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!

New Demo Reel for 2011 :)

Christian Orlando Mendoza Demo Reel 2010

As part of my plans for new animations this year, I'm reworking my website as well.. For now its just one page with a new demo reel.. Check it out here..

Give me critique if you see fit. I'm always looking for it :)

I really hate website design, so updating the site is gonna take awhile :P Don't expect anything spectacular either.. I rather spend my time on my animations :)

updates!

As always, I don't attend to this blog as I should. and then when I do, I have a shitload to report!

Life moving along. My contract with EA has ended and I'm currently looking for next big thing. I'm going at a rather slow pace though. With the holiday season, its kinda hard to find a job.. Everything kinda freezes up this time of year.

At least though I'm starting to move along with my portfolio work.. or at least planning on it :)

I still have to finish up my star wars models.. I want to at least UV them. I probably won't put much more work into them until I get some new animations done. I want to improve my portfolio in the early part of this new year. Yet I have not decided where to take my portfolio.. so for now I'm gonna finish UVing these babies while I sit at home waiting for christmas to come.. well in the daytime at least.. At night I go out with fam and friends :) Enjoying my time with them while I can..

i've got some ideas for my new portfolio pieces, but this weekend I'll figureo out where I'll start.

potential animation ideas...
Deadpool animations for a fight game...
TF2 Character animations... involves me manhandling the source engine to do my bidding...
Creating new rigs tackling specific problems and not a "do everything" rig...
Action scene involving a character my friend Pam did a while back... involves her a "danger room" type setting...

The Secret of Kells

Anyone and everyone should see "The Secret of Kells." Its an amazing animated film. The art is beautiful, drawing on celtic themes and illuminated manuscripts. I'll have a more thoughtful commentary on it later, but I just needed to say that. but to keep you interested, watch this!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbFMFjUjiPs&feature=related