June 22, 2014: resuming activities

A new directed studies class, so a new set of journal entries. The current class is Rigging Studio X, which simulates the workplace of a company. For me, this isn't particularly new, due to previous freelance work. However, due to NDA documents, I cannot discuss what it is that I'm actually working on, unless given express permission by the parties helming the projects. The most I can say is that I'm currently on a conceptual project, and may soon be on another. If I complete a prototype of one rig, I may be placed on a previous project again and resuming some work there, though I may just keep tabs on it, as I'm on a higher rung in the hierarchy for the class.

As to my golem, I took a short break from really working to give my hands some time to recover, but I've made a bit of progress. Firstly, after a bit of feedback relating to the look of the ground controls, I'm going to test some new ones.

Mostly, I just broke apart the translation and rotation into separate controls, as well as making them circular to better distinguish from the boxes that normally control the various stones.

Beyond this, I did a few texture upgrades.

First are the horns. Using a combination of raw sapphire and smoothed ice from Ice caves, I created this look for them, as well as duplicating and crushing the mesh inwards to create a brighter core for the more intense glowing and light emission.

Then I added the final emblem design onto both the anchor and the opal chest stone. The rainbow effect of the flakes is still not quite there, since the reflective flakes are not randomizing the colors just yet. hey are only based on a sampler info node that connects to a color ramps facing ration node. Once again, I have a dual layer of geometry, though this time, the top layer serves as the surface for the emblem and some transparency to help bloke out the flakes in the blue veins, while the inner geo has a car paint shader to simulate the opal flakes.

Thats all for now.

Cheers.

Updates as of May 11th, 2014

Not much in the way to report this time around. I've completed adding in the remaining cloth sim components for the simulation file. It works for the most part, however, there is an issue with the proximity of all the nCloth objects to one another. With self collide enabled, the simulation time skyrockets, due to the collision thickness is in constant contact. To prevent this massive time lag, self collide was disabled for the time being.

Meanwhile, to reduce the overall dynamic file size, I tossed out all of the excess geometry that have no nCloth counterpart. I've also connected the cloth objects to a control to enable and disable the simulations, so that animators can turn on the dynamics when they wish to do so. I've also create a low res cage for the skull tree to help with simulations.

Everything is currently cached out to help out with calculations.

updates as of April 24, 2014

Not as much to report, given the large span of time. To start, I did create a brief test animation relating to the rig as it stood on the 9th of this month:

Nothing amazing, beyond showing all the components running in conjunction with one another. No dynamics were set beyond the vines at the time of the assembly.

However, while testing, I did discover an odd occurrence relating to the head. When it was set to it's ground locator, the control on the main rig would still have influence over the rotation of the head tree, and that of the eyes. After digging a bit, I had concluded that the orient constraints that were running were broken in some way, so I removed them. In their stead, I constrained the eye controls to the actual joints that bound the skull geo, and had a direct connection from the joints on the main rig onto those that bound the skull tree.

There was also a second issue relating to the two wood plates on the golem's back, where I had unintentionally broken the parenting setup. Where I had intended them to switch between their ground locators and being parented to the chest's center stone, they simply stayed parented to the stone, and would be immobile while set to their supposed ground locators. Diving into the outliner, I corrected the problem, in that I had removed the double parenting, and created a fresh parent constraint to the proper components.

Past this, I decided to revisit the vine script I had made a while back. After building the finger vines, I decided to do a little revising regarding the setup, ultimately ditching the command to look up the Ivy brush that exists in the paint effects, and using the default one that comes pre-loaded into the scene. I'm going to try and combine the two halves of the script, in that it would ultimately mimic the finger vines, but with a little more control regarding the shape of the curve before running the dynamics.

At this time, I've created a separate dynamics file for the stones and wood components, allowing for some easier testing in a lighter scene. However, it's difficult to determine how everything will interact, so the file is referenced into an animation scene.

Here, using the gray wireframe to indicate the original geometry, I can see that the hand stones and the left leg stones should be loosened in their constraints, though to what degree is difficult to predict, as the scene, with everything running, becomes heavy to simulate. It's pretty much trial and error at this point.

Updates as of April 4, 2014

Been a bit of a spell, but here is the low down.

First up, the left hand dynamics had a rather nasty issue. When simulating on campus, the geometry moved as it should, staying connected to the body. However, at home, the geometry would disconnect and float off into space, before coming back. after a bit of investigation, I found that it was the dynamic curves that were being offset. There were three attempts to remedy this, the first was to bind it to joints, the second, being a blend shape node that linked back to a duplicate of the original curve, and then using an IK spline setup. Ultimately, it was the fact that all of the curves were simulating on one nucleus node, rather than being on either the same hair system or having their own nucleus to simulate off of. After a brief adjustment, this was remedied, and the setup worked.

All of this, so that, a dynamic setup could be achieved on the finger vines. This setup allows for jiggle when controlling the position of the vines, and can allow for complete freedom on the vine's part to move around.

After that bit of madness, I created a new control to influence the visibility of components.

This would allow animators to lessen the burden of the rig on their machine and the scene in question, as having everything active would be a hindrance.

I've also been readjusting some of the influences on the vine curves, so that some of the assembly control pieces, now fully functional, can move the vines themselves. below is a small example of this.

I've also gone in and separated the anchor stone from the golem, allowing the golem to move about freely, or be tied to it, if the animator so wishes.

Even more so, I've added an extra control to this so that the anchor stone can be flat out hidden, allowing the animator to work with the golem as a stand alone.

I've also worked out the eye system, where when the closed blendshape is active, it neutralizes the other blendshapes for when the eye moves about in the socket.

It was a simple matter of plugging in the close blendshape's output state into a multiply-divide node as the first input, then plugging in the rotational blendshapes into the second input state. For example, the closed state going into input 1X, and the forward y rotation blendshape into input 2X. As a result, whenever the eye is open (open blend active), it allows the rotational correction blends to work. However, when the eye is closed (Open blend inactive), it sets the 1X node to zero, cancelling out the rotation correction blends.

I have recorded a demo of the dynamic vine system on the left hand. The original curves are bound to a broken joint chain, allowing for the vines to be posed. The dynamic vines themselves can be activated or deactivated, as well as influenced by the original curve. This gives the animator the ability to make the vine either very stiff, or very loose and able to flop about.

On the topic of the dynamic curves, while working on a separate file for the golem, I ran into an issue with a script I had been using. Originally, the script was meant to create the vine curves, and could create the dynamic sets similar to those on the left hand. However, upon testing the script in a referenced scene, I found that, should an nDynamic nucleus already exist in the scene, it would attach the nHair system to that nucleus, and disrupt the rest of the script, preventing the new setup from being tidy. I had tried a simple fix, adding in a few lines to set it to a new nucleus, but this also had a drawback. If this modified script were to be run in a fresh scene without an nDynamic, nucleus, it would create two nuclei instead of just one. I'll probably need to experiment with an "if than" or and "if else" command in my script to prevent this.

Rig updates as of March 12, 2014

Been a bit longer than the norm for updates, but here is the current status of the golem.

At this time, I've completed the ground to control rig system for all of the individual components, as well as set up attributes on the golem global to hide the numerous controls across the rig relating to that system. All of the normal maps for the major body components have been completed as well, so the only things left to texture are the horns, the chest opal, and adding the opal's glyph to the anchor stone.

Relating to textures, I've replaced all of the materials for mental-ray materials for better accuracy come render time. The horns and opal also have a surface light node plugged in to the mia_mat's additional color node, which allows the material to emit light.

Back on track, I did encounter a rather frustrating issue with the paint effects curves I am using with my rig. Due to me attempting to use a multiple component scaling system, where in the anchor stone and the golem could be scaled both independently and in unison with one another, the vine geometry would not scale properly along with the rig. It would shrink in diameter, which as one would guess, is not a good thing.

One fix I attempted was the wrap deformer adjustment, where in the geometry that is being wrap deformed onto another object is bound to a single joint, and that joint is placed in a group along with the main bind joint system of the rig. However, this lead to the double transformation problem seen in the lower half of the above image. Ultimately, I had to scrap the individual transformations and settle for the main global to do the scaling. This still left with the diameter issue. To get around this, I plugged in the scaling information from the main global control into a condition node, then took that information and plugged it into a multiply divide node to whittle down the data. Finally, I took the output and sent it into the pressure max node of the paint effects strokes. Once connected, everything scaled properly.

After that problem was dealt with, I moved on to adjusting the left wrist area again, as well as adding dynamic hair curves so that the finger vines could have a large amount of jiggle if the animator so wanted. With a separate control above the left hand stone, the dynamics, and the corresponding geometry, could be enabled or disabled at the animator's whim.

Relating to dynamics, I'm hoping to begin adding in some of the jiggle/jostle systems for the rig soon. The only things left to really set up on the rig that don't involve dynamics are the eye flowers, which have been started as of this post, and the tree on the top of the skull.

For now, here are the current textures on the golem:

Displaying the subtle light emissions from the horns and opal

Showing the adjusted teeth textures, as well as the adjusted vine colors.

Update as of February 24, 2014

I'd like to say that the golem rig is at a good point at this time. I've managed to bind all of the key components to where they need to be, the vines are moving around nicely, and the diffuse passes on the textures have been completed. At this time, none of the dynamic simulation components have been added yet, as there are still some errors that need to be tended to. I have also added joints throughout the goelm in anticipation of both the construction rig and the usage of jiggle bones.

Test render of some of the textures

Second test, full view, no anchor vines

Updated materials on some of the components, plus a different light setup and the anchor chain.

An attempt was made to use the dynamic hair system on the finger curves, thereby allowing a more believable sense to the fingers being vines. However, I need to consult my advisers on how to make the base of the vine more stiff while not sacrificing the stiffness of the vine near the tip.

As a bit of an aside to the main project, I'm going to attempt t create a ragged looking cloak to add on top of the golem. It's mainly for a cloth sim class, but it can also allow for better insight onto using nCloth throughout the rig itself come time the rig is labeled ready as an animatable piece.

Below I've attached a current visual breakdown of the rig at this time.

16-02-2014 update

So much to place here, yet so little. Since the February 5th update, I've gotten a lot done behind the scenes, such as finishing up the UV unwrapping and binding the skeleton to controls. All of the vine curves on the main body have been bound to the skeleton, and a good deal of skin weight adjustments have been made so that deformation feels more believable when things move about. Thank you Component Editor.

Elsewhere in the project, I got some texture work started, focusing mainly on the diffuse pass for now. I've also cleaned up all the naming conventions, as I was scolded for not having my initials on everything within the file itself. Add to this the IK FK setup on the arms and the IK systems on the legs, and most of that technical bit was set.

Some planned sculpting for the back components

temporary mockup of the current textures on the model 

I know I'll need to adjust the texture a bit to closer match the original concept art colors, but that'll be on the next update.

Back on the setup page, I broke apart all of the vine animations onto their own controls, so now the arms, body, leg, and neck can grow into place individually. This was done using the set driven key setup and keying the max clip control on the paint effect brush stroke. Needless to say, I should look into a faster way, if possible.

 

Past this, I've also blocked in the anchor, as seen in the background of the video above, and setup a temporary control system for the vine chain leading to the golem. This simply consists of an IK spline controlled by free floating joints. Still, the section between the anchor chain and the golem's back vines needs to be worked on, as the current point and orient constrain setup has an issue where the joints flip. not a good thing.

Current rig setup

Lastly, I'm currently developing a design to place on the anchor to help round out things. I liked the look of the calligraphy word god in arabic I want to use on the stone in the golem's chest, so I want to create something similar to the look for the anchor stone.