Bugsy well. Aside from the fact that they're both bugs I think that Bugsy being such a tiny flimsy character and my plans for the beetle to be a relatively larger character, that the pairing of the two could spawn some fun interactions.

Hey Everyone,

I'm new to this blogging thing but I want to jump right into this. My name is Tre Vital, I'm a computer animation student at full sail university. The curriculum here at full sail is extremely diverse so I've touched a lot of programs and concepts. I'm focusing on the modeling and rigging disciplines. I have a strong love for hard surface modeling and characters.

This image is for one of the personal projects I'm going for. The image in the bottom middle with the number 1 is essentially the character I am going for.  I found the image on deviant art from a artist named lysol jones > http://lysol-jones.deviantart.com that is his link to check out his art. I want to really bring this character into my own the surrounding images are reference for some of the details and main body forms I'll be throwing on this guy. I plan on turning him into a more mesomorphic character and I will be giving him different legs for sure. That being said we have a bug character we animate for most of our character animation classes named Bugsy. Its my plan to execute this character so that he is visually appealing and riggable and maybe he can be a character asset that the students who follow me may be able to animate. I'll be posting my WIP images along with the critiques I'll be getting from my animation teacher and my rigging instructor.