Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Here be gifs


Good day everyone!

As frequent visitors may already now, I've been working on new rigs these last couple of months. If you don't know what a rig is, let me explain the whole deal real (not!) quick:
3d characters are typically animated with bones. As the name suggests, these are joints inside the character model. The model is then weighted to these bones, so that each bone moves a certain area of the character's model. This process is called skinning. Therefore when animating, you actually animate the bones, which then move the character.
But animating each bone individually is impractical, would take extremely long and often results in jittery motions. Therefore you build a rig, which is basically a system, build around the bones to help control multiple bones at once, in a way it makes sense. An integral part of a rig are the control objects ... these are what's actually being animated.

Imagine your character has a spine made up of five bones and you want him to turn his chest to the left. That rotation should affect the entire spine, so each bone in the chain would have to rotate a little bit to make it look realistic. Without a rig, that would mean you'd have to go in and animate five bones. If you built a rig, you would probably create at least one control object on top of the spine and one on the bottom. And you would set it up so that when you move either of these control objects, it affects all five bones in a way you'd expect from a spine. So when you want to rotate the character's chest, you'd just have to rotate the control object on the top and let the rig take care of rotating the bones. You see, rigs are very important and can quickly become really complex, but will make animating a lot easier.

The importance of rigs is not new to me ... even my first animation was animated with the help of a rudimentary rig. As the years have passed however, I now know what I need my rigs to be able to do and I've learned enough to make such a rig.

And that's what I've mostly been working on these last couple of months: building a new rig.
After lots of trial and erroring, it's finally finished. I can easily repurpose it and use it for new characters, rather than building it from scratch. It has lots of stuff that'll make animating easier for me - especially the hands and the face. And every animation I make from now on, I can apply to any character that uses this new rig.


To put this rig to the test, I made a quick animation and applied it to two different characters. As expected, I had to do some refining, but overall I'd call it a success =)
I don't want to open commissions just yet, though. Still need to figure out what to do with the male character models.

Anyway, enjoy!

Download the Bloodelf here or here

Download Elizabeth here or here

23 comments:

  1. Nice, the bioshock one is awsome :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Awesome work, hope to see full length animations soon

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh god Elizabeth!
    I love you for making that one.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Should you take the time to add sound and several minutes of length, you could create works which would even give Zone a run for his money.

    Keep up the fine work!

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Awsome stuff man. i would love to see some more advanced wow ones with multiple scenes but also some cool mass effects ones too =)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Both pieces (though especially the Elizabeth piece) are nothing short of brilliant. The level of artistic detail and software skill in creating the rig and applying the character over it is just...I don't have the proper words. You might have just created the most exceptional Elizabeth piece on the web just as a test for your new tech.

    ReplyDelete
  8. The Elizabeth video is honestly, and I mean honestly, the best 3d model and animation I have ever seen outside of a massive budget film. And seeing the detail of the hands on the Blood Elf one... INCREDIBLE.
    I am speechless.
    You sir, are amazing.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Pretty much what the person above here said! Would looove it if you made a longer Elizabeth clip!

    ReplyDelete
  10. You are legend and you bring exciting news

    ReplyDelete
  11. You are just fucking amazing ! Could you make some more gifs with Elizabeth?

    ReplyDelete
  12. please make a longer version/more poses of Elizabeth. i'd give you all of my monnies!

    ReplyDelete
  13. That Elizabeth gif needs a oscars award!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Fuck the male model. Do it POV with both. Maybe with some eye contact too!

    Good job man!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  15. The Elizabeth gif blew up on reddit, I wanted to come here and say thanks! Amazing work!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Amazing works!
    Maybe you will be interested to create characters based on races from MMO Tera online. They are hot)

    FE:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSHBvWsE0OA

    ReplyDelete
  17. I like it man, keep up the good work
    You're inspiring me to keep at it as well

    ReplyDelete
  18. I love your anim for Elizabeth <3

    ReplyDelete
  19. Looove your Elizabeth animation soo cute an sexy xD

    ReplyDelete
  20. Both downloads for the Bloodelf are gone, and the Mega download for Elizabeth is gone. Where are they? :(

    ReplyDelete