jklind

Like a deer in headlights

A little bit of point-pulling, just to see if my redesign could actually work.

Making things personal

Something that crossed my mind lately - if I start doing machinima at any point, how do I stand out? If I'm using the same base models as everyone else, how might my animations be recognized as my own? Altering the hell out of the models might do it.

Machinima artists modifying models is nothing new. Obviously when their animation calls for details/anatomy that the original model doesn't have, modifications are necessary. Some will even increase the polygon count, to smooth out the rou...

FEET!!

This is it - the last major piece of my core rigging script is in place!!  Now apart from rigging her toes, all that's left is clean-up!

The timing could be perfect.  Some time in the next few days, I should be starting on my new contract, which means I'll need to push my personal 3D work aside for a month or two.  My fear has been that if I got pulled away from these scripts before they're more-or-less complete, then I wouldn't know where I'd left off once I got back to the...

Weekend Update

I'm having a bit of a slow week - the walls are being repainted, so there's a fair amount of noise/activity to deal with.  But at least two of five commissions are more-or-less ready for inks!

I've also learned when I'll be starting on my next contract - in about a week.  I don't know how busy this will keep me, yet.  I'll only be doing skin weights, and it sounds like it'll only require about 2-4 hours of work per model.  There are a lot of models, though, and my boss ...

Not at all alike

Going through my commission reference folder, one of the thumbnails (left) looked like a face, even though I knew it wasn't.  On the right is the actual image.

Not the warm-up I was expecting, but I'll take it!  Now I may have to find room for this guy somewhere...

Loredom

Tuesday is my Sunday - it’s my day off from everything, and I am BORED!  To liven things up a bit, hows about I answer some Daisy's Diner lore questions?   The trick for me will be to not spoil things that I would much rather do in comic form, no matter how long it takes to get to those things...  folks who tune in to my streams sometimes get enough spoilers as it is!  :P

Hit me!

To Arms!

After more than a week away from it, I've made some progress on my rigging script - it now rigs Daisy's clavicles, and attaches her arms! More importantly, I've split the Daisy-specific commands off into their own script, so now the core script can be used on other characters!

There's still a bit of work to do on the core script before it's ready, though. Here's my to-do list so far -

• Rig the neck and head. Head should rotate independently.
• Adjust arm IK shapes. 2016-05-02 21:45:14 +0000 UTC View Post

Taking a dip

Two for the price of one!  I liked how this pose turned out, but it's one of those ones where Daisy's boobs covered too much...  mini-Rose to the rescue!

Plus there's another version or two stashed away, somewhere...

With these out of the way, I've one commission to finish, and then it's back to work on Daisy's rig/script.  What's kinda depressing is that even after her core rig is complete, it'll still take who knows how long to refine her skin weights, and I also nee...

One Down!

One pinup left to go!  Or two, if you count the mini-Rose alt.  Either way, the next one is already about 75% done, so it might be uploaded to Dropbox later today!

Daisy Rig progress!

Scripting may be a pain in the ass, but Daisy's rig is finally coming together!

Her right arm is almost complete - just a few more cosmetic changes, then I can copy the code over to the left side (though first I'll need to remove the previous rigging).  Her right leg also technically has the same setup, I just haven't added any shapes to the controls yet.

Even though the script isn't nearly complete, I'm tempted to use a copy of it on one of my older models just to verify whethe...

Back in the sunshine!

Quick recap of my trip to Michigan, if anyone's interested - my youngest niece is now a year old; I got to see my younger brother's new house for the first time; got to hang out with my best friend for a couple days, and meet his service dog.  Also my oldest niece is now raising chickens (and some ducks!), but since they don't have a proper coop yet, they were kept in the room just on the other side of the wall from where I sleep...  something those feathery little bastards apparently ...

Sexy Feet!

This image might not look like much, but it's the result of my latest rigging script - run the command, and it spits out this structure, which can then be fitted to a character's foot.  The green crosshairs are the pivots, and the blue shapes will be the controls.  Once everything's in place, another command - which I still need to write - will build the actual rig.

...and I thought I was done with scripting!  I also thought Daisy was further along, but then I tried my spine...

Guess it's a two-fer!

Taking another look at yesterday's Daisy sketch, I liked the pose so much that I decided to do a mini-Rose variant!

On a different note, now that two major scripts are more or less finished - my IK/FK matcher and finger rigger - I'm looking forward to not having touch any of my scripts again any time soon, unless I absolutely need to...

That said, I'm kinda proud of the matcher.  So far I've tested it on three very different rigs, and it's worked on all of them!
<...

Warm-up #2 - Disrobing #3

After a week or so of working on Maya scripts, drawing feels like I'm climbing out of a deep hole, rather than simply warming up...  but at least I'm finally getting to another part of the "disrobing" sequence!  The uncensored version is up on Dropbox.

As much as I dislike how much it throws me off creatively, scripting isn't a total waste.  Over the past few days I've written scripts that will be used for Daisy's fingers and spine, another for driving pose-corrections, ...

Not fun anymo- oop, nevermind

I really should not fire off wordy posts early in the morning, especially after I've woken up a couple hours too early and/or am angry that one of my tools isn't working.  I've deleted that post, so here's some highlights -

• "this is why I hate scripting"
• (techno babble that takes too long to explain) bones on the one side don't rotate properly when rigged.
• two days fixing this script, and it's still not working.

A line I chose to omit from t...

So much excitement

Try to contain your excitement - I spent much of today coding some updates to my limb rigging tool!  Now when it creates a limb, it takes the info from the UI (left) and stores it all on the limb's root object.  Another important feature - using this stored info, it can delete the rig and restore the bones to their original state.  I hadn't planned on spending the day coding, though...

Since one of my big ideas for Daisy's breast rig didn't work, this morning I was going...

Setback

Sometimes your first instinct is the best.  After spending most of yesterday modeling Daisy's breast with 32-point edgeloops, today I gave the 24-point version another look.  So far it looks like the 24-point version requires fewer changes to the base mesh, while looking pretty much the same.

I hit a setback while trying a simple experiment with Maya's nCloth.  I wanted to see if my idea of sending dynamic motion back to the breast joints would work.  Short answer - it ...

Rigging

Monday was stressful, but I'm not sure I can convey just HOW stressful.  I'd spent most of the day trying to weight Daisy's shoulder, which might've gone a lot smoother if I'd thought to slap a rig on her arm a few hours sooner.  Without the rig, the bones weren't rotating correctly, which caused about 90% of my frustration.

Rigging her arm wasn't as easy as it should be, either.  I wrote my own rigging tool a couple years back, specifically to speed things up.  For all...

Snu-Snu!

...now the question is, do I do the follow-up where Bill is in a cast from the waist down?

For those of you who don't know, Bill is one of my older characters - his original purpose was basically just to sexually harass Mary (and pretty much any other woman) at every opportunity, and also be her usually-accidental victim...  kinda like a grown-up version of Kenny from South Park.

I'm not sure what his purpose is now, though.  Until I figure that out, he'll mainly help fill ...

Showing some backbone

You know what?  As much of a pain as Daisy's stomach geometry was to weight, I like how it folds when she leans forward.  Too bad her stomach will be mostly covered whenever her breasts are added...

Most of her model is now weighted fairly cleanly, with only the shoulders and hips remaining.  These just happen to be the most difficult parts to adjust.  Once those are weighted, I can start on her core animation rig!

Poor Patty's Day Planning

St. Patrick's Day always sneaks up on me.  It's a good excuse to draw Mercy, but otherwise it's never on my radar.  Oktoberfest is easier to plan for, because that lasts a whole week.

After spending most of yesterday rebuilding Daisy's arm, I feel I need a break...  so maybe today I should finally draw my "cougar on the prowl" image?  The dialogue could probably use some tweaking - all I got so far is a variation of Futurama's "scaroused" gag, so maybe it could use ...

One step forward, two back

So Monday I worked on the skin weights for Daisy's fingers, and yesterday was spent mostly on her toes.  The plan for today was to work my way up from there, but plans change...

After testing out some sculpt joints on her palm yesterday, to help get a more natural fold when her fingers are curled, I decided there wasn't enough geometry on the palm.  Fixing this wasn't that difficult - copy the base mesh, cut in the new edges, attach the new model to the skeleton, then copy the we...

Something about jobs on hands

This is it - I've started attaching Daisy to her skeleton!  I can't decide if her hands are the easiest part to tackle, or one of the most difficult, but whatever the case I decided to tackle them first.  Her feet are also in progress, but not as far along.  From there, I'll work my way up.

The color of progress

I've been anxious all week - apart from drawing the remaining commissions, I've been nervous about attach Daisy to her skeleton, because I don't know how much time I'll have.  As of yesterday, the latest word from my boss is that I'll have at least another week to work on her!

One thing I've started - perhaps prematurely - is her color map.  This is difficult for me, because I can't paint.  One nice little cheat?  Ambient occlusion.  Baking this is to a texture tak...

This could get awkward...

How long do you think it'll take for Daisy to realize Lizzie is blind?

Lizzie belongs to up2knowgood.

Pre-skinning

Daisy's model still needs some minor tweaking before it'll be ready for skinning and rigging, but it's close enough that I can start testing key areas like the ankles, hips, and eyelids.  Her hips are an obvious area, because of how wide they are.  Her eyelids need to be tested for another reason - to make sure there's enough detail.  And her ankles...  I've just never gotten decent deformation out of my characters' ankles.  Feet are hard enough to draw, but modeling the...

Lift & Drop

Don't mind me, I'm just thinking up animations that are a nightmare to do in 3D.

My goal this month is get Daisy’s model rigged, but first I’ll need to figure out HOW she’ll be rigged. What controls will be needed to get the results I'm after? 

Her breasts are the greatest challenge, and there are at least two possibilities - keyframe animation, and simulation. Both have their pros and cons.

With keyframe animation, I’d have total control over their movement, b...

Daisypool 2

Daisy's really regretting not seeing Kung Fu Panda 3 instead...

Fun times

I'm trying to figure out if the circled area never bothered me before, or if I simply decided to leave it be because fixing it would be too much of a pain.   I couldn't ignore it any longer, though, so I've spent most of today fixing it.  Seriously - I woke up around 6 a.m., couldn't get back to sleep because I thinking about this, so I grabbed my Cintiq and started working. 

My brain feels like it could leak out of my ears, so I should probably take a nap... ...

Guess who?

I got bored this afternoon, and started pulling points around...