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Teaser Trailer

2011-11-15T15:45:00.001-05:00

Just a quick post for now. We've been working hard on getting Saturday Morning RPG ready for launch, and we now have our first teaser trailer up for viewing!

Surgery and Cathedrals

2011-09-24T20:48:00.000-04:00

I had oral surgery last week (soft tissue graft so my molars won't fall out), which meant a lot of sitting at home with a lot of extra time on my hands while the drugs messed with my brain. Of course, I did what any other reasonable person riding a Vicodin high would do: I built a cathedral in Minecraft.

Now, I did use a very nice program called MCEdit to take care of most of the repetitive work, so it's not like I mined, crafted, and built this entire thing by hand. I did a ton of planning on graph paper, especially how to handle the various curves. All of the detail-work and parts-building was done in Minecraft proper (using the nice "new" creative mode), but I then used MCEdit to copy/paste/shift the bits around. I'm still not finished, but I figured I have enough so far to pique some interest.

There's also a catacombs level which leads to a large cavern that I'm not sure what I will do yet. I don't have any screenshots of those yet. Not that it would matter, since the catacombs are so dark that you can only see about 5 blocks in any direction, thanks to the darkening effects of being placed just over the void.

A view from the nearby NPC village

An external view of the sanctuary

Pretty lights at night!

Before I finished the sanctuary wall...


Main hall at night


Dome at night

A view from the pews


The sanctuary at night

Perfect view of the sunset

Also, because I miss features like real shadows and depth-of-field, I've started re-creating the cathedral in Maya.

Rough block-in

Making some curves, plus rough textures

Rough roof, more textures, and incandescence

Sneak Peek

2011-09-24T10:57:00.000-04:00

I've been working on a large-ish side project in my free time over the past few weeks. Here's a little preview.

Google AdSense

2011-08-23T08:53:00.002-04:00

I've not been thrilled with my experience with Google's AdSense service. My site traffic isn't terribly high, so it wasn't going to earn much. I'm perfectly fine with that. However, what annoys me is how Google decided to cancel my account for "Invalid Account Activity," which, from what I can tell, mainly involves attempting to boost my own earnings in ways prohibited by their Terms of Service. This wouldn't be so bad if they gave some indication as to the type of activity they have found to be offensive. Instead, they apply the ban, then give you the option to appeal blindly in the hope that you can convince the appeal committee that you haven't committed whatever actions they have accused you of. Definitely not a good experience. Needless to say, I don't have ads anymore.

Blogging Experiment

2011-06-18T01:42:00.003-04:00

I generally don't like blogging about blogging, and I certainly don't like blogging about my personal life, but I feel compelled to make an exception.

I love the work that I'm doing, and I love working with the people at my jobs, but right now I'm not getting paid. Working for both a startup and a mod team, I knew when I signed on that I wasn't going to be making much, if anything, for the opening stretch, and I'm ok with that. We're all in the same boat together.

However, savings don't last forever, and while I really want to keep working with these groups long enough to get them over that first pay-day hump, I can only hold out so long. Thus, I'm trying out an experiment to see if I can't get a bit more cash coming in on the side to keep me out of the poor-house.

You may notice two new things added to the blog page recently. I've signed up for AdSense through Blogger.com, and it will start display ads between my posts and on the sidebar. I have also added a PayPal donation button in the sidebar on the off-chance that any of my readers generous/stupid enough to toss a coin in my proverbial hat.

This is very much experimental, so please bear with me as I try to get it all worked out.

TL;DR version - I'm turning on AdSense. I'd rather not have ads, but being able to pay rent, pay off school loans, afford food, fill my car with gas, and maintain my hardware are all things that require money to do.

Suicidal Computers

2011-06-16T23:08:00.001-04:00

In case it hasn't been clear before now, let me make one thing very clear: I love computers. Tooling around with them is incredibly fun, challenging, and rewarding. That word challenging, though, is a fickle one. Today (and last night-ish), for example, I was presented with two challenges: my main webserver died, then my laptop decided it had had enough of my shenanigans. Despite the stress presented by both events, though, it's been a particularly interesting (and challenging) learning experience.

My laptop's mini-suicide is the least involved, so I'll start there. I was doing some animation cleanup and sprite-sheet compositing in Photoshop, and it was certainly pushing my system hard. Moving the layer groups around was taking upwards of 10 seconds per update, but I figured that it would be ok once I finished my task, saved, and shut down the program. I got a little weirded out when my cursor changed from an arrow to a bizarre vertical dotted line for no apparent reason, but it functioned normally otherwise, so I continued to work. Then this happened:

I honestly have no idea as to the actual cause of that. My only guess is that I was pushing the system too hard, it overheated, and gave up the ghost. I'm thankful that after I let it cool down a while, it started back up just fine.

The real kicker was my server dying. It was originally a desktop box, but its CPU heatsink isn't entirely stable, so I relegated it to less stressful jobs. I had a bios password enabled on it, and forgot to take it off when I installed the server OS. For a desktop, the boot-up password wouldn't be a problem, but on a server it means that I can't do any sort of remote reboot. Easy enough to fix, I thought. Boot up to the bios screen, remove the password, reboot to the OS, and everything will be dandy. And it was, until it didn't boot the OS.

I admit that I panicked a bit at first. I tried reinstalling the OS to reuse the existing partitions, and that didn't work. That freaked me out a bit more, so I mounted a usb key and pulled off all the critical data (website, subversion repositories), and tried a full format and reboot. That didn't work, so I transferred the salvaged data to my secondary server and went home to sleep.

I spent the next morning configuring the secondary server's Apache to replace the old server. Honestly, I was surprised at how quickly it went. It took me several hours over many days to figure out how to get it all set up the first few times. Even though it was much easier and much less painless than I expected, it really drilled into me that I need to get a good backup system in place. Looks like I'll be doing an rysnc/cron crash-course soon.

After work, I discovered the most anti-climactic solution to my server's startup issues. I flashed the bios. I don't know what it changed, but it must have fixed something, because it boots just fine now. Since I re-formatted and re-installed the OS, it'll at least give me a fresh start on building it up more efficiently. Also, my dad gave me a bunch of old drives to use. I'm going to shove a few each into the servers to see if I can't stave off any more massive failures.

Also, as an added bonus, here's a crappy ipod photo my current workspace:

A. is my Lenovo T60p laptop, "Cacofonix". It has a 32-bit Core2Duo 2Ghz CPU,3Gb RAM, an ATI FireGl v5250 graphics card, a 100Gb primary drive, 250Gb secondary drive, and runs on Vista Business.

B. is my main work machine, "Fulliautomatix", custom built. It has a 64-bit Core2Quad 2.66Ghz CPU, 8Gb RAM, a GeForce 275GTX, a 150Gb primary drive, a 375Gb secondary drive, a 1.5Tb storage drive, a 300Gb scratch drive, and runs on Windows 7 Pro.

C. is the webserver, "Shoggy" (formerly a desktop named "Tragicomix"), that crapped out on me. It has a 32-bit Core2Duo 2.66Ghz CPU, 2.5Gb RAM, a 250Gb drive, and runs Ubuntu Server 11.

D. is a mystery-box :3 It's not mine, I don't get to keep it, but it was really cool to play around with expensive enterprise-class hardware.

Not shown is my other server, "Merrt" (formerly a desktop named "Asterix"), which is one of my dad's old desktops. It has a 64-bit 2Ghz dual core AMD CPU, 2Gb RAM, a 150Gb drive, and also runs Ubuntu Server 11.

A side bit of fun for me: computer naming. My family has always been a fan of the Asterix and TinTin comic books, so our computers have always been named after things, usually characters, relating to them. I remember at one time, my dad had a trio of servers at his job which he'd named Uderzo, Goscinny, and Herge, after the authors and artists of those two comic series. At home we've had computers named Asterix, Getafix, Geriatrix, Fulliautomatix, Lutetia, Cacofonix, Dogmatix, Tragicomix, Unhygenix, and Panacea.

While I've always loved my family's naming scheme, I've wanted to start differentiating my systems as I starting to create my own networks and administrating my own servers. Thus, I've been naming all my new machines after characters from the Warhammer 40K Gaunt's Ghosts series. With so many good characters to choose from, I have attempted to pair my servers with characters who share similar traits.

The character Shoggy was a trooper who lost his eyes and had them replaced with mechanical ones. He's good at a few things, but can't perform up to the same standard as the rest of the soldiers. Similarly, the server Shoggy has an unreliable heatsink, so I don't trust it to do any heavy lifting, like rendering stuff in 3d.

The character Merrt was an excellent sniper who took a jaw-shot, and had it replace with a mechanical one. He still fights well, but he's no crack shot anymore, and he has confidence issues. Merrt the server was hot stuff when my dad first got him. It was our first 64-bit system, and had an internal RAID system. But as time wore on, he became less shiny, the RAID system started corrupting stuff, and he was finally replaced with new hardware.

I love taking old hardware and making it useful again.

Anyways, enough about computers for now. I hope to have some more fun art to post when I have more free time. :D In the meantime, check out Mighty Rabbit's Website and Facebook page to keep up with what we've been doing.

Pixel Run

2011-06-06T16:28:00.001-04:00

Just a quick run I doodled out while at work today. Most of the anims we need have to be under 4 frames each, so it was fun to play around with something a bit smoother. Yes, he's missing an arm. Because I said so.

Also, as free as the basic version of GraphicsGale is, I have to say I much much MUCH prefer ProMotion for pixel art. I miss being able to scale my brushes dynamically and traversing the palette with my numpad.

UPDATE: Here's some more fun stuff that won't make it into the game because the frame count is too high. The character is a three frame cycle, but the cloak is six frames (for the math-impaired, the cloak's framerate is double the resolution of the body).

New Domain

2011-06-06T13:56:00.000-04:00

You might notice, if you look at your address bar, that this blog has changed locations. I got a pretty sweet deal on my domain name by signing up through Google Apps. For $10, they registered my domain name and set it up with sub-domains pointing to the free apps they provide (email, calendar, docs, and sites). I had to set up the main site and blog manually, but that wasn't terribly difficult because the third party registrar Google used (www.enom.com) has a handy web interface that makes DNS configuration pretty simple.

I've also been having a lot of fun getting my Ubuntu server back up and running. After several months of being offline, I tried to resurrect it, only to have a failed update make the system unbootable. I was thankful to discover that you can install a fresh version of Ubuntu server over an old one using the "reuse partition" option, and you will retain most of your files. My MySQL databases were completely wiped, but I didn't have anything worthwhile in them anyways.

Since it had been a while since I'd gotten my hands dirty with server maintenance, there was a lot of fumbling around in the command line before I hit my groove again. Once I did, though, I got my Subversion safety nets set up for the various projects I'm involved with, and learned how to make them all easily and (sort of) securely accessible with Apache.

That said, there's still a number of bugs to iron out. My Wordpress testing site has mysteriously lost functionality. I can navigate to the pages, but they load up blank, and viewing source in my browser seems to tell me that there is no code being loaded. I may just scrap it all and just reinstall WP completely from the ground up. Also, with all the hack-y setup I was doing before I hit my groove, I really need to go back and fix permissions and consolidate password/access settings for Subversion.

Gun Rigging

2011-05-09T20:37:00.000-04:00

Quick update on what I'm working on! I'm now working as a pixel animator at Mighty Rabbit Studios here in the Triangle area, so I will be delving into more pixel work on here in the near future.

The Angels Fall First project is progressing well, too. The finished mech rig has been put aside for now so that I can do a full overhaul on the first-person arms and weapons.

The arm rigging is pretty nuts right now. The original meshes were created using a poly-decimator, which basically takes a hi-poly mesh and tries to create a low-poly version while maintaining the overall surface shape. The problem is decimators don't create clean topology, and messy topology looks crappy when it deforms. Thus, I've had to re-topo the hands and try to fit them all to approximately the same proportions, with a marginal degree of success. I hope to explain more in a future post.

My latest work, tho, has been on the gun rigs. I've got a ton of awesome weaponry on my hard drive, and I've been having a ball working on getting it all set up to animate. I took one of the assault rifles all the way thru to a finished rig so that I can start testing thing out in-engine soon. Here's a short demo vid:

This rig took a lot more work than I'd expected. It has a lot more moving parts than most guns (sometimes all you need is 2 bones: grip and magazine), which was work enough, but the real challenge was making the switchable pivot points. I tried a number of different methods, but the eventual solution ended up being pretty simple.

At the core, it's a variation off the simple IK/FK triple-skeleton switching system. I have two skeletons for the stock and grip which drive the main control skeleton. One skeleton is rooted at the stock, the other at the grip. The main body control houses the attribute which switches between the two. Ideally, I'd like to set up a script that will allow for matching between the two versions. Way down the road, I'm hoping to write a GUI that would allow the animator to switch out weapons on the fly and do other nifty tricks, but that's gonna take a lot more planning and work.

Alrighty. That's me for now. If things go well, I should have moar soon! :D

PyMel

2011-04-20T10:00:00.070-04:00

I print tshirts for a living, and that means that a good chunk of my work-day is spent waiting for the machine to spit out the next shirt. It gets pretty boring if I spend that time just sitting and waiting, so I get on my laptop and do useful things instead. This week, for example, I started to look into using PyMel for some of my scripting needs.

To get everyone up to speed, Maya uses its own embedded scripting language called MEL - Maya Embedded Language. It's a good start for learning how Maya works behind the scenes, but it is rather rigid in its structure, and has a tendency to be very very verbose.

Newer versions of Maya have begun to include a Python runtime as well as a library which ports all (most? I'm not 100% sure) of Maya's MEL commands for use in Python. This essentially allows you to write MEL code while taking advantages of some of Python's nicer features: dynamically typed variables, more refined string manipulation, and not having to check every freaking line of code for the one semi-colon you missed that's causing your whole script to break. However, it still requires you to think largely in more of a MEL-type flow, which ends up feeling like a half-baked hybrid that nobody really would want to look at.

That's where PyMel is intended to come it. From what I gather, PyMel is designed as a more Python-y integration of Maya commands into Python. Honestly, I don't have enough experience to say for sure, but at first glance it does seem to be an improvement. I will add one caveat: it appears that others more experienced than I have a less-than-enthusiastic opinion of PyMel, primarily because they have found it to become excessively slow for large iterative tasks. However, since I'm writing small helper scripts rather than full-on tools, the speed differences have so far been indistinguishable. (As a final aside, a brief websearch indicates that PyMel is faster overall for scripting control, but it is faster to then switch to the Maya.Cmds functions for iterating large loops.)

Anyways, why is all this important? Because I'm a perfectionist and a minimalist (usually within reason). I like to do as much as I can with as little as I can get away with. For example, why write 5 lines of MEL code when I can do the same thing with 1 line of PyMel?

//Parent constrain lower-level control object's zero-group to higher-level control object
//MEL Code
string $OA_ctrl_parent_selection[] = `ls -sl`;
string $parent_ctrl = $OA_ctrl_parent_selection[0];
string $child_ctrl = $OA_ctrl_parent_selection[1];
string $child_group = "GRP_" + $child_ctrl + "_zero";
parentConstraint -mo $parent_ctrl $child_group

//Parent constrain lower-level control object's zero-group to higher-level control object
//Python/PyMel Code
parentConstraint( ls(sl = 1)[0] , "GRP_" + ls(sl = 1)[1] + "_zero" , mo = 1 )

I'll be the first to admit that the PyMel snippet is much more difficult to decipher, but ultimately it's going onto my shelf as a button anyways. I'm also working on translating to PyMel the script I talked about in my previous post, but it's still a work in progress. In the end, though, I just really love writing these bits of automation to make my life easier. My rigging is already getting faster just by reducing the number of operations I have to execute to get the same results.

Mech Rigs + Tool Writing

2011-04-17T23:17:00.001-04:00

I've recently joined the Angels Fall First team as an animator, which is turning out to be a lot of fun already. I enjoy animating, but I love rigging and scripting, which is good since my first set of jobs are to rig (and eventually animate) the first big mech, the Velius Mk2, as well as some of the first-person arms and weapons. It's been a while since I've done any hardcore 3D work, so I've been shaking loose the cobwebs and getting back into my groove.

For the mech, I was given the in-game mesh weighted to an older version skeleton, but it was missing any sort of controls, and the existing animation had been baked down onto the bones. After looking the whole thing over, I scrapped the animation, detached the mesh, and went to work improving the skeleton. The original structure was mostly acceptable, but I added in some extra degrees of motion for the hips, torso, and neck, as well as bones for the toes. I also added in some bones which will be be used in-engine to facilitate the destructible armor plating.

Once that was finished, I weighted the mesh back onto the skeleton so it could move around. Weighting mechanical objects like a mech is a fairly easy process, since most of it simulates rigid binding, but it can still be tedious.

I then duplicated the skinned skeleton to provide a base for the control skeleton. My thinking was that by separating the control structures from the skinned skeleton, I could re-skin the mesh or fiddle with the rig controls without affecting the other too much. The two skeletons are exactly the same, except that the control skeleton has two sets of arms and legs to allow for IK and FK control sets.

Of course, a control skeleton isn't very useful without control objects for the animator to manipulate. Most rigs I've used in the past stick to NURBs curves for the controls, but I decided to mix and match. I'm experimenting with doing super-low-poly versions of the limbs instead of control curves because they are easier to spot and easier to click on. The arrow control curves were objects that I created quickly in Illustrator, saved as Illustrator 10 files for compatibility, then imported into Maya

With the control objects built, I now need to hook them up. The IK controls will be a little tricky, but FK controls are about as straightforward as you can get. However, connecting everything by hand takes a long time, so I wrote a little script to speed things up. All I have to do is select my control object, the joint I want to connect it to, and run the script. What it gives me is a control surface completely oriented to the joint with all its translation, rotation, and scale channels zeroed out. This gives the animator a nice, clean base to start with.

In all, getting to this point has taken me about a day and a half, and I loved every minute of it. I spent almost my entire weekend working this up because that's what I like to do. I'll post more shots as I finish it up. Also, go check out the Angels Fall First site! It's got a lot more cool stuff to look at!

Guys With Pencils

2011-04-05T20:13:00.000-04:00

I want to give a huge plug to two buddies of mine from Sheridan: Adam Hines and Andrew Murray. We graduated together last year, and they've both gotten gigs in the TV animation industry. They have also recently started a new podcast called Guys With Pencils, and it's awesome stuff!

Check it out! http://gwp.libsyn.com/

Conference Time

2011-04-05T12:43:00.001-04:00

Good news everybody! I'm going to the East Coast Game Conference on April 13th and 14th. I've been prepping a variety of projects for the con, and I'll post bits and pieces over the next little while. In the meantime, here's a sample of the new theme I'm working on.

Obsessions

2011-01-27T00:06:00.001-05:00

It feels good to be coding again. Minecraft quickly turned into an addiction, which I have curbed by turning it into a project. I'm writing a Python script that converts Minecraft's world save data into Maya scenes.

When I was looking for Minecraft wallpaper for my desktop, I discovered an image where someone had taken Minecraft's level data and exported it to a different game engine, then used the game engine to export an OBJ to Blender. The final render looks like this:

I was blown away, but I quickly discovered that their method was quite specific to their software and, more importantly, Mac-only.

My script is still in the rough stages, but much of the basic functionality is there. It can open the .DAT files in which Minecraft stores its world chunks, strip out the section about what kind of blocks make up the chunk, then use that data to re-create the chunk inside of Maya. The end result looks like this:

It's an ugly pile of dirt, but it's a start. The blurry stuff on the top is water, and the various colored blocks are the different materials that make up the chunk. In the end, the script should create a set of geometry like this, as well as a proxy model, save to a file, then reference all the completed chunks into a central map scene.

I also have a list of features I'd like to add:
1) A shell mode where blocks that cannot be seen will not be created. Each chunk is 16 blocks wide, 16 blocks deep, and 128 blocks tall. That comes out to 32768 blocks per chunk...
2) A way to generate better water geometry. In the end, this may just have to be put in manually using planes.
3) UV layout and assignment to use the in-game textures.
4) Automatic lighting creation and placement for things like torches, lava, glowstone, etc.

I'm having a lot of fun with this. It's the biggest technical challenge I've had to tackle, and it's been a rewarding experience.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-25T01:02:00.000-05:00

I've been busy with work and other things, so I haven't had much to post lately. However, I have one of my current projects at a point where I feel like showing off a bit. I'm working on modeling Keith Thompson's Leicheoberschuetzer.

The red items are block-in placeholders so I can get a sense of scale for the parts I have yet to tackle. None of the geometry is textured; I've just assigned a variety of Phong shaders to approximate the different types of materials used, then rendered in Mental Ray.

DKoK Flamer Trooper: Part 2

2010-08-29T20:04:00.010-04:00

After posting to the PixelAtion forums, one of the regulars, Helm, did an awesome paintover to demonstrate some of the weaknesses in my approach. Succinctly, he said that I think too much in terms of normal art, just at low rez, rather than as actual "pixel" art, and that I needed to approach this work differently if I wanted to get better results. Here's the paintover he did (the shot with a green background is his version):

After studying his color and tone choices, I decided to take my work back to square one, and I began a greyscale study to focus on my tonal control. I think that I'll be working in greyscale only for a while, then move into color pieces once I'm more comfortable with my skills. In the meantime, here's the WIP version of my greyscale study:

EDIT: This went through another round of crits by Helm and another member, talking more about the details of the pixel art workflow. This is the resulting paintover by the two of them:

I took some time to download and try out the demo for ProMotion 6, a piece of software design for pixel art work. It's got a different mindset than standard digital art programs, but there's a tightly-controlled method to the madness. Here's my tonal block-in using this new tool:

Flame Trooper Character Portrait

2010-08-28T01:17:00.000-04:00

I had some time this evening to work on a character portrait for the Death Korps pixel art project I've had sitting on the back burner for a while. The majority of this is reposted from my thread on PixelAtion, but I've edited and added to it for the blog.

Despite this being pixel art, I've been using a more compositing-oriented workflow because I'm not sure how much I like the different aspects of the image. Once I get a solid foundation, I'll have to decide if I want to flatten it and finish with traditional pixelling techniques, or whether I'll try to complete it entirely with composited layers. I've split the process into multiple images to help make it easier to talk about how I think about my work.

L1 is a down-rez'd scan of a sketch from my sketchbook. L2 is a cleanup done using a standard round brush tool and a Wacom tablet. In L3, I've broken the forms down into planes to use as reference for working out the shading. L4 is a WIP snapshot of doing a full clean on the lineart.

C1 is a continuation of the work from L3, working out the shading of the faces relative to their angle from the light source, irrespective of any shadowing or ambient occlusion. C2 is a lighting mask showing cast shadows, ambient occlusion, and ambient/reflected light. C3 is a flat color layer to block in the basic forms for painting. The colors in C3 are actually significantly darker and duller-looking than this image indicates because the layer uses the "Hard Light" blend mode.

This shows how the layers composite to create a flat-shaded image. The C2 light mask is set as a "Multiply" layer over top the C3 color map. (In this instance, C3 could be converted to a straight color layer without the Hard Light blend mode, but the reason for retaining that setting will be apparent in the full shaded image.) Finally, the L4 line art layer is multiplied over top of the color layers to finish the look. In the final artwork, there will be another color layer added over the line art as a clipping mask so that I can color the line art w/o having to go back with a single pixel brush.

This is the same image as the flat-shaded art, except that I have added the C1 shade map underneath the C2 color map. This adds an extra level of detail to the overall lighting effect of the image.

I realize that this setup is overkill for basic pixel art, but this style of composite image has its benefits. I can alter some parts without having to re-do whole sections. Additionally, if I want to start animating stuff, this makes it very easy to flesh out the overall motion of a piece, then add in the light and shade without risking the original art.

For those coming from film/cg/animation backgrounds, this stuff should all be elementary, but for more traditional artists or those who don't have a solid understanding of layers and blend modes, I hope this is informative in helping to think about new ways of working with images.

New Website Launching!

2010-08-26T23:37:00.001-04:00

If you'd like to see what has been consuming so much of my time recently, check out www.CustomHeadrestCovers.com. The embroidery shop I work at has recently launched this site so you can personalize your car's headrests. Our catalog only has names, initials, and monograms right now, but we'll be continually adding more items as we get things fully up and running. One of the biggest features, though, is that we also do custom orders. Send us a graphic or logo and we can get it converted to something we can sew on.

I was the sole developer on this site, and I think it was a great way for me to get my feet wet with site design. It's built using GoDaddy's WebsiteTonite toolkit based off of a standard template, but I've done a ton of customization to steer away from that cheap, pre-built feel. I added a lot of custom CSS to tweak the existing layout elements, as well as creating some of our own. I'm proudest of the thread color table on the Product Information page. I created a whole container/table class system that lets me add new color blocks without having to upload swatch images like I was afraid I was going to have to. I also created new banner images for the site and store headers, plus the SHOP NOW! banner. I took all of the photos for the header/banners. My dad and my boss took the majority of the shots in the Photo Gallery, though I have done significant cleanup and re-touching to them to try to unify their look and feel.

On the tools and technical side, I discovered the amazing Firebug plugin for Firefox while I was trying to work out all the CSS structure for the pre-made code. It's a great tool to find your way through the code, plus you can edit the code live and see the changes on the page in real time!

New developments

2010-08-16T16:39:00.000-04:00

I apologize for my extended absence, but I've been busy working on a number of projects. I've been hired full time as resident artist, web-designer, and t-shirt wrangler at my sister's father-in-law's promotions and embroidery business. Needless to say, I've had my hands full getting the current sites prettied up, as well as getting ready to launch a new spin-off product line.

I've also gotten started on a major side project. I've decided to start making my own game. The plan is to make a small, relatively simple turn-based strategy game in Python using pixel art and 8-bit music, all created by me. I've already started to hammer out some of the base classes in an effort to wrap my head around object oriented programming, and it's a ton of fun.

It'll be a while before I have much worth looking at, but I'll do my best to load up art work, screen shots, and (once I have it working better) some beta code.

Self-Portrait

2010-07-25T22:55:00.000-04:00

Pretty self-explanatory. Haven't been keeping in practice as much as I'd like, so I took some time to do this.

Beach Painting

2010-07-22T22:07:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago my boss, who also happens to be my sister's father-in-law, invited me to go with them to the beach for a big 4th of July weekend. Here's the result:

It's been a while since I've done watercolor (gouache, actually), so I guess this would fall more as a warmup than anything. Still, it felt good to get back into natural media, and I'd like to practice my painting more.

Animation Camp

2010-07-10T17:47:00.001-04:00

This is the final work from the students of the first Lego animation class I teach for Bricks Bots and Beyond. It was a four day camp for kids ages 10 and up. I think it was a huge success, especially for being a first on many fronts. I want to give a whole bunch of credit to Chris Walsh, my stop-mo teacher from Sheridan. My class was largely based off of the 3rd-year stop-mo class he taught, and he was generous enough to give me some helpful suggestions and feedback as I developed the curriculum.

For those interested in what the camp entailed, here's a breakdown of what I taught:

Day 1

• Introduction to animation as a medium
• Introduction to the AnimatorDV Simple+ software
• Simple animation exercise
• Group critique

Day2

• Introduction to storyboarding
• Create a story, then board it
• Translating storyboards into actual shots
• Group critique

Day 3

• Introduction to post-production and editing
• Introduction to the VideoSpin software
• Finish shooting films
• Group critique

Day 4

• Editing films
• How to export a film
• Final viewing for parents

This is video is a slideshow of the class in progress that my boss put together. You can see the workstations and sets that the kids used to make their films. There's also some good shots that show how well they problem-solved to make their films look good.

Seeing the kids getting really into the animation and enjoying their work was really cool to me. I've got a ton of thoughts about what happened in the class that I may put up in subsequent posts.

Commander Portrait WIP

2010-06-19T14:07:00.000-04:00

Quick WIP update on the Death Korps commander portrait.

I'm trying a new workflow that relies mainly on solid color fill layers paired with individual alpha masks. Makes it much easier to fiddle with individual color areas for best effect. Also, the alpha masks, paired with traditional dithering, makes for some nicer gradients.

I'm taking a really long time to get this one finished up, which is driving me a bit crazy. Even so, I'm trying out a variety of new ideas, so I'm thinking that once I'm done with this guy, the next few will go more quickly.

Death Korps Portraiture

2010-06-16T10:58:00.001-04:00

I've finally found the time (and/or discipline ⌐_⌐) to start working on my own stuff. I'm on one heck of a Warhammer 40K kick, so I decided to continue my forays into Death Korp pixel art.

The first piece that I've mostly completed is a stick-grenade. The design is a loose hybrid of 40K's Krak Grenades and the old German WW2 "Potato Masher." I've blown it up to 300% so it's actually visible without squinting.

I'm also doing two character portraits. The first is of the Heavy Weapons type trooper, with a hardened skull-type cover for his mask.

The second is of a commanding officer.

The final piece in the works is more of an action pose for a trooper in close assault, wielding a bolt pistol and an entrenching tool.

The end goal I'm aiming for is to eventually have a mock-up of a game interface. These character portraits and items would be used in things like character selection/customization, or to identify what unit you're controlling. There's an old 40K computer game called Final Liberation, which is an adaptation of the tabletop 40K Epic rules which I loved to play. It's got old-school pixel art graphic and some really fun turn-based strategy gameplay (when it isn't deciding to crash or hang on newer versions of Windows). I would really enjoy seeing an updated version with new graphics and more armies. Maybe someday...

LEGOS!

2010-06-07T13:19:00.004-04:00

The past few weeks have been kinda crazy for me. In addition to working on my portfolio, I've been doing some freelance work for two different companies. One of them, Bricks Bots and Beyond, focuses on teaching kids about how to use technology using Legos and a drag-and-drop programming language called Scratch. Last week I worked as a teaching assistant for the Lego WeDo camp teaching kids about simple robotics and programming.

I was also asked to do a logo/tshirt design for them.

This was my first stab at using Illustrator, and it's been a mixed experience. I really like how clean and efficient the results can be, but it's been difficult adapting to the right mindset. Like maintaining consistent real-world scales between artboards when using linked images that will need to eventually be imported and saved into an EPS file for the printers... Anyways, I'm hoping to try some more advanced work in it later to see what it can do.

In further fun news, I've been asked to develop, organize, and teach a four day stop-mo Lego animation camp. My stop-mo teacher from third year and all-round awesome dude Chris Walsh was gracious enough to give me some pointers on what I will need to run the classes. As I told him, now that I'm on the teaching side of the classroom, I have a whole lot more respect for teachers and their ability to wrangle kids (yes, college animation students count as kids, too) and beat the information into our heads.

End of the tunnel

2010-04-30T10:25:00.000-04:00

For better or worse, Industry Day has come and gone. To be perfectly honest, I was not expecting a whole lot to come of it, and for the most part I was not disappointed. The stuff I had to show was specifically technical in nature, so the vast majority of attending reps didn't even give my work a second glance as they walked by. However, a few guys from a number of companies (I'll err on the side of discretion and not name names) stopped by to have a look, ask some questions, and pick up a resume. To those guys and/or anyone from their companies who might be reading this: thank you for taking the time to take a look at what I had, and thank you for coming to see my blog.

To all of my classmates: It's been a crazy ride, and I'm so happy I could share it with you. I can't wait to see where we end up after this.

Completed Flame Trooper

2010-04-20T03:07:00.001-04:00

I'm going to go ahead and call this done. As far as my memory serves, this is probably the first, maybe only "finished" piece of personal work I've ever done. All the other work I'd call finished were school projects. I'm glad to say I've found a type of art that I enjoy doing for its own sake (instead of all the technical stuff behind it), and I hope to do lots more of it.

(Also, if you're reading this, feel free to leave comments. Feedback lets me aim my posts more at what you guys want.)

Synchronicity makes days better

2010-04-19T11:22:00.000-04:00

Awesome moment for the day:

I'm listening to "This American Life" while blocking in some more scenes for my [now very late] film. The episode is about life on an aircraft carrier. The scene I'm blocking has three Messerschmitts attacking the carrier plane. In a brilliant bit of timing, I start play-testing through the scene right as the episode plays the sounds of a fighter jet taking off, perfectly matching the pace of my shot. For a split second, it seemed so much more real.

I'm on FIRE!

2010-04-18T15:57:00.005-04:00

I love Warhammer, I love pixel art, I love animation, I love the Death Korps, and I love fire. So I took yesterday and part of today off from my film to do some personal work. As a warm-up for the sort of stuff I'd like to do in my free time once I get back home, I decided to take one of the Death Korp models from the Forge World website and make it into pixel art.

This pic is really just a trace-off from the promo pic on the site (click for original page). This made it much easier to just focus on working out some of the more fiddly bits of working at the per-pixel level, instead of having to balance that with creating completely original work. The only part that is 100% me is the flame animation. This is a work-in-progress, and I hope to have him shooting serious flame in the near future.

EDIT: Got the rough flame burst working, plus some body lighting. I find the timeline feature in Photoshop to be very unintuitive relative to the other programs I've animated it. Could just be my inexperience with it. Either way, I still love doing this stuff.

Right now the flame is only using two of the five total colors, and it's only the major shapes, so I've got plent of detailing left to do. I also haven't blocked out all of the areas the light should be hitting on the body. More fun stuff to do. :D

Ubuntu Kaboom

2010-04-09T13:00:00.003-04:00

Fun little difference between Windows and Linux: Windows crashes relatively frequently (generally speaking), but the crashes tend to be relatively minor. Linux almost never crashes (in my experience), but when it does, it crashes *HARD*. Today has been an object lesson in that.

Long story short, I discovered that Ubuntu has a quirk that can cause major problems. (I'm going to use broad generalizations in this next bit, so if I'm not 100% accurate, please forgive me.) The quirk is this: Ubuntu assigns a UUID (Universally Unique IDentifier) to the system hard drives, and references this UUID in the GRUB bootloader. For those unfamiliar with Linux, the bootloader is a bit of software that runs on startup that allows you to choose from a variety of bootup configurations (sorta like the screen you get after a Windows crash that asks you if you want to start normally or in safe mode). Unlike the Windows one, you can directly edit these boot options. This gives you much more control, but it also allows you to effectively shoot yourself in the foot, and take the leg with it.

The specific problem I encountered is that somehow the bootloader UUID and the UUID for my drive became mismatched, so it couldn't find the drive. Apparently the more traditional way to reference drives is through their /dev/ path (eg. /dev/sda1) instead of with the UUID, and a number of forums online suggested editing the bootloader to use the old method instead of the new. It took a good bit of time, a large number of reboots, and some fumbling around with the command line, but I finally worked out the proper path for my boot drive, got the OS booted up, and fixed the pathing in the GRUB configuration file.

I love doing my own tech support, and I feel like my understanding of how Linux works is incrementally more solid for the experience, but I'm thankful that it's fixed so I can get back to finishing out my film. I look forward to finishing out the year so I can tackle a number of things I'd like to do with my Ubuntu box. Some of the things I'm looking at trying: setting up a proper Samba server, learning advance SVN administration, setting up a domain server, setting up my own HTTP/FTP server, and getting my own dedicated Left4Dead1/2 server(s) up and running.

TL;DR version: Ubuntu screwed itself up. I fixed it. I want to do more with it in the future.

I'm a tool (writer)

2010-04-06T21:20:00.004-04:00

Things are getting pretty busy. The film is due for marks on Friday, and I'm busy trying to get something patched together for marks. To help try to meet that, I took some time today to write a little pair of tools to get me working faster.

The UDK has a nifty command switch called "dumpmovie" which forces it to save every rendered frame to the screenshots folder. In combination with the "fps XX" switch (where XX is the number of frames per second), it essentialy performs like a batch render in Maya, except there's not automatic off. Instead, it plays in a game window, and stops recording when you exit the game. Of course, the options with this are very limited. You can't (as far as I'm aware) set the path for the screenshots, and it only saves in BMP format, but it works, and that's what's important. Since BMPs are uncompressed, they take up a lot of space. A 120-frame render weighs in just over 300Mb. With WinRAR, I can collect and compress those 120 frames into a single 20Mb RAR file. That's about a 93% storage savings.

With those facts in mind, here was my workflow for rendering out a scene:

Save final map and assets in UDK, then close editor.
Open command prompt and type in really long UDK shell command to start a Dumpmovie render. (example: C:\UDK\UDK-2010-03\Binaries\Win32\UDK MapName -dumpmovie -benchmark -fps 24 -resx=1280 -resy=720)
Render out scene.
Open Explorer to the UDK screenshots folder.
Select all new rendered frames.
Right click, "Add to archive."
Set up WinRAR options.
Delete leftover frames.

Not optimal at all.

So instead, I wrote two simple batch files. One does the rendering side, the other runs the archiving. The rendering one also has the option of calling the archiver as soon as the render finishes. This is my new workflow.

Run UDK_Render.bat.
Give map name, choose resolution (full or half 720p).
Run render.
Choose to archive (or not).
Give archive name.
Done.

This leaves me with a screenshots folder that has nicely organized archives for each shot, plus it deletes the source files after creating the archive, so the screenshot folder is clean and primed for the next render. This also makes it very easy extract each archive into its own folder to prep for rendering out an uncompressed AVI from AfterEffects so I can then throw it into Premiere for editing.

As a side note for comparing UDK render time against Maya: If we assume Mental Ray is rendering at 5 frames/minute and UDK at 15 frames/sec, the ratio is 4500:1!! Render time essentially becomes a non-issue. I could render my entire film (if it were contained in a single map), check for errors, tweak the map, and re-render in about the time it would take MR to render 3-5 frames. This by itself is one of my major arguments for using real-time rendering engines (like game engines) for rapid film production work.

You win, SVN, Also, overheating kills machines.

2010-04-03T18:55:00.005-04:00

I am absolutely in love with SVN right now. I was setting up a scene in UDK to test out some workflow/rendering things, and something didn't quite go right. I went to save my stuff, and my computer completely froze. Had to do a full hard reboot and check some BIOS settings. When I got back up and running, I reopened UDK only to discover that almost all of my asset packages had corrupted and would crash the editor when I tried to load them. If I had to rebuild them, I would waste up to a few hours getting everything reimported and reconstructed. If I did only traditional backups, I'd have to hunt them down and overwrite the corrupted files with the new ones. SVN pretty much eliminates that.

To recover my damaged files, all I had to do was right click, Tortoise SVN, Revert, and click to confirm. A total of about 15 seconds. Thank you, version control.

Now to figure out why my camera socket mount isn't working properly...

PS: Totally discovered why my computer froze. After a few blackout crashes, I popped open my case to see the big fancy sticker from my video card dangling loose among the cables. I've been drilling it so hard that the card melted the adhesive. Of course, there's a number of factors that figure into this:

Rez is stupid dusty. Anything that sits for more than a few days is coated with dust. The leading edges of all my case fans are white with the stuff.
I don't have my towers in optimal airflow areas. My Linux box is sitting under my (mostly enclosed) desk, and my work box is penned in on three sides by my desk, my dresser, and a concrete wall. If the case didn't have 200mm front and top fans, there'd be almost no airflow for it whatsoever.
It's getting warmer (for Canada, anyways), and the building still doesn't have the A/C turned on. My only choices are heating, or opening the windows.
I run my machines hard. I do regular maintenance, but the hard reality is that I stress my machines a lot. I'm often running Maya, Photoshop, UDK, and Premiere all at the same time, along with Firefox, Steam, and VLC or Winamp. UDK is especially bad because it constantly chews CPU cycles when active since it's actively running parts of the Unreal engine constantly.

So once my machine cools off, I'm gonna rearrange my room a bit and see if that doesn't alleviate my overheating issues.

Animooshunnnn

2010-03-27T15:52:00.004-04:00

First single big step for my project! I finally have all my rigs done and tested. They're not perfect, so I'm not 100% pleased with them, but they're good enough for now, and I really don't have any more time to spend tweaking them. The whole process was really good for helping me understand possible UDK pipeline problems with character creation.

To test the character rigs, we were required to put each one through an arm raise, a walk, a turn and step, and a jump. Since two of my characters are airplanes, I ran those through control surface tests, a simple climb and dive, a loop turn, and a turret test for the carrier plane. I banged out each individual animation in <1hr or less, so they're not well timed, and they're not cleaned up at all.

Chester RigTests from Adric Worley on Vimeo.

I'm mostly happy with Chester's rig. His proportions create some issues with knee bend clipping, and the biceps look a little wonky, but otherwise he works pretty well. The autorigger script, as I may have mentioned before, is designed to work in Y-up space, and I'm using Z-up, so that's created some minor issues with the rig controls, but nothing I can't deal with.

NaziGrunt RigTests from Adric Worley on Vimeo.

I'm about as happy with this rig as with Chester's, though I wish I had the time to work out a better shoulder solution. The way it is now just doesn't twist well.

Messr RigTests from Adric Worley on Vimeo.

I like the way this model turned out. My only concern with the rig is that I may have placed the center of gravity pivot point just a little off from where it should be.

Carrier RigTests from Adric Worley on Vimeo.

I'm really really happy with the way this one came out. I tried a few extra things with the animation, adding in some small vibration to break up some otherwise stiff stuff, and I think it adds a lot to it. When it's got the particle effects hooked up, it makes me even happier :D.

Now to finish the actual film production in about 14 days >:(
Can't wait til this whole film thing is over. I wanna make games... with vikings...

Pewpewpew!

2010-03-23T22:03:00.003-04:00

I've been fiddling around with animation tests and setting up particle effects this week. Now that my rigs are done, I have to put them through some quick paces to debug controls/weighting. So far the planes look good. Chester needs some work, but what he needs can only really be solved by remodeling and doing some custom rigging instead of the autorigger, so I'll just have to make do.

Anyways, I spent Sunday learning how to use the UDK's Cascade particle effects editor. It's a nice tool, very powerful and modular, but (obviously) not nearly as crazy as Maya's stuff since it all needs to run realtime. The main downside to Cascade is that comparing it's interface and workflow to Maya's is like comparing command line Linux to Windows. There's a lot you can do, but it's not pretty, it's not easy, and you better know what you're doing.

So I got some basic muzzle flash FX working, and hooked them up to my carrier plane to see how they look...

B17 Particle/Animation test from Adric Worley on Vimeo.

Pretty sweet. I hope to get the plane textured and add some tracer particles when I have some downtime from animating. I'm loving the pewpewpew.

:D!

2010-03-17T17:16:00.005-04:00

Guuuuuuuuh. Had to rebuild Chester's head and his whole rig. Here's a shot from painting weights.

That is all.

EDIT:

Chester's so happy to have a (minimal) working facial rig. Definitely not ready for any sort of real lip-sync, but it'll have to do. In my ideal world, I'd have time to make a snazzy face UI that has crazy stuff like, you know, labels for what controls do what, or blendshapes, or something. No time for that (both b/c of time setting up in Maya and working on downstream UDK implementation). Gotta crunch as much in as fast as possible to get a passing film.

Reeeeeally want to start working on a side-project that we've got cooking on the back burners. May throw out some hints later on... :D

A consistent error

2010-03-13T11:28:00.002-05:00

I have a habit of making solutions more complicated than necessary because I spend much of my time working in the theoretical realm. My Specular Power shader is a perfect example. My solution has some advantage in allowing for more discrete transitions in the texture maps by using up to 4 color channels, but I have realized how unnecessary that is.

What I realized is this: my shader uses 4 color channels to combine 4 different specular power constants to the model. In theory, this allows for more flexibility and control. In reality, it creates a lot of unnecessary wrangling. After looking at some of the texture maps for recent Dominance War entries, I realized that it would much simpler and easier to find the maximum specular power you would need for the model, then use a single channel map to place the power at a percentage of that constant.

Solving problems is fun. Finding out you're wrong can be fun, too. Especially when it leads to even better solutions.

Lightmass

2010-03-12T15:21:00.004-05:00

Just upgraded to the latest build of UDK since I'm still in Content Creation, and haven't committed too many assets to the engine yet. One feature I hadn't played with at all til today was Lightmass. Lightmass is a new system for creating the baked-in lightmaps for level geometry. Unlike the old system, which used purely direct lighting (requiring individual lights for all lighting effects), Lightmap uses global illumination to create more realistic effects. The results are pretty incredible.

These shots are from the DM-Deck map that ships with the UDK. The only work I did was rebuild the lighting with and without Lightmass. It's amazing to see how good the lighting looks in comparison to the old system. As an added bonus, Lightmass comes with a network redistribution feature, so I can shunt some of the workload onto my lappy and speed the process up. As a comparison of build time, the old system lighting rebuilt in just over a minute, while Lightmass rebuilt in about 15.

Organizational

2010-03-10T17:31:00.007-05:00

I've been getting more organized this week. I found this article about how to be a productive artist. After some more research, I found two great articles: The Top 10 Sources of Interruptions and Getting Ready for 2010: My Moleskine Setup.

After reading these articles, I went out and bought two new notebooks: a small, red, lined Moleskine and a slightly larger blue Pentalic. I've set up the red one as a sort of Goalbook, organized like the third article mentioned above. I've got a list of my current projects, long term goals, short term goals, "someday maybe" goals, daily/weekly checklists, current tasks and related notes, and a section for information and reference. The blue one is a sort of thought-capture/brain-dump book that I'll be using for random thoughts and notes that distract me as I work.

Despite only having the books for a short time, I'm already finding my motivation levels higher. I have a difficult time working towards my goals unless I have them in a concrete form that I can check back on as needed, or tick off when done. Having them in a little book that I can keep with me and add to whenever new tasks pop up keeps me focused and gives me something to aim for. The blue book should be enormous help, too, since my worst distractions while working are the random thoughts that pop into my head and refuse to leave until I give them the attention they want, usually in the form of Wikipedia research. Having a place to write them down for later perusal should keep me much more focused, because I'll know that I won't forget to look up whatever it was that seemed so important at the moment.

The other fun part of getting the notebooks is personalizing them. Now that I'm accumulating more hard-bound notebooks, I feel like I need to label them and make covers for new ones as I get them. Thus, I took my Moleskines and the Pentalic, labelled the spines, and have created a cover for my Goalbook.

The art is by an artist who goes by Nivbed (one of the first artists I followed online, and I still absolutely love his work), and the piece is called Vigsen. I applied the image by printing out a copy on normal printer paper, brushing a couple layers of clear acrylic medium to form a tough skin, then wetting and rubbing off the paper. The result is a thin piece of flexible plastic with an imprint of the image on the backside. (When done with a greyscale print on white paper, the white becomes transparent, a la Flaming Pear's "Ghost" filter, allowing the ground's color to show through.) I added some acrylic gouache to the backside to highlight the outline and the eyes, then used more acrylic medium to bond the transfer piece to the cover of the book.

You can see from the inside shot that I've got the whole thing divided up using sticky tabs, and that I've got dedicated pages for certain types of data (in this image, Tasks on the left, related Notes on the right), plus indicators where tasks and data are related. I've also numbered most of the pages, leaving some blanks because I was lazy and I won't get to them in a while. I'm really excited about the whole notebook thing (notebooks, sketchbooks, nice paper, and quality writing materials are all guilty pleasures), and I'm hoping that this will help keep me on track. I may post some updates in the future to see how much use I've really gotten out of them.

Now to go get some of those items checked off...

Nazis and Shaders!

2010-03-02T00:01:00.006-05:00

Finally! Something visual to throw out into the world.

One of the options that caught my attention when I first started playing around with UDK's material editor was the Specular Power parameter. Specularity is essentially how shiny an object is. In reality, specular highlights are reflections of whatever is casting light. In CG, esp. for games, it's an approximation. The two control parameters given are Color and Power. Color is obvious, but the Power parameter is control over the spread of the highlight. Really shiny objects like polished metal have tight, bright highlights, while things like rough-textured plastics, unfinished wood, or other duller objects would have very wide, diffuse highlights. What first came to mind was how to control that across a surface? If you could control the SpecPower, you could simulate multiple material types without having to create and assign a new shader material for each material type. It took a few tries, but I think I have a basic working solution.

In addition to creating Diffuse, Specular Color, Bump, and Normal maps for a material, I worked out a way to make a Specular Power map. The way it works is it divides the texture into 4 color channels (RGBA) and assigns each one a specific specular power. It then adds each area back together, then divides the result by the sum of the original channels. Here's an image of this set up as a shader network in UDK:

The texture can't be applied directly to the Specular Power parameter because UDK sees each color channel as a value between 0 and 1, while the SpecPower parameter is a (relatively) unlimited number, and 1 creates a very very diffuse specular. By multiplying each channel by a fixed desired SpecPower, the artist can apply a range of specular intensities in the same material. Here's a quick example of the shader in action:

SpecPwr Shader Demo from Adric Worley on Vimeo.

As you can see, the reflected white highlight is larger and more diffuse on some areas, and smaller and more focused in others.

I don't know if this has any practical application in games, or if it's too expensive for too little payoff, but if was certainly a fun problem to try to solve.

Next up: Zombies!

Now that I have a working rig with a skinned mesh, I've finally gotten down to pumping out some animation. It's not great, it's not finished, but it's something. So far all I've done is a rough walk and run, but I'm slowly getting back into the groove. Emphasis on slowly. (Also, Vimeo, in its infinite wisdom, appears to have enabled frame blend on its upload encoding, so the vids aren't great quality. shame.)

NaziWalk from Adric Worley on Vimeo.

NaziRun from Adric Worley on Vimeo.

To be perfectly honest, I'm quite disappointed with animation here at Sheridan. I haven't done any animation of note in about two years. Most of the later work in 2nd year was all lip-sync, and as I've said before, character animation does not come easily. Combine that with my still-developing character-drawing skills, and you end up with a lot of meh work. Third year was a bust, too. My action analysis was terrible because I spent so much time trying to keep up in all the other classes that animation kept getting pushed to the side (a common problem here), and my group film went similarly. I wish that we'd been given more opportunity to focus on doing animation, or at least have enough time outside of schoolwork to explore it more on our own. My friends can attest that the time I took out of class work to explore Maya took its toll on my marks. With any luck (and dedication), I'll be able to do more animating on my own once all this film stuff is done.

EDIT: I've written more about this overly-complex SpecPower shader in this post, where I realize a more efficient solution.

Frustration

2010-02-28T13:55:00.008-05:00

One of the greatest challenges I find in the work I do is the struggle between artistic expression and technical perfection. I love getting wrapped up in the details of how things work and why, so I find that I almost always become preoccupied by making sure things are done correctly. In and of itself, doing things correctly is a good thing. My problem is that I become so focused on making sure things are done the right way that I neglect the overall result. That is, perfection of process is more important than quality of product.

What this means for me is I need to work out a balance between perfecting my technical skills and making something that is artistically appealing. Interestingly to me, I find that this need for balance is something I've been fighting with for a very long time and didn't really know it. When I was studying music, I was so focused on playing the right notes, the right techniques, that I lost the musicality. In my traditional art, I've been more concerned with using the media correctly, shading properly, making nice lines, than in creating images that convey something. In my CG work, I'm so cautious to make sure all the numbers line up nicely, the curves smooth out, and everything is clean instead of stepping back and seeing if what I'm doing is communicating well.

Technical perfection is a mental habit that is deeply embedded in my mind. It has helped me in many areas, and drives me to try to achieve, but I'm trying to take a step back from that. I'm trying to convince myself to accept technical imperfection for now so that I can develop my artistic and aesthetic skills. I want to be more than the technical guy whose art is hopelessly rigid, and I want to go beyond the art guy who doesn't understand the hows and whys of the tools he uses. It's a tough goal, maybe unrealistic, but I'mma try.

No Moar Trax

2010-02-26T02:36:00.011-05:00

After looking into Maya's Character Set and Trax animation features, it is clear to me that there is good reason for there to be so little information about them on the net. They suck. The concept is really cool and would be useful in production, but the implementation is finicky, frustrating, and has the potential to completely screw your work.

The character set creating workflow is simple enough at first, but there are a number of major problems that crop up:

Character sets interrupt how Maya stores animation curve data in relation to actual controls. If a character set is changed on the rig file, it has the potential to wipe the animation from a curve, since its curves are connected to the character set node rather than the control itself. For example, taking the structure LowerBody>Legs>LeftLeg/RightLeg and merging the lower nodes up into a single LowerBody node will wipe all animation from the controls that the lower-level nodes contained.
The Trax editor can only create clips at the lowest character level in a set with subcharacters rather than allowing you to choose the level at which the clip is created. For example, creating a clip by choosing the top node in the LowerBody>Legs>LeftLeg/RightLeg character/subcharacter hierarchy will result in between 2 and 4 clips (depending on whether or not the higher levels have controls not contained in lower levels), instead of a single LowerBody clip. EDIT: There is a way to group clips so you don't have to fiddle around as much with each individual clip, but that seems to leave more room for fiddly errors than creating a single clip at a higher level.
There doesn't seem to be any clear way to save Trax clips as external files. Defeats the purpose of creating a library of clips which can be imported into a scene as needed. EDIT: Apparently you can export the clips as MayaBinary or MayaAscii files. Doesn't rectify the more egregious issues mentioned above.

Some of these shortcomings are based solely on my own expectations, needs, and limited experience, so I admit that there are those who won't find any problems with what I've pointed out, or who can show that I don't know what I'm talking about. In any event, the tool I was expecting this to be shouldn't really be that hard to implement. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that most studios have their own scripts written to do just that. In the meantime, I'll have to find an alternative solution for segmenting and storing my animation clips.

EDIT: As these later comments show, I wasn't writing from the full picture. Even with clip grouping and exporting abilities, though, the animation-wiping nature of character set nodes is a deal-breaker for me. It's unconscionable to me for a setup artist to use a system that could potentially destroy large chunks of, if not all of, previously completed animation when updates and alterations are added.

Exploratoring

2010-02-25T16:08:00.006-05:00

Continuing in the vein of my previous few posts.... PROBLEM SOLVING!

Probably the most exciting part of solving problems for me (other than the thrill of finally fixing a tricky issue) is research. I'm a self-admitted information junkie, and I love learning new stuff. Anyone who knows me can attest that I spend a lot of time browsing for new techniques, cool tricks, or just stuff I want to know (I've gotten into a bad habit of reading Wikipedia articles on food when I'm hungry). One of the side effects of this is I've gotten reasonably good at targeting searches and finding elusive information. The sad reality is, though, that just because I'm looking for information doesn't mean that it's there to be found. This has been especially true in the case of Maya Character Sets and Trax information.

Since I'm creating my film to be exported to Epic's UDK for realtime render and using their Matinee editor to put everything together, I want a way to easily organize my various animation clips and test out various setups in Maya before I export. The way Matinee works, you can assign animation channels to a skeletal mesh (like a character) and tell it to play one or more animation clips, allowing you to blend or add clips together. My rudimentary understanding of Trax is that it does essentially the same thing. Unfortunately, the official documentation is woefully inadequate, and there is precious little information online. Maya's documentation is little more than an explanation of how to create Character Sets and how to create Trax clips, but there is no adequate explanation of exactly what a Character Set it, what it's doing, how it works, and any "best practices" for implementation.

Being relatively adventurous with technology, I've taken a dive into the world of Character Sets and Trax with the goal of understanding how to properly create sets, how to organize them into sub-sets, and how to use them with Trax. I'm approximately finished with my first attempt at creating a hierarchical set and will be doing some preliminary animation tests to see if my understanding is correct. Once I feel I have a decent grasp of the system, my goal is to write some sort of explanatory document and tutorial on proper workflow so that there will at least be some reasonable resource to help others along.

I love solutions

2010-02-23T00:31:00.003-05:00

I figured I'd break up the last post into two parts to avoid TL;DR syndrome.

FUN PROBLEMS
Today my friend Andrew posed me with an interesting problem: He was working on a scene with a relatively large number of complex character rigs (high polycounts combined with lots of lattice deformers), and he chewed up all of his RAM. This killed Maya, and somehow corrupted his file. This raises two interesting points with solutions I enjoy. First, saving often and making backups. I am terrified of losing my progress and work, so I like to have as many safety nets as possible.

My favorite solution for giving me peace of mind is source control. I have a modest Ubuntu box sitting under my desk running Subversion, and my laptop and work machine both have TortoiseSVN for Windows. It's great because it's easy to keep both machines up-to-date, and I feel much safer knowing that a broken file is only a few clicks away from reversioning to a working file. As an added bonus, I've set my machines to be accessible from any point on campus (password protected of course), so I don't have to lug around a bulky external hard drive. I have never had to actually use the safety net features of my setup, but I am willing to take more risks knowing that, failing a total system meltdown, I can always go back to an earlier version.

The second solution Andrew's situation brings up is proxies. I haven't done much exploration with proxies, but the concept seems highly useful, and I plan to learn more about them. In general terms, referencing files in Maya allows you to pull in assets from other scenes (like character rigs or environment elements) and use them without fear of accidentally breaking them in some way. Also, going back to that compartmentalization I mentioned in my last post, it gives flexibility to edit the original asset file, with changes being reflected in the new scene without needing any user interference short of a reference reload. The problem with referencing is that scenes can often eat up tons of RAM (what with rigs, smooth skins, deformers, textures, etc...), and that's where proxies come it.

From what little fiddling I've done with them, proxies allow you to create low-resolution versions of your assets and have them stand in for the more complex ones. Low-res is, of course, a wide term. It could be anything from a simpler rig with fewer controls and parented geometry chunks instead of smooth skins. It could be just a bounding box. Or it could be somewhere in-between. Whatever the case, it gives you a way to see the asset working in the scene without it taking up unnecessary resources, and, if set up properly, allows you to rough in placement/animation before switching it out with the high-res version for final tweaks. I'm still rather vague on specific implementation, but I'm looking forward to working out how to use them appropriately for smoother workflow.

Also on my list of things to figure out: Maya Trax and how well it works with planning out Matinee work in UDK.

Still alive...

2010-02-22T23:58:00.004-05:00

The cake is a lie...

Just doing a quick post to keep this thing going. I don't have anything to show for the past two weeks... yet. I've been doing a lot of rigging work which is all very technical and not very visual. Long story short, I got my Nazi Grunt character fully rigged and weighted, which made me very happy. Then I exported him to the UDK for testing, and that did not.

Maya uses the Y-axis as its world-up, while UDK uses Z-up. I've been doing all my modeling and character prep in Z-up space, but the autorigger I've been using doesn't play nicely with Z-up, so I did all the rig setup in Y-up. Needless to say, that causes problems. Additionally, the autorigger adds a lot of extra bones to handle IK/FK arms, legs, and spines, and those get exported to UDK as a mass of crazy. Had to figure out how to pare it down to just what I need.

Technical Stuff
For those interested, here's how I solved these multiple problems:
1) I saved the whole rig to a new file, where I stripped the skeleton of everything except the smooth-bound joints. I then parented the floating joints (spline-IK spine) to the root spine joint.
2) I then exported a skin weights map to preserve all the weighting I'd done this weekend, then removed the mesh's smoothing skinning.
3) With the mesh and skeleton separate, I was able to rotate the mesh to orient correctly, and could freeze the rotation of the skeleton's root joint. This solved the issue where my animations played along the wrong axes in UDK. Previously, even with the controllers pointing correctly, the actual skinned bones were receiving translates/rotates along the wrong axes.
4) I smoothbound the rotated mesh to the skeleton and re-imported the skin weight maps. Because I have some mirrored UVs to save on texture memory, I had to re-paint some of the weights and mirror.
5) This file was saved, then imported into the file with the full rig. I deleted the mesh attached to the full rig, then parent/orient constrained each of the bound joints on the imported file to the rigged joints of the existing file.

This gives me a certain level of compartmentalization between the rig I'm animating versus the rig that's actually moving the mesh. I can now change around the controller mesh in various ways without affecting the bound skeleton and mesh. If, for example, the leg rig turns out to be something other than what i wanted, I can remove the control structure, create my own, and I don't have to worry about re-exporting a new version of the skinned mesh to the UDK or having to update any exported animation to account for new/deleted bones, or changed proportions.

The downside to all this is I've realized that I have to do this to Chester, too. Not as bad as having to figure it all from scratch again, tho.

Luftwaffen!

2010-02-08T03:19:00.004-05:00

I've been doing yet more work on the Messerschmitt. The model is done and I'm getting the textures roughed out. Wikipedia has been enormously helpful for my modeling/texturing work on the planes. Both models I'm working on had almost-perfect orthographic views, and the ones for the Messerschmitt were about 6000x4000px, so they were really easy to work from. Additionally, they work as great guides for the texture work I'll be doing. Throw them into Photoshop, align to UVs, set to multiply, and there you go.

The texturing for the Messerchmitt inspired me to play around with some lighting stuff to get an idea of how it's all coming together. That also gave me some practice on working out how to best simulate actual lighting conditions. The first image below is the bare render thrown onto a blue background in Photoshop, and the second is my quick and dirty attempt at an old-timey photograph look. The sepia look is an adjustment layer, plus an alpha-masked aged photo paper texture I found on Google images.

Not Dead Yet!!

2010-02-05T16:20:00.006-05:00

This blog still lives, as do I (for now). Been chugging away at my film for the past while. I'm not as far as I'd like to be or as I really should be, but that's what I get for scrapping an entire semester's worth of meh work so I can do something I really enjoy.

Most of the last week has been spent creating Chester's final mesh. It's essentially done, though I may still have to fiddle with how I'm doing the eyes and mouth.

As you can see from the screenshots, I've begun work on the rig. Skin weight painting is a really tedious bit of work. I'm sure there has to be a better way than manually painting every value (doesn't Max have some sort of bone-capsule weighting system?). The rig itself is the very handy abAutoRig script found at the SuperCrumbly blog. It's a nice modular script that gives you the flexibility to set up the entire rig (minus facial setup), or just pick and choose what you want it to rig so you can do some custom controls.

I've also done some more work on the Messerschmitt. I've made the tail an actual rudder, and added the gun recesses for the nose. I'm also starting to get into effects work. The muzzle flash is a quick alpha'd texture I painted in Photoshop. I was surprised how quick it was, and it also reminded me how much I enjoy doing little effects bits. I'd much rather be doing cool little things that go PEWPEWPEW than make characters act.

Just for the heck of it, I tried messing around with the motion blur effects to see what it might look like in flight. I don't think MentalRay likes my scenes very much because I'm working with a scale designed to transfer easily to the Unreal Engine, so my dimensions are much larger than Maya likes. I have to set my far clip planes to some ungodly high value (100K or something like that) just to see all my work.

I can't wait til I get past this whole film thing so I can make an actual game out of this stuff (I hope).

Technically Fun

2010-01-23T00:33:00.005-05:00

This video shows off what I love doing most: solving technical problems. I didn't want to have to hand-place all the ranks of little Zombie Nazis for my marching scene, so I decided to write a script to place them for me. Since we don't actually cover any sort of programming topics in the Animation program, this was a wonderful adventure of logic and math for me.

I like animation and art well enough, but I'm a computer guy at heart. So once I got the basic placement script working, I decided to add a procedure that lets me open up a blank scene, tell it how many rows of how many soldiers I want, and it'll reference them all, then form the ranks. I tested it up to a 20x20 grouping, then thought it'd be funny to make them all look in the same direction. I created a locater, point constrained a box to it so you could see its placement in the renders, then wrote a little script that aim-constrained the zombies to face the box.

So there you have it: Adric's idea of fun and thorough enjoyment.

Crowd Look Test from Adric Worley on Vimeo.

Reboot!

2010-01-20T23:29:00.010-05:00

Let's kick this back into gear, shall we? I'm working on my thesis film with one semester left to go. That's only slightly terrifying, since I scrapped my original film at the end of last semester and have started again from the ground up over Christmas Break. Long story short, Zombie Hitler has established his victory in Europe, and only Chester Harrison and his amazing moustache collection can bring freedom and democracy back where it belongs!

These are rough models, nothing more than proxies for blocking in my scenes. I'm pretty happy with the Zombie Nazi, and for a single day's worth of work, the B-17 isn't too shabby, either. Chester needs some more work, tho.

He's missing his hair, and I'm still fiddling around with his shapes and proportions.

The B-17 is untextured, except for the guns and propellers. The props are single quad polys with alpha'd textures, and the guns are sets of volumetric poly planes w/ alpha'd textures. This represents a single day's work. I'd like to take this rough model and cartoon it up a bit to fit with the proportions and features of the characters.

I just lowe the ay this guy turned out. I can't wait to finish him up, add some buddies, and get them moving.

This is a rough mockup I've put together to test camera settings and to start blocking out ideas for the gameplay footage. The background is a rip from one of the Metal Slug games. I slapped it onto a poly plane, extruded back some of the window and door areas, and voila, instant game-scape.

With any luck, plus some persistence and dedication, I hope to be adding updates here approximately once a week. I promise no miracles, but I will try to be consistent.

Speedpaint

2008-11-05T02:01:00.002-05:00

My painting for the evening. An ink bottle on a dish cloth. I was really tired, so I wasn't feeling up to my usual ocd color checking, so the colors may be a bit off. I need to do this a lot more.

More painting

2008-11-02T13:09:00.002-05:00

Decided to try another painting today. Not quite as successful as yesterday's, but I'm still getting the hang of this whole painting thing. I'm not quite sure how to accurately portray the translucency of this plastic.

StopMotion Exercises

2008-11-01T23:57:00.002-04:00

I'm enjoying our stop-motion class this semester. I definitely wouldn't want to do it professionally, but I like the ability to do decent animation so much more immediately. It feels almost like sketching motion to me. I could see myself keeping a good puppet rig on hand just to try out motion ideas w/o having to sit down and draw or fiddle with software. With stop-mo, you don't have to worry about your volumes changing size, or if the rig will have all the controls you need for it. Or so it seems to me.

This first one was an exercise on having the puppet go from a crouch to a stand. all while keeping smooth overlapping action. I ran short on time at the end, so I wasn't able to have the puppet settle as completely as I wanted, but I think the end result still works. Each of these were done in under 2 hours.

This second one was an in-class action analysis assignment. We had to have the puppet smash a clay object w/ a bat. I hadn't animated clay before, and didn't quite nail it this time, so even though the object's smash is a bit slow, I would've had to go back and reshoot the entire thing just to fix those 2-4 frames. As added bit of fun for this assignment, as I was posing the puppet to bring the bat down, the spine wire snapped in half, prompting an emergency fix. Despite the apparent catastrophe, Chris was able to help me fix the puppet and continue shooting the assignment. See if you can spot the frame at which the wire was replaced.

Painting for fun

2008-11-01T23:50:00.003-04:00

We started doing color in lifedrawing this week, so I decided to bring my lappy/tablet so I didn't have to buy more stuff and so I could start learning how to use them to draw live since I really don't like newsprint, conte, or nu/pastel. The drawings from the class itself were pretty meh, especially since I spent a good chunk of the class fiddling with software configuration, but T showed me a great, simple way to set up my Photoshop brush so I can get some good blending along with hard/soft edge control. I took a used Boost bottle off my desk tonight and tried painting it. This is all with the standard hard round brush.

Speedpaint

2007-11-11T21:13:00.000-05:00

My speedpaint for the day is a bottle of Winsor Newton masking fluid that was on my desk.

In other news, I've been working on my Walk and Run assignment all day. Lady Amplebottom runs like Olive Oyl.

And my dad broke his clavicle. Playing soccer. Surprise.

There's no sense crying over every mistake...

2007-11-11T01:12:00.000-05:00

You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

I've been loving Valve's mini-game Portal this last week or so. Everyone's been getting Orange Box, but I've only been able to get my hands on a copy of Portal. Not that I'm disappointed. It's a great little game. And the ending song is brilliant.

Anyways, I've got a few more things to throw up onto the internet now. I've decided to start doing grayscale speedpaints of whatever I find around me in hopes that my painting and tonal skills will improve. I might even move to color once I feel comfortable enough with my grays. I've got two so far, and I hope that I'll have more to come soonish.

Yesterday's was my heavy-duty Xacto pencil sharpener from the lab.

Today's was a bottle of green Dr. P.H. Martin's India ink.

And lastly is a pic that Robin found. It's me as a cat. Seriously.

That's all I've got for now. I should have more speedpaints, a painting assignment, and maybe some character designs up in the next week or two.

Survival

2007-10-20T12:24:00.000-04:00

Finally, reading week is here. The past week was rough on all of us, but we've survived, and now we get nine full days to recover and catch up on work.

I figure that since I've got this nice spot to throw my work onto, I might as well go ahead and do so. I don't have a lot to put up since I'm not big on doing "finished" work, but I have a character turnaround and a painting for your perusal.

Here's the turnaround I did for Pete Emslie's character design class, then used later for the "Weight Lift Toss" animation in Mark Mayerson's animation class.

We also had to do poses of the character grabbing, lifting, and tossing an object. The drawings could be viewed as keys for the animation, though I ended up doing completely new poses for mine.

The first painting assignment Mike Hitchcox gave us this year was to paint an outdoor layout, either one of the examples he gave us or one of our own. I opted for one of the provided layouts since I have none of my own to work from.

The first step we had to do was a set of rough tonal thumbnails. These were done on plain printer paper with graphite powder and a Tombow 2B pencil.

We chose the rough that worked best, then did a final tonal painting of it. This one is on Arches 140lb Cold Press paper using Winsor Newton Ivory Black Gouache.

We then took the tonal idea and used it to formulate some color roughs (which I have misplaced), and then produced a final color key painting. This is also on Arches 140lb Cold Press with Winsor Newton Gouache.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now.

In other news, I'm working on figuring out Adobe's new version of Contribute, and for whatever reason, I can't upload photos to Blogger directly thru the program, so I'm working on figuring out a solution. In the meantime, the pics may be nonexistant, or show scaling artifacts. Hopefully I'll get that cleared up soon enough.

Resurrection!

2007-10-13T09:11:00.000-04:00

I'm going to try to resurrect this blog. The idea is that I'll occaisionally post up stuff that I've been working on. That, in all likelihood, will only happen once or twice every few weeks. I'll try to get into a more regular pattern at some point, but I guarantee nothing.