I'm back in full drive!

Its been way too long since my last update, but I'm finally getting back to work on my portfolio!

I'm still working at EA games, but I've started working on my personal stuff again. Its been months, but I've found a new drive to continue this stuff. I'm entering alpha on Tiger, but even with that, I'm finding the drive to come home and work on my own stuff late into the night.

I started back up last week and the first thing to do was finish my Rigging ToolBox. Its a continuing work, but the first release will be coming today. Expect an update later today!

Then hopefully you'll see some new keyframe animations this week... ;)

Update on the Rigging ToolBox

Hey y'all,

So two bits of news. First I'm nearing completion of the autorigger. I feel I'm behidn schedule, though I know I never did set a hard deadline for this stuff. I was actually onnly thinking about havign 4 or 5 scripts done by the end of the first month. Instead nearly two months later, I've learned alot of mel scripting and got a whole Rigging Toolbox in the works. Its good and as I said I'm almost done. At least with v1.0. This toolbox is a work in progress and I'll update/tweak it as I learn new things and add more tools to my rigging/animation. As for v1.0 I got about another week of work to do. I'm almost done with the autorigger portion of the tool. It creates all my rigs, but now I'm tweaking the blends and cleanup procs for it. I also keep finding new stuff to add, but I'm trying hard to stop that heh. As for the rest of the tool, the Parts builder and Rig builder are working fine. Their menus need clean up though.

As I said I should have v1.0 of the COM Rigging ToolBox with about a week's work. After that I'm going to start rigging up the TF2 characters. Thats gonna be part of my beta testing. As I do that, I'll also add in more tweaks to the tool that I have in mind, but aren't essential to getting it complete. I'll post those ideas once the tool is up.

Heres some screenshots.. First is pictures of the menus for the ToolBox. The 2nd is a shot of the autorigger working on a test skeleton I have setup. You can see the IKFK blends working.




The sad part is that my grandma past away yesterday. I'm at home right now with my family and taking care of stuff. I'm only posting this stuff now to keep track of all the progress I've done in the past month. but I won't be working now until I'm done taking care of family stuff. To whoever reads this, probably me in 10 years.. Always take care of family and friends first, leave work/fun a very distant last.

500 lines cut out! Woot!

That took a couple of hours but I cut out about 500 lines of code from the COMRigToolBox script I'm still working on.. I'm still only halfway done with the tool, but I need to go back and do this cleaning.. The menu is slowly being fleshed out in Visio, while I continue with the actual scripting.. Definitely not going to beat my 1 month deadline I had, but at the same time I definitely haven't been wasting time.. I've been creating and refining alot of code to create the tool I want.. I'm pretty damn sure once I'm done with this, my rigging will be 10 times faster than the rigging by hand I do now. Well I'll be finishing the arm stuff tomorrow.. Then moving onto the leg scripts tomorrow..

Reducing my code..

Soo figured out how to reduce my procedures further in my new toolbox script.. Going back right now to rewrite alot of the code... I'm hoping to be done with the rewrite later tonight.. Currently its at..

1875 lines
78kb

Lets see the new numbers I come up with.

scripts update

Soo the first iteration on my IK/FK Tool is done.. It does IK and FK rigs separately as well as puts them together. I finished the main stuff on friday, but I took the weekend to clean up the code and also put in other stuff like the master rig buttons. The master rig stuff really wasn't neccessary for this tool, but when I start work on the auto rigger sometime next week, it will be.. So I decided to do it now and start testing it out with IK/FK scripts.

Basically I create a "master" rig from a skeleton. The original is parent constrained to the master rig. The master rig is in turn parent constrained to all the other rigs, and it has attr to blend to eitehr one. So nothing ever touches the original other. like IK/FK, that makes it follow whatever rig its connected to .. Most people use this with IK/FK, but in this way I can use it with any number of rigs I decide to connect.. whether it be a mocap skel that takes mocap data, or any other special rigs. you can see below what I have in mind.

Anyhow so I automated these procedures.. I've tested them out on the tf2 models and they seem to be holding up to testing. The window is not the final thing at all. I just have my many procs in buttons, so I can test stuff out.. I'm not spending too much time on the UI, cause I would like to put all these tools in one big rigging "toolbox." I kinda have it in my head and I'll post in the next blog once I have the idea more solidified.

Anyhow I'm going to continue along with this tool.. So far the IK/FK tools help in creating legs, but I'm going to adapt it to making arms. Since most if not all the procedures are done, I'm not sure how much this next version of the IK/FK setup is gonna take.. I'm hoping just a day or two, but we'll see.

Getting back on track..

Sooo I decided this morning to switch back to my original plans..

I'm still going to mel script, but I'm gonna go back to doing my rig tools. The reason being I want to continue my TF2 plans, but before I do that, I need to do my rig tools and autorigger I would like to tackle. Once I have those things done, then I can rig up the characters and start animating them. I could rig em up now by hand, but the whole point of this project is to create pipeline tools from start to finish..

Did I ever post what my full plan is? Here it is I guess in bullet form!

TF2 Project
Aim: To recreate a whole animation pipeline from start to finish, as if I was a TA working on a big team project. In particular I'm recreating the TF2 pipeline.

Steps to success!
1. Grab Valve's characters
2. Create rigging scripts and Auto Rigger
3. Rig TF2 characters using my new scripts/AutoRigger
4. Create new animations for TF2 (game and film animations)
5. Create export tools to get my animations back into Source engine and TF2.
6. Learn to use my animations in conjunction with Valve's other software, especially their facial animation program, Faceposer.
7. Bring animations into Source FilmMaker, either the hacked version or release when Valve gets around to it.

As to why I want to do all this and specifically TF2?.. Aside from TF2 is one of my all time favorite games.. Well all these steps aim to teach me new things. I've always been tech savvy, but have never shown it. At FIEA, I was always one to tinker and enjoyed figuring out the pipeline stuff for our small games, including Gamebryo and Panda. I coulda created rigging scripts ages ago, but never gave myself time.. I just wanted to keep animating.. and I still do.. but I also enjoy this stuff. Animating exercises my creative side, while scripting and pipeline stuff exercises my problem solving side. I figure now is the best time to do it. I'm trying to revamp my portfolio and this is a great way to start. I want to be able to show that tech side, along with my animation side.

With this project I get both. First I'm finally delving into mel scripting and making my rigging life easier.. I shoulda done this a loooong time ago! Then once that is done, I'll start animating these characters. Some of it will be in game animations, like run cycles.. Others will be more film oriented.. All of it will be new portfolio pieces to show off. and hopefully a short film can come out of it.

Once these new animations are completed, I'll figure out how to bring them into the Source engine. At the same time, I hope to make pipeline tools to help me get these animations in there with little ease. I have not looked into what support Valve offers for that, but whatever it is, I want to streamline it and make some tools, like what you would give artists at a studio.

And that is just getting my stuff into Source. I still want to figure out how to mix my animations with Valve's Faceposer. That would be awesome.. Then finally bring it into Valve's FilmMaker, figure out cameras and make some badass renders for this.. That's the ultimate endgame.

I don't know if other people have done this.. Surely they've created new animations, or people have made machinima with Garry's mod.. but to go to the extent I'm going.. I don't think so.. So I want to do it. and I'm hoping to learn alot along the way. :)

As for a schedule.. I plan on finishing this rigging stuff in two weeks.. From there I'll be animating for about a month.. By the start of may I should have a good group of animations to draw from.. That is what I have planned so far at least..

Object Replace Tool finished! Pose Tool Next!

Hey I finished the Object Replace Tool over the weekend. I pretty much had it done on friday. Then I decided to once and for all figure out procedures. I've done some programming before, but everytime I dealt with local procs in Mel, it always screwed me up, and I never had time to actually figure it out. In the past I just turned it all into global procs to get the work done, but I knew that just wasn't the right way.

Well it took me a couple of days but I finally learned how to make local procs and also pass along arguments into them. That help reduce the code size in in about half of what I had.. and made it cleaner.. I'm just dealing with a couple of kb now, but I had to figure this stuff out if I really wanted to start handling the larger scripts I have in mind.. So anyhow, cleaned up that code and then decided to go back to my earlier scripts. They're all clean and commented out now.

I started a new tool today, one for us animators! I'm building my own Character Pose Tool. Nothing orignal, I'm just gonna take Motionbuilder's Pose Tool and make a maya version of it. I can already tell I'm biting more than I can chew. I started today and I just finished up the window for it. Half the time though I spent on figuring out how to handle the image thumbnail..

This tool will definitely be teaching some new stuff. Need to figure out how to handle both ascii files and images, connect them to my tool, and be able to update it how I want. I also want to be able handle multiple chars, bones and control rigs.. I'm hoping to finish it by Friday though.. So I might save that last bit for 2.0...

Funny I keep pushing my other rig tools back, but these just seem cooler :)

Window roughly done.. I'm keeping space incase I decide to add another button or two..

Object Replace Tool progress!

As you can see below, I'm progressing with my new tool for artist. The Object Replace Tool.
I only have the window setup. Took me all day, but I'm finally figuring out how all this window layout stuff works. Tonight I'll start working on the actual procedures for this tool.
Should get it done by friday I think.

As the name suggests, it takes care of replacing objects. If you're an environment artist, I'm sure you've run into many times where you had to replace tons of objects with a new model.

This tool will..
1. Replace many objects at once(bolt on a car?)
2. Provide offset options to correct transforms(flipped object?)
3. Ability to randomize offsets(imagine random rocks)

I may add more later, but I want to roll this out first.

Back in Orlando!

Back in Orlando this week.. Slowly setting up my stuff again.. As well as getting back to my portfolio work. I had to put things on hold the last couple of weeks as I had some family emergencies happen. I was in the ER and doctor's office way too much the past few weeks.
So I couldn't get to work on those bone/IK tools.

Anyhow, I'm back in Orlando and ready to work!

I'm continuing to tackle the scripting work I want to do. I went back first and finished up the two previous scripts I had done. I had pretty much finished them up before, but was having trouble with window resizing.. Apparently Maya saves window preferences, including sizing. So I just to add some code to check for this and delete it if found.

I also cleaned up the code for both and added in checks/feedback for the user. Took me about half the day to do it, so it was worth it.

I'll start putting these scripts up so people can download them and use them. Have to figure out a good way to do it. and to whoever reads this stuff.. Give me some feedback on them please! I want to see if they work and what else you'd like to see done.

The next part for Rigging scripts is Bone/IK tool.. I'll be doing that this week, though I kind of want to detour and work on an environment tool. A lot of times artists have to replace objects with other objects and I want to make a tool for that. I'm sure its been done before, but I want to make my own. Soo I think I'll work on that tonight. :)

Work is on hold for now :(

I keep saying it, but been busy last couple of weeks.. I been in and out of doctor's offices for the past few weeks for both my grandma and father.. :( but they're healthy now which is good :)

Inbetween I been making new "Scene Clean Up " scripts.. I'm adding to it as I go. simple commands you can find aroudn Maya, but I wanna have it all in one window for me to grab when I'm rigging.



Anyhow I'll start back up with this and the IK scripts next week when I back to Orlando

The wedding business is over!

After a crazy week of partying with family and enjoying a a wedding, its time to get back to work!

I'm going to start on my Bone/IK script this week. Right now I'm figuring out what I want it to do and how my interface is gonna work. Should start working on it by week's end and hopefully have it done by early next week..

I also recently had two dreams in the past two weeks. I've written them down and have started drawing them out.. Hopefully I'll make both into animations at some point in my life.. But for now they're in the journal at least.

Finished up the Group Nodes Script.

Nothing Fancy.. Just creates my groups for me. But the procedures I wrote into it, I'll be using for other scripts later down the line.

Next... Bone and IK creation scripts!

Inbetween two weddings and a trip, some work gets done!

So I went to Austin, Texas for a couple of week in January to visit some friends. After that I had a wedding and two later, I still have another wedding this weekdend to go to. Lots of fun, but less time for work..

So I've been doing some scripting here and there..I always try it every year, but I always want to get straight to animating and rig by hand... So I leave the scripting to other people. Even though I took programming classes back in the day Now that I have this TF2 project, I have a purpose to make these scripts cause to rig 9 characters would take a while. I'm gonna work as if I have a whole animation pipeline to create.

Right now I'm writing up a script/GUI to make empty group nodes. I can input a prefix/suffix and then make whatever group nodes I need for my rigs.. Like IKs, Bones and such. I type in the name.. click the button and it creates the group nodes(ex. "Prefix_IK_GRP)

Very simple but its a tedious repetitive task that can be easily automated.. I'll eventually roll this script into a larger rigging pipeline.

Next I'm starting on making scripts for creating bones and IKs.

My Tf2 project begins!

I was able to figure out extracting the models from SourceSDK into Maya. Took some work, though luckily there are some nifty tools to help with extracting the SourceSDK. Still it involved many little steps.. I got the models and their skeletons now.


I have two goals in this project. 1. Automate my rigging process 2. create new animations for my personal portfolio.

I've been rigging/animating for the past 4 years, but never found the time to work on scripting. Which I know I can do, but I've never given time too. Now I have some time and I have 9 characters to rig! I'll be approaching this as if I was a TA in charge of TF2's Character setup process! I'd like to start with one character and create new scripts to speed up my rigging. Once I get familiar with my scripting again, I'll move onto the next step.

I'd like to bring new animations back into the TF2 Source engine. So I'm gonna aim to create a new workflow to get my animations from my new rigs onto the old TF2 skeletons. Then hopefully get these back into Source. I'm hoping to automate the process along the way and get a new workflow going between the two. In this way, I'll be in the position of a TA trying to automate the character animation process. :)

Of course in between all this, I'll start creating new animations!

Woot I'm excited!