I streamed myself working on my vehicle takedown animation on Twitch. It was over 5 hours.
I’m planning on setting up a consistent streaming schedule but need to work out the details first.
Here is the WIP of where I left off.
I have been focusing on the attacking character (Dex) mostly and will animate Jack (the guy on the bike getting kicked) once I am happy with Dex’s movement.
The environment will be changed out a cliff, which Jack will be kicked off of.
Today I updated my website.
Changes have been made to all pages under ANIMATIONS, TECHNICAL ART, HOME, and ABOUT.
On the main page of ANIMATIONS and TECHNICAL ART, I have made it easier to get a quick view of some of the animations in each category, updated the videos to take more screen space, and added an icon to direct you to the subpages if you want more info.
With these changes, I made my HOME and ABOUT pages more current to reflect this.
Also, I updated my LinkedIn page and made updates on some of my other social media pages.
I shot some reference for my new animation I will be working on. The focus will be to convey the weight of the character picking up a mini turret.
I started my Augmented Animator class with Rusty Gray. This will be my 3rd time taking this class/mentorship.
Today was our first meetup and we mainly focused on my plan of attack for the next 12 weeks.
I finished the first version of my Mixamo Rig Converter script.
With this script, you will be able to download anything you want off Mixamo and turn it into an animateable rig.
It will create controls to animate the rig. The existing animation will then be transferred over to these controls.
Display and Animation layers will be automatically generated, for easy organization.
The created animation layer is additive with all controls added to it, so you will be able to start animating right away.
You can check the Joint Orientation of the rig with the first 2 buttons.
Next, you can decide how big the NURBS circles will be for your controls.
Don’t forget to click set. You can create some test sizes beforehand and delete them all at once when you find the right size.
You can set the time range of what parts of the animation you want.
The frequency is how often they will set a keyframe.
When you have set everything, click the bottom button and have fun with your new rig.
I haven’t updated my blog in a while but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on things.
Here is an update on the script for class.
I downloaded a rig of mixamo.com. My script generates NURBS curves at all the joints, parent constraints to the corresponding joint, and the NURBS curves mimic the joint hierarchy.
Also, I rename the joints to have the “_JNT” suffix added to the end of it. Then I have the NURBS curves mimic the name of the joints but replace “_JNT” with “_CNTRL”
I’m no done but it’s in a good spot at the moment.
Next, I will change the controls to rotate to be in the optimal angle for the rig, change the control size so they are easier to grab them, and create a UI to interact with the script.
My stretch goal is to take the Mixamo keyframes from the joints and bake them onto the controls I have created.
I started working on a script for my last assignment for class.
Currently, I have a set of joints made by hand. The script creates a NURBS circle as the controller and then it parents it to the matching joint.
Next, I want to have the controls rotated the correct way. I also want to place them at the exact spot of the joint (right now I have them in arbitrary positions that are close enough).
This week we are learning about custom UI’s and Dialogue Boxes.
I created a normal Maya dialogue box to warn you about errors. The help button will bring you to my website where the documentation is.
The next script is a custom UI asking the user how many cubes they want to make. You can choose between big and small cubes.
This was a test run before creating a more complex script with a custom Ui.
I finished the bonus question for my homework. It generates a forest with the tree models provided. We also were prompted to create an image with words over it, like a postcard. I automated this step too. Creates a new poly plane, moves it in from of the camera, creates new material, and attaches 2 textures to the material. I separated the forest creation and the plane creation into their own functions. With this, you can easily generate more forests without creating extra planes.
The past few days I have been working on my python homework. I’ve finished the 2 main scripts but still need to do the bonus question.
1st script creates a scene from scratch.
2nd script adjusts Maya’s userSetup.py file which starts Maya in a way it normally wouldn’t. In this case, it adds another shelf with 2 buttons. One button creates a simple sphere and the other sends you to my website.
