Initial spring test 01

Playing around with the spring (- arms are not animated) The first clip is of the spring just sorting out the up and down key frames then i go on to add the 'side to side' variants in the further two clips.

It is the first initial time Ive played around with animating the spring. I have however found a problem with the arms and the way that i rigged them as they are not working how i would like them to. I think it has something to do with the controls that i have used but I'm not sure. The hands are tilting where they shouldn't and when i tried making new elbow and shoulder controls they wouldn't link up... I'm not really sure what is going on at the moment but I'm desperate to get them sorted because as soon as they work i can really get into animating him. Im going in nto see Alan and see if he can work out whats going on - i think it may have something to do with the ncloth i used and all the alterations i may have made in the process to and from ncloth?

Ncloth developments..

Unfortunately after getting it to work it still didnt look right and so i tried just skinning the arm to see what effect this would have, it actually looked pretty good! And Ive since decided to get rid of ncloth for the arms and just skin. Its wasted time using ncloth but I'm glad that i tried it, Ive actually started to grasp the basics of ncloth now... the very basics. I think it one of those methods that you really can see until you've done it. At the moment I'm now starting to do some test springs and basic poses whilst working on my storyboard.

Dancer

Like the Jack in the box, i created blend shapes and a control in the same way for the dancer - she is fully rigged and bound and ready to animate.



(POSE TEST)

Ncloth problem - solved!

After speaking to Alan today Ive been able to finally achieve the final result for my fabric jack in the box arms i was looking for. It was suggested by Alan just skinning the arms to the joints and using a jiggle deformer or soft bodies deformer, but eventually the Ncloth worked. I have had to make some slight alterations, as you can see Ive included extra geometry within the arm itself to give it some definition of an arm shape and stop the cloth from just falling through itself, it also has given me a bit more control over how i want the arm to look. Ive also rigged the hands and fingers now.

I think i will hopefully be able to do the final grouping tomorrow, but i do want to get my character checked by Alan beforehand so that i don't start animating then end up having a problem with something that i could have sorted out earlier.

Below are some images of how the ncloth is working.

• I selected the arm geometry and then chose ndynamics - nmesh - create ncloth
• Then reselected the arm and also the main spring geometry as this is what was previously causing weird problems and chose 'exclude collide pairs' from the ncloth - nconstraint menu. This stopped the arm interferring with the spring.
• I transform constrained the vertices's on either end of the arm from the nconstraint menu - transform.
• After doing this the arm stayed put, sagging in the middle behaving normally.
• I then placed some objects within the arm. A sphere for the elbow and two edited cylinders to keep the arms shape and parented them to the joints.
  
• After they had been modified and fit the arm i selected the arm geometry and then the object and then chose nmesh - create passive collider. This then told the arm geometry not to pass through and treat them as solid objects.
• I did a few tests, moving the arm and watching the nmesh to make sure it was still behaving normally and it all worked perfectly.

I'm so glad the i could use the nmesh as its giving the effect that i wanted :)



I also added a few custom controls to my character. (obviously apart from the obvious controls on the arms and hands and fingers)

My lid only has an 'open_close' control that i linked to the rotate z channel using the connection editor, i also did a similar thing for the winder on the side of the box giving it only a 'turn' control (no transltaes/rotates or scales)

I also created a main body spring control that i gave a 'sqash' attribute and also a 'lean L to R' (left to right) and a 'lean f t b' (fron to back) allowing me to move Jack in all directions allowing me to squash and stretch at the same time.

For the blend shapes i created a 'happy' 'sad' 'angry' 'suprised' 'left EB lift' (eyebrow) and a 'right EB lift'. I created a control shape above Jacks head for this. Emily also suggested that i make a few blank blend shapes that i can link up so that if i need to add another expression i have some spares to edit, so i also have two spare heads.

Update

The characters:


Jack so far:

• Finish blend shapes
• Smooth bind

Dancer so far:

• Finish blend shapes
• Smooth bind

Environment:

Rigging my charatcers

Although my dancer is mainly stationary, she eventually moves her legs at the very end of the animation meaning that she did need a full basic rig. The only difference was that her arms are in a fixed position. As a dancer every position that she will move into has a curved arm, and trying to stick to the toy aspect i have applied this to her body. Even though they are fixed she still maintains a rotational ball and socket joint at the shoulder, allowing her to lift and circle them. Another point to add is that she does not have movable fingers, like a doll/barbie so she does not have finger joints. Below is the rig so far, I'm just finishing off the arms but at the moment all the controls work and it is a successful rig.




I have also been working on my Jack in the box spring, i took some serious notes from Alan and was able to remake the spring he demonstrated. A few things to add here is that the texture is temporary at the moment, it is comprised of a projected U ramp shader, wrapped around the object in a cylindrical manner, but as the spring will be moving i had to create a texture reference object to keep the texture from morphing. I'm not sure if i will use this texture like i said but for the moment it is allowing me to check that everything is working correctly. It has also been the firs time that i have used ncloth in Maya to get the material effect that i wanted. When i had imagined my jack in the box springing out, i had imagined the cloth around the spring stretching, but just as it stretches it would also need to fold and 'wobble' before it goes back inside. The preference setting for this effect that, at the moment is working OK, is 'chiffon'.







Alan suggested to create shapes and parent them to my joints so allow a quicker less memory consuming preview of what my spring is doing and so the above imge is showing this.


I will hopefully spend tomorrow binding my dancer, and finish off my jack in the box's rig enabling me to bind jack on sunday. Today im off to work til late - gr.

Dancer

I've also been working on the dancer. My first attempt at her, left her legs to long her waist to tiny and her head to big. I re visited my sketches and made some alterations to the way i had modeled her. I made her legs larger, from the thigh to the foot as i was working from the proportions given by the head from my orthograph, and i had accidentally made her feet tiny! i then realised her knee was too low so i raised her knee and gave more shape to the entire size of the leg. I also changer the dress. Before the dress was too long and the waist was too small plus i had made her chest area too large so decreased this too.


BEFORE:




AFTER:

Face developments:

......just remembered!

My colour palette had changed slightly since i last took a look at my dancers music box and so there needed to be some changes made to its colour scheme. I decided to give my dancer and the jack in the box a very primary theme, but slightly more washed out then usual. Their surrounding in the toy shop are very bright and plain and i wanted there to be a contrast but not make them look like they came from too entirely different worlds. My dancer is wearing green and had red hair - opposite to the blue eyed blond haired barbies near by to their sale display. Deciding this i needed to update my music box. The textures need some further development but the over all colour scheme is closer so what i want.

Clown and dancer face developments

Further modelling

Dancer:







(i had only just started on the arm - please ignore!)






Jack:




Barbie: