Judd Simantov

Workshop write up

2011-12-13T07:30:00.000-08:00

Daniel Snaddon did an awesome write up on the workshop I hosted 2 weekends ago. Check it out here, it gives you a really good breakdown on what the workshop covered!

Thanks Daniel!!

http://www.danielsnaddon.com/?p=138

The Last of Us

2011-12-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

Hey! So I'm really excited to be able to share this with everybody! This is what I've been working on for ND. This project is going to be so amazing and it's been such an awesome experience working on it so far.

Check out the trailer here:

The Last Of Us Video Game, VGA 2011: Exclusive Debut Trailer HD | Video Clip | Game Trailers & Videos | GameTrailers.com

Congrats to everybody who has been working on this!

CGSociety Workshop

2011-12-09T10:41:00.001-08:00

I just realised how much stuff I have going on :( I also have a CGSociety facial rigging workshop... it's not open for enrollment yet, but you can get notified for when it does. Check it out here:

http://workshops.cgsociety.org/instructor.php?userid=6205

Also, an awesome Uncharted 3 interview, with some super cool colleagues/friends just went up... check it out here:

http://area.autodesk.com/inhouse/bts/uncharted_3_with_naughty_dog

Workshop

2011-12-09T10:36:00.000-08:00

While I'm at it... I also did a weekend workshop on digital sculpting just before the trip to Paris. We picked a person's name out of a hat and chose their design for the traditional sculpt demo (they then got to take the sculpt home!). Daniel Snaddon was picked and his design (see below) was totally awesome! I have to admit, doing a live sculpture demo and explaining what I'm doing is a lot harder than I was expecting :)

Doing the workshop again next weekend... I still have 1 spot open if anybody is interested!

Here are some pics (thanks to Jonathan for the collage!)

Games Connection Paris

2011-12-09T10:30:00.000-08:00

I've been pretty quiet lately and I've had a lot going on... I just wrapped up doing a masterclass and a talk at games connection in Paris. Everything went well and I'm officially in love with Paris. Here's a screenshot from the games connection website. Right next to Jason Gregory :)

Hasidic Sculpt

2011-10-13T16:43:00.000-07:00

I'll be away on a business trip soon, so this will probably be the last one for about a month or so... I had this sketch I did a while back of a hasidic and saw it lying around the other day... I always liked how much of the character's personality came out in his eyes, general facial structure and of course hair and clothing... enjoy!

Madiba Sculpt

2011-10-12T16:00:00.000-07:00

Here's one more... I've been busting them out lately... having a lot of fun doing quick sketches like this. It took about 2 hours from beginning to end. This is based on Zapiro's caricatures of Madiba.

head sculpt

2011-10-11T16:27:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of stylised stuff lately and I figured I needed to go for something more realistic... I enjoy this kind of stuff because it helps me improve my anatomical knowledge and because of how unforgiving it can be... it forces me to really have to focus on proportions, anatomy, forms...etc.

Did some lectures at Wits

2011-09-27T12:06:00.001-07:00

Hey,

I did some lectures at Wits and it got linked here, so I thought I'd share:

http://www.wits.ac.za/academic/humanities/wsoa/2011/13933/news_item_13933.html

The students were really cool and it was really fun hanging and helping them out!

Workshop Flyer!!

2011-09-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

Here is the final flyer for the workshop... big thanks to Daniel Snaddon for throwing it together!

Some more workshop stuff

2011-09-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

Here's another sculpt I've thought about using for the workshop...

Workshop Sculpt

2011-08-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'll be doing a weekend workshop here in Joburg...this is the character I'll be using for the workshop. If you live in South Africa and want more info, email me at juddsim.at.gmail.com

Stylized Drake Painting

2011-06-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

So you work on something for so long that you get kind of tired of it... and then you stop working on it and start missing it! .... weird :) Anyway, I'm kinda obsessed with creating a stylized drake and so this is one more attempt at it. It' not that different from the sculpt I did in an earlier post. Also gave me an opportunity to keep learning painter. I definitely need to get into colour... I'm just kinda scared of it right now...

Hope you dig it!

fat dude character design

2011-06-14T14:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, I started learning painter and did this value study as my first painting... there are some cool-ass brushes in painter! I'm really enjoying it. Will probably have a colour version of this to post pretty soon.

Mugabe Caricature

2011-06-14T03:17:00.000-07:00

I did a sketch for this a while back.... while going through some stuff I saw it and decided to paint it and finish it off... my wife is from Zimbabwe, so it's only fitting that I do a caricature of Mugabe :) ... not to mention how interesting his face is!

Head Sculpt

2011-06-07T12:56:00.001-07:00

Hey,

Here's a head sculpt I did today just for fun.... it took me about 2 hours in total. The one is a screen-shot out of mudbox and the other is a quick maya render ( I just put SSS on everything, so its kinda overbearing :) )... Enjoy!

Tarzan Animation

2011-05-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

Here's the animation test I did... I spent about an hour on this, so it's not super polished... I'll probably take another polish pass on it.

Below it is a quick take I did... don't know why, but takes are always just fun to do :)

Tarzan Study: Dialogue Test from Judd Simantov on Vimeo.

Tarzan Take from Judd Simantov on Vimeo.

Tarzan Study

2011-05-26T14:15:00.001-07:00

So, like most people I watched Tangled and was super impressed with how they were able to capture the classic disney feeling in a 3d movie. I decided to take one of my favourite characters (Tarzan) and do a study on translating the character into 3d and then I used the expression sheet from Tangled as reference to do some quick tests. This rig is only about 65% completed, so things are not perfect, but its a pretty good starting point. I felt like I went a little soft, but I'm quite happy with the overall results.

*This is based on Disney Tarzan's design, so I am in no way taking credit for that aspect of the work. Also, I know the hair is different, but the study was about the character design and facial expressions, so I didn't want to spend time worrying about getting dreadlocks to look good.

Nic and Pusho Caricature

2011-05-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

I haven't updated in a while, so here is a caricature I did for my brother in law and his girlfriend. I had a lot of fun doing these... it's cool doing them for someone you actually know :)

Quick Sketch & Caricature

2011-01-20T23:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a quick sketch I did...and a caricature of myself...the caricature is kept loose on purpose... I felt like I captured the essence and the rest was just details.

Interview I did a while back

2010-12-25T22:01:00.000-08:00

Hey,

So I did a full interview that was part of a bigger interview of multiple people. The full interview is posted on its own and you can go check it out here:

http://www.gamedevsa.com/resource/articles/judd-simantov

Please ignore the profile picture of me... :)

2010 Show-Reel

2010-12-23T19:26:00.000-08:00

It's been a long time since I've needed to put together a show-reel, but I figured now would be a good time to put my work out there...I will be leaving Naughty Dog after an amazing 6 1/2 years. I've decided to move back to South Africa and do freelance work from there. The video's are really small, so I'll try and get them up on Vimeo in HD...

I don't have any Uncharted stuff on the reel, but I'll probably post another reel that is more game specific as well. I also didn't show much of the tech and tools that I've written (which is probably a bigger part than all the art :) ) so I'll probably post that stuff later as well...

Here's the reel:

Judd Simantov 2010 Reel from Judd Simantov on Vimeo.

Below is some of animation work as well. I didn't include this in my reel for the sake of keeping my reel shorter, so I've uploaded it separately.

Animation Reel - Judd Simantov from Judd Simantov on Vimeo.

Below is a video trailer of a personal project that myself and Rich Diamant worked on (you'll see bits of it in my reel). We both got crazy busy and he went off to work at Blizzard, so we stopped working on it and I figured I'd start putting this out there. We used XNA and wrote an entire pipeline, exporter and XML based system for handling the development process. We both shared the load of all the art, programming, design...etc. I mostly focused on the run-time coding and Rich wrote most of the offline pipeline tools. He also implemented a sick Octree based Collision system that allowed us to do some really cool things! I'll post a tech demo as well showing off the pipeline we developed.

Isis Personal Game Project from Judd Simantov on Vimeo.

Stylized Drake Sculpt

2010-12-22T14:05:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I updated this, but I'm going to be updated more often now that I got some things out of the way... here is the latest sculpt I worked on. It's a stylized take on Drake... I made a mold for this so it can be replicated and cast. This is actually a resin cast in the photo... The photograph was taken by Iki Ikram an amazing photographer and effects artists at Naughty Dog. Thanks Iki!

Miyazaki

2010-06-06T01:28:00.001-07:00

Hey... Just got back from Japan! Had an awesome time and got to go check out the amazing studio ghibli museum... I got inspired to do something afterwards, my first idea was a 3d zoetrope (they have an awesome totoro zoetrope) but my apartment is way too small to start building revolving tables... I decided to just do a quick caricature of Miyazaki, I kept it small and "thumbnaily"... enjoy!

Slides from our GDC 2010 Talk

2010-04-27T23:36:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to the slides from our (Rich and I) GDC talk...

http://cmpmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/vault/gdc10/slides/simantov_judd_uncharted2_character_pipeline.pdf

Feel free to hit me up if you have any questions!

2010-03-20T23:14:00.000-07:00

Hey,

So I just got back from an awesome week in SF! I got to give 3 autodesk presentations and 1 GDC talk which seated +- 800 people. It was intimidating but really fun! I also got to take a trip to Pixar thanks to my buddy Rich and then attended a 1 week sculpting course with Andrew Cawrse and Damon Bard. Here are some pics of Pixar, GDC and the sculpt I did at the workshop. The character design is based on Adam Ford's Centaur and this piece is a study that was worked on by myself and the 2 instructors (Damon and Andrew), so I dont take full credit for it. I learned an insane amount from them and cant wait to start on my next piece!

The pic of me with Oogway is obviously the maquette done for Kung Fu Panda by Damon Bard. He's ridiculously talented!!

The pic of the people in the crowd is one side of the room while I was on stage doing the GDC presentation.

60 min speed sculpt

2010-02-20T01:31:00.000-08:00

I decided to try taking a little longer on one, so I went for 60 mins on this while taking a break from some other stuff... It's definitely way better working on my Cintiq at home than on my Intuos at work... maybe ND will get me a Cintiq just so I can speed sculpt :)

Latest Speed Sculpt

2010-02-19T18:23:00.001-08:00

Again.... 30 mins and the topic was super-hero's...it's not my favourite in terms of anatomy and appeal, but I like it conceptually...it could definitely use another 20-25 mins of finessing.

Speed Sculpts

2010-02-18T23:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a while, so I figured I'd put these up.... a super awesome collegue and my sculpture workshop roomy Bryan Wynia (check out links) came up with this awesome idea to do 30 min speed sculpts at work. Each day someone picks a topic and we all have to sculpt that topic in 30 minutes. Really great idea and its such a cool learning process to see everybody's individual take on the same idea... Anyway, so I am not very good at digital sculpting and most of my sculpting has been traditional so I was very uncomfortable at first and had a hard time, but its getting a lot better and I'm feeling more confident and comfortable. Most of these are done in 30 mins and then for the mohawk one, I spent another 25mins because I was matching Adam Ford's awesome centaur concept! I'll be sculpting his design in a traditional workshop I'm taking, so this was just a quick exercise to explore the design...

Enjoy!

Madiba

2009-12-16T11:55:00.001-08:00

Hey,

I went to watch Invictus with my wife and man did that movie move me....obviously being South African and growing up during the height of all those events made the film that much more relevant... I was so inspired I decided to go home and do a caricature of Mandela...I kept it quite loose and small, cause I'm just trying to get the feel and not detail for days on end.

Enjoy!

another mood painting test

2009-12-01T02:51:00.000-08:00

Here's another one... very much in the same vein. I tried to keep things a little more cohesive in this one...

quick sketch painting

2009-11-26T14:39:00.000-08:00

Here's a little something I just did as a quick study on getting some more dramatic lighting in my designs... I'm trying to change up my approach a little where instead of first painting value and then going into color, I just decide on a color palette and jump straight into color.

Lighting Piece

2009-11-14T08:16:00.001-08:00

Here's a lighting piece I did as part of a workshop... it's all hand placed lights. No Global Illumination or Final Gather, just a bunch of lights based on the direct lighting, areas of bounce and fill.

african baller

2009-11-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

So I had this idea for a basketball player in africa and did a bunch of sketches... these are the ones I liked the most.

Up - Karl Sculpt

2009-09-25T01:59:00.000-07:00

Hey,

I've been working on this for a while now... just been jumping back and forth between a few things and I was waiting to really refine this before posting it. The only problem is I might not ever get around to actually finishing it, so I decided to just put it up! His fingers, feet and the base still need a bunch of work and there are a bunch of textural details that I haven't gotten in yet. The face is the most refined part...

As many people know, I'm a huge fan of Pixar and an even bigger fan of Up... so this was a really cool little project for me to do! He still needs his glasses, so I'll probably do that as a seperate piece out of plastic.

messing around

2009-08-25T01:43:00.001-07:00

hey... here's a little something I sketched as a character I've wanted to create for a while...

New IK Posing Tool

2009-08-08T16:54:00.000-07:00

Hey,

So I haven't posted much since we've been pretty crazy at working trying to wrap up on Uncharted 2...I just finished up this tool recently that I thought I'd share.

It might be a little confusing from the video, but basically you always have the FK controls selected and you're always keying them. So in essence you're never actually in IK. This just lets you pose and FK arm with an IK tool/context.

Let me know if you got any questions....

color script 01

2009-06-29T01:00:00.000-07:00

Hey,

So after being super-inspired by some of the lighting in UP and the simplicity of their color scripts, I embarked on creating the first color script for my short. It was fun playing around with light in such a simplistic manner and it really helped set the tone for what I want to achieve in CG. I'm really learning that its the idea that matters in concept, not the details. It can be super simple, but if it conveys all the appropriate information it serves its purpose.

I know this is not much, but thought I'd post it anyway.

younger kid model from short

2009-05-31T15:32:00.001-07:00

Hey... here is a quick snippet of the CG model for the younger kid. It's pretty crazy to see it go from drawing, to clay sculpt, to CG model.... it'll be even cooler once I actually get him rigged and moving around.

another rig test

2009-05-27T03:57:00.000-07:00

So after making some adjustments based on the walk cycle, I did this little test.... The rig is really starting to come together and I'm feeling confident that it will hold up well in most cases. I've just got a few more adjustments to make to it and it should be good to go.

short film character walk cycle

2009-05-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

Hey...

So I've been pretty quiet about my short film... primarily because I've been juggling a few hundred things, but I decided this weekend to take a little break from camels and programming and did a quick rig test in the hope to final the rig for this character. I found a few things that need some fixing and skinning still needs lots of work... I also made some basic changes to his design that you probably wont really notice but it makes the model a little easier to animate.

The next thing with him will probably be more elaborate than a walk cycle... just gotta make sure I iron out all the rig issues first.

camel design

2009-05-22T23:15:00.000-07:00

Hey! Never drawn a camel before, so it took ALOT of drawings until I got to this. It's funny looking back on the first few that I thought were cool and realizing how bad they were :) I'm contemplating turning this into a sculpt, but I first want to draw the body and maybe do some expression poses.

latest sculpt...

2009-05-21T00:59:00.000-07:00

Hey,

Here is the latest sculpt I've been working on... I was thinking of maybe smoothing this one out more and maybe casting it so I can duplicate it. Hopefully he'll make his way into one of the personal projects I'm working on...If you look closely, he's loosely based on one of the sketches I posted earlier.... Next up... a camel! :)

free stretchy IK plugin

2009-04-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

Hey! So here is a python plugin that just simplifies creating a stretchy IK arm/leg setup.

You can download it HERE

This video is a basic demo of how it works... I know the text is ridiculously small and it was stupid that I even recorded it... sorry :) I've attached an image so you can see the attributes that I'm talking about. There is also a readme.txt file in the zip.

Also, on a side note, I've named things elbow and upper_arm, but you can just rename that to upper_leg and knee for a leg setup.

It's not super tight in terms of being packaged as an easy to use tool, so hit me up if you have any problems.

On one more side note... my voice really cant be that nasally... that has to be compression!!! :)

Face Rig Video

2009-04-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a sneak peak at the facial rig... I havent had much time to take it further, but I think its heading in the right direction. As some of my colleagues (Rich in particular!) have pointed out there are some volume issues that I still need to sort out.

Enjoy!

new style test

2009-04-22T00:23:00.000-07:00

Hey,

I was playing around with a new style where I do a drawing and keep the note pad as the background... seems to create quite a cool feel.

some bad guy designs

2009-04-19T21:41:00.001-07:00

Here are some more designs... I just started out with some heads to get a feel for the character. We are picking which one of these we like the most, so if you want, comment on which one(s) you like.

Thanks!

new character design

2009-04-18T22:53:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest design I just finished up for one of the projects I'm working on... I'm having fun with these big muscle-head type of dudes.... I might or might not do a sculpt of this guy, just depends on how much time I get.

Enjoy!

some storyboards

2009-04-17T00:25:00.001-07:00

Here are some boards I did for a little story idea... you'll notice the security guard from the design below. They're not in any sort of narrative order, its just some of the boards that I liked randomly stuck together.

security guard

2009-04-03T00:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a little security guard design I was playing around with...I've been pretty busy at work lately, so I havent had time to work on as much personal stuff, but I should have some new stuff coming soon.

Later!

Uh... another side project....?!

2009-02-20T01:22:00.000-08:00

So myself and a buddy of mine (Rich Diamant) are working on a little something that I cant say much about and will only come together at a much later stage (after I get my short done), but we decided to play around with some sketches... here is a design I came up for one of the characters... I cant say much about the story, but its going to be a lot of fun!!

Uncharted 2

2009-02-06T23:52:00.003-08:00

Here's some info on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. This is the project I've been working on at ND... this game is really shaping up to be something amazing!!

Uncharted 2 Blog Entry

Enjoy!

Thoughts...

2009-02-05T02:02:00.000-08:00

I'm about to head off and read a bit before sleeping... I just finished animating and sculpting a little and something quite profound hit me. Its the idea of arbitrary decisions. In any medium, be it sculpting, drawing, animation or cinematography, arbitrary decisions can be your worst enemy or best friend. To explain this, let me give you an example... when you pick up a book and start reading, if you encounter a word that is not in your vocab, most people just skip over it and ignore the sentence... these people were just given the perfect opportunity to learn a new word and they completely ignored it. With reading there is no resulting tangible piece that we call our art...art that is defined by a series of arbitrary decisions. However, when you sculpt, the minute you place a piece of clay down, or scrape a piece off, it should be with purpose... if you find yourself defining a form arbitrarily because you are unsure about what that form really looks like, that's your word that isn't in your vocab and you can either look up the word in the dictionary (reference some anatomy) or just make some random decision. Obviously there is a certain level of discovery and exploration depending on the medium, but even exploration can have purpose and intent. If I feel like placing a camera in a few different spots to see which works, I should still have a good idea of what I'm trying to say in this scene and then explore some different options.

Obviously if you have to look things up every time you're unsure about something, you'll probably never get anything finished, but I think its a good place to strive to get to and it will encourage a certain hunger for knowledge and growth.

I'm sure nobody is going to read this, but if you do.... hope it was somewhat interesting! :)

later!

Playblast...Really?!

2009-01-31T11:51:00.000-08:00

I gotta admit, I feel kinda dumb for never discovering this before, but I figured maybe I'm only somewhat dumb and that other people might have encountered this before, so I decided to post it anyway.... plus I haven't updated my blog in a while :(

Alright, so I'm animating some stuff and playblasting to fcheck... the image sequence loads really quickly and plays back at 24fps. Now, a few days later I decide to do some test renders... I change my image format to tga, tiff or jpg (depending on what I wanna do). I render out a sequence, save my scene and enjoy how awesome renders look. A day later I reopen my scene, make some animation changes and playblast... The image sequence takes FOREVER to cache in fcheck. Obviously once it caches it plays back at 24fps, but I gotta wait again for it to cache. I dont get it.... this stuff loaded fine a few days ago.... okay, so what changed?!! I set my render globals to tga's! Yes, render globals... not playblast globals :) I had no idea this affected your playblast format. Anyway... I thought okay, I'll change it to jpgs... they have to be quick... but nope, no luck. So obviously I went back to default which is .iff's. That was it!

So after all of that, the bottom line is.... set your image format in your render globals to .IFF when playblasting!

If this is common knowledge, please let me know so I can delete this post before someone from Naughty Dog reads this and decides maybe I shouldn't be solving technical problems :) ..hehehe

sneak peak of a work in progress

2009-01-14T01:50:00.001-08:00

Hey! I was watching the golden globes the other night with my cute couch potato wife and after watching Spielberg give a really great speech, I figured he'd be a great person to do a caricature of... especially with me working on a short film and all :) I've kept this small cause its still a work in progress and certain parts are still very loose... all comments are welcome!

On a side note, I've been a little distracted from the short the last few days, but I should be jumping back into it in full force pretty soon and will have some stuff posted...

cheers!

Maya API ... Python .vs C

2009-01-09T23:56:00.001-08:00

So I ran into a nice little problem today... I've tried to write all the tools thus far using python API, for the reason that it makes distribution of the tools easier with no recompiling required as newer versions of Maya come out. I started writing a deformer and quickly realised that vertex iteration in python API is slow!!! Probably about 10 times slower than in C++... so I rewrote the plugin in C and it worked like a charm... kinda sucks that this is the case, but I guess I'll just need distribute some tools in a compiled .mll format.

I'll try and get some stuff up on the blog, just got back into work this week, so things are a bit slow... Also, I'm working on more rig stuff, so its not as pretty to put up on the blog :(

Later!

Arm Rig Video Example

2009-01-02T14:46:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: None of the weighting/deformations are final. I'm just showing functionality, so the geometry will probably look weird in certain places/poses.

Here's a vid of the arm rig at work ( I know its kinda long, but I havent figured out how to speed things up in iMovie yet)... just to explain it all a little: There are 2 main things going on. One is the stretchy IK arm and the other is a bezier spline based node I wrote that allows you to have bezier curves (just like the graph editor) in the viewport. So for the stretchy IK stuff, its basically taking all the functionality that would be setup with a lot of nodes and transforms and basically turned into one custom API node. The great thing about this, is its really easy to update and not worry about all these connections and nodes, its really fast and its very managable. So some of the things it does is, toggle automatically calculate volume, stretch multiplier, volume multiplier, locking the elbow or knees down, plus a few other custom controls that are more fine level stuff...

The bezier spline node is pretty cool in that you can add more key points to it (I wouldnt do this in the arm and its not demonstrated here), but it functions exactly like a curve would in the graph editor, so for a tail rig that stuff would work great. It basically has a main "key" point and then "tangent" points that come off of that. It then generates a curve that you can attach anything to. This is also a node that computes all this stuff really quickly and keeps things pretty clean.

I had a bunch of this stuff working as C++ plugins and decided to re-write them as python API plugins so that I can distribute this stuff without worrying about OS and version dependencies. I do intend on giving all of this stuff out for free once I'm done with my film.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-01T03:36:00.000-08:00

Hey,

Happy New Year! I started on another character... I try to switch it up between tech and art stuff and I was doing a little too much tech stuff, so I decided to get a head start on this guy and just rough out a sculpt in clay. I kept it pretty loose and sketchy, cause I really only need this sculpt as a reference point for how the 2d design will translate into 3d and the finessing will get done on the CG model. Also, I opted to just do the head cause I felt like his body was pretty straight forward... I'll probably do a full body one at a later stage, but for now this will suffice for me to get it started in 3d.

Jaw Open

2008-12-27T01:34:00.000-08:00

I've started to think about how I want the face to work and the first thing I started looking into was the jaw opening. I figured I'd post a little workflow tip that I do when working with the mouth. The problem with the mouth is that we always model it closed. Then if you choose to open it with a joint you never quite get the right looking mouth open. Its usually because all the verts were collapsed in on themselves in the default pose, so when they untangle, they don't have the right thickness and volume....

So here's my workflow. I model my mouth closed as normal and dont worry about it too much. Then I add my jaw joint, bind it and do a basic weighting setup so I can get a nice jaw open (not the final, but enough to see the volumes)... Now I open the jaw, duplicate off that mesh go into mudbox or zbrush and model the volumes to look the way I want. Now, I apply this shape back onto the original as a blend target, making sure the jaw is closed. This way I can see how its affected the original pose and because the blend is live (still connected), I'm able to tweak it a little more and make sure that I'm also getting a good base shape.

Here are some pics to show the results, the shape on the right is the old mouth open before being fixed... you can see the shape is cleaner, has more volume and will create better shapes when added with other mouth shapes:

Some more thoughts...

2008-12-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

So I was thinking a bit about the rigging process again... instead of just typing a bunch of stuff, I figured I'd also post a pic... so here you go before I start rambling (its just a quick snap of where the rig is currently at)... Quick shout out to Dan Barker for some of his top notch advice...:

Its interesting, I was thinking a little about how most TD's (Riggers) and Animators that I've spoken to seem to not really work well together or get along. As I'm working on my short, I'm thinking about this and find it really hard to understand how that is the case. If I was just the TD on this character and not the animator, then I'd rig the character and pass it off to somebody else to animate.... if all goes well, then I'd probably get a few requests here and there and then the animator would pretty much go off and bring the character to life. So the point I'm really making is that I would never have to actually animate the rig. Okay, so with this in mind, why would TD's be so attached to how something would work that they will never be using? It seems like the majority of conflict between TD's and Animators is when animators request something and the TD doesnt necessarily feel like it should be added... this can be understandable, I have these issues at work sometimes, as a TD you obviously cant please everybody and there is deadlines and things that need to get done, but I would think that the most functional relationship an animator would have in production would be with the TD and vica-versa ... they should be able to sit down, discuss the pro's and cons and figure out if the solution will save the animator more time than it will take to implement. In a nutshell, I guess what I'm saying is a rig is only as good as the animators say... it can have crazy technical solutions, but if the animators dont like it, you've failed... so listen to the animators and collaborate.

Luckily I really have this kind of relationship with our lead animator Jeremy Yates... even if he's always trying to make me a good person :)

shweet!

Update to my short and some look dev

2008-12-24T04:17:00.000-08:00

Alright, its 4:20am and this is one of those evenings where things were just working, so I couldnt leave it and go to sleep... I'm really happy with the results I'm getting thus far! Here is a sneak peak at some look dev and posing... I'm also in the process of rigging this guy (hence him being posed), so its a little more techie and not as fun to look at, but I'll post some info on the rigging process as well.

-Judd

Kobe Caricature WIP

2008-12-23T23:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a little something I started last night... I'm not sure that I made the right exaggeration choices, but I'm happy with the overall construction and some of the planes that were established in his face... Its still very loose, but I've had enough of it for now.... I'll definitely finish it up when I get a spurt of inspiration!

On a quick side note, I had been doing so much really graphic stylized stuff lately, that getting back into this more anatomical type of stuff was quite the challenge... the first few sketches were pretty bad...

-Judd

Design, Rigging & Animation

2008-12-23T14:18:00.000-08:00

Thought I'd just post some thoughts on some stuff that came up this weekend. I started rigging the star trek geek from my short... I got to a point where I had the body rigged (in its most basic form) and ready to be animated. Its really important to get to a point where you can start testing the animation before flushing out weighting, facial setup, details controls...etc. I did a basic walk cycle and the first thing I ran into is that his feet were just too big for such short legs and it meant that anytime I lifted his feet and tried rotating around his ankles I'd intersect his legs. So I went back, sized them down, quickly re-rigged the leg setup and replaced reference in my animation (If you dont use some kind of referencing in your pipeline, you really should!). Needless to say, it worked much better. Anyway, the point that I'm making is A. Make sure your pipeline allows for design changes after animation tests B. get stuff down the pipe and tested as quick as possible with the least amount of time invested so you can see problems and make the changes. Its impossible to account for all problems from the get go, so a flexible pipeline is incredibly important.

Here are some basic tools that really help me with that:

Quick rig scripts that let me setup basic structures (arms, legs...etc)
Save/Load weights tool, so I can detach the skinning, make changes and rebind (even if point order changes).
Orientation importer/exporter.. lets me change joint position and will maintain joint orientation (obviously the general orienation is preserved, in terms of what is the aim and up vector, but as the joint moves this stuff has to change). As long as the aim and up is correct, your animation will be preserved pretty well.
Animation/Import export tool... lets me copy stuff in and out of different places really quickly.

There is obviously a bunch more I could do with, but this stuff is what I'm using right now.

That's it for now... I got some new art I'm working on that I'll post soon!

-Judd

2008-12-17T00:08:00.000-08:00

Here's another design I threw together this evening... I'd love to see some of these designs come together in 3d. As soon as I get some time, I'm definitely gonna do some little clay sculpts of these guys. For some reason I'm obsessed with sad eyes and bald characters. It seems like sad characters just manage to evoke some kind of emotion. Its kinda like Wall-E when he tilts his eyes downwards... anyway, enough rambling..... hope you dig it!

Doodle design

2008-12-16T01:40:00.000-08:00

I was about to fall asleep last night and got this image of this really long face character in my head. I almost woke up and started drawing, but I decided to just sleep (it was 4am)...this evening when I got home from work I messed around and came up with this... I like the extremes in the shape, I'd dig to try and sculpt this and see how it translates to a 3d form.

-Judd

Early CG character

2008-12-14T02:27:00.000-08:00

Here is a very early render of one of the characters... I got to a point with the modelling and figured I'd just test how the geometry is going to respond to lighting (there is no textures and no real light setup, just something basic)... its funny how no matter how good your lighting or model might be, if there is no posing and expression on a character its just not appealing. I'll be rigging this guy soon enough so I can get him posed. I'll post some info and tools as I create the rigging/animation pipeline.

Basic Lighting Tests...

2008-12-13T21:57:00.000-08:00

I started playing around with some basic layout and lighting for the room in my short... this stuff is all rendered in Mental Ray with no global illumination and only 1 raytraced shadow. Some of them have some DOF in them, but render times are really low! This stuff is going to change a lot in terms of the stylization of shape and layout... its mostly just about doing some lighting tests.

exploration of design

2008-12-13T15:36:00.001-08:00

Here are some sketches just exploring the basics of shape, with nothing really flushed out yet...

Some more sketches from my short

2008-12-13T15:30:00.001-08:00

Here are a few earlier sketches I did to explore some character development...I have a lot more than this, but I thought I'd just post some. One thing I cant emphasize enough is to never settle on your first drawing... I generally do about 10-20 sketches before finding something I like. It's not necessarily the 20th drawing, but it gives me enough variety to pick the "right" design from.

Character Designs for my short

2008-12-10T15:55:00.001-08:00

Hey,

So here are some character designs from my short film I'm working on. I tried to keep things really graphic...I also posted the sculpt I've been working on, so you can see what its starting to look like in a more 3d form... It obviously changes a little (I sometimes feel like it loses some of the life that it has in the drawing), but it should get closer to the image in CG:

2008-11-21T00:23:00.001-08:00

I figured I'd throw in some of my paintings as well quickly... here is some caricature stuff I recently did:

2008-11-19T23:59:00.000-08:00

Hey,

So I finally got into this whole blogging thing... I'll be mostly posting some of my artwork... I'll be posting some teaser stuff to my short that I'm working on, but most of that will be kept under wraps so I dont kill too much of the novelty. In the meantime here is 2 of my sculptures... the first is just something a friend of mine (Dan Barker) designed and I sculpted... the second is sculpted off of the great Sebastian Kruger's caricature painting: