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Morgan Bipedal - GITS Major Motoko

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  • Morgan Bipedal - GITS Major Motoko

    Professor, I am doing Major Motoko in the style of the latest GITS game - First Assault. I'm very excited!!

    Here is my first draft of the topology. I transferred your topology to a sculpt that I am using for this character like we discussed. I did my best to place the edge loops in the deformation zones, but I am looking forward to seeing how you arrange them.

    For the face I am using a friend's character from a different game.

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    Last edited by MorganD; November 27, 2016, 21:12.

  • #2
    Originally posted by MorganD View Post
    Professor, I am doing Major Motoko in the style of the latest GITS game - First Assault. I'm very excited!!

    [ATTACH]90568[/ATTACH]

    Here is my first draft of the topology. I transferred your topology to a sculpt that I am using for this character like we discussed. I did my best to place the edge loops in the deformation zones, but I am looking forward to seeing how you arrange them.

    For the face I am using a friend's character from a different game.

    [ATTACH=CONFIG]90558[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]90565[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]90566[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]90559[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]90567[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]90560[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]90561[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]90562[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]90563[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]90564[/ATTACH]
    Hi Morgan,

    This is unbeliable, good job tranfering the topology, how exactly did you do that? I am impressed.

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    • #3
      Thank you!

      I basically placed your mesh into my mesh and made my mesh a live surface. Then I went section by section and snapped the topology verts into place.

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      For the face I used Maya sculpt tools, Grab and Relax. I placed reference images in the scene so that as I rotated the model, I could see the reference image for that angle on the side.

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      The quads-only mesh I used is a model I've kept as a sort of digital maquette. It's not good for deformations but the horizontal and vertical edge loops are good for looking at the contours of the body. Without getting too high in polys, it's also good for maintaining anatomy landmarks.

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      • #4
        Hey professor, I just want to post an update~!

        Thank you for adjusting the topology around deformation areas and to help me get the anatomy to "pop." I went around the body using the strategy you showed me. You can see it in the knees and the bottom of the buttocks especially. I guess I was a bit more confident about placing topology and made the anatomy more pronounced.

        After you mentioned A-pose vs T-pose twice, and then the upperclassmen mentioned T-pose issues during their senior thesis presentation, I decided it would probably be a good idea to convert to A-pose. That is pretty much the classic example of a bad omen lol

        I will have skin weights done (hopefully) in time to get some feedback on it during office hours tomorrow.

        Thank you!

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        Last edited by MorganD; November 3, 2016, 14:59.

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        • #5
          weekend @ the cave update~

          I added the floating magazines in the scene for a nice parallax effect whenever I rotate the model. Just makes it more fun and interesting.

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          • #6
            Professor, thank you again for this topology. I began to understand it more as I worked on the rig.

            I decided to make the shirt part of the base mesh rather than a wrap. I also got a nice effect in the opening of the shirt. Using skin weights on the clavicles I got the shirt to open and close based on clavicle position. And then there's the nice fold between her shoulder blades that I like.

            Getting more familiar with topology allowed me to push the geometry to get more personality out of them. I feel like I studied the topology as much as I worked on the rig. It was very good practice. Thank you!

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            http://i.imgur.com/pYsoV6K.gifv mp4 animation of the result (1mb)

            A buddy mentioned that separate meshes for things like clothing would be less than ideal for games due to draw calls. I'm not sure what that is exactly but it sounds like it makes sense.

            I haven't added folds to the jacket, and it would be great if you would alter the mesh to make an example fold. I added edge loops to the skin to make the jacket, and I avoided N-Gons and almost all tris. But there were a few tris that I seemed to chase around the topology without being able to terminate them into quads. :-/
            Last edited by MorganD; November 9, 2016, 09:12.

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            • #7
              Awesome!

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              • #8
                Update (I'm still working on this one)

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                I added corrective blendshapes and initially drove them with Set Driven Keys on the bind joints. The rig became more and more unstable as I added keys, especially in the IK on the legs.

                I asked Professor Li about it and he suggested using Locator distance as blendshape drivers, to clear up the clutter on the bind joints. It works great (THANKS AGAIN PROFESSOR LI)

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                Locators, bound to the rig using parent constraints.

                The locator distance node outputs a flat distance, so to account for scaling I included a MultiplyDivide node and divided the distance by the rig's scale. I keyed the blendshapes to the output of the MultiplyDivide nodes.

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                With this locator method I keyed blendshapes for the butt, stomach, and hamstring/back of the knee

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                The stomach locator was a pretty big improvement in functionality. Previously I keyed the stomach blendshape on the pelvis joint rotation angle. By using locators on the chest and the pelvis, the stomach blendshape activates any time the chest and pelvis get closer.

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                The butt and hip flexor locators were a straight improvement to rig stability. The bind joints jittered and animations failed before, but now everything works smoothly. The rearward blendshape is activated fully at -30 degrees, and there are three forward blendshapes at 45, 90, and 125 degrees.

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                I triangulated the mesh to UV in 3DS Max. I experimented with a skin bind in this triangulated form and found the skin deformations were much smoother, so I kept it.

                One last major change was Set Driven Key translations to the hips based on controller rotation. I wanted her walk to have some personality by default so I hard coded some sway.

                I can get a very similar result by (simply) moving the pivot of the hip controller to the rib cage joint, but I also wanted to consolidate all the inputs to the pelvis before applying them. That meant deleting any constraints on the pelvis joint and instead manually connecting their translations and rotations with nodes.

                Default rig vs translation SDKs applied. I added red markers in the gifs but you can also see the translations at work compared to the controller curves.

                Hula


                Sway


                I started converting parent and orient constraints into node connections to prevent popping past 180 degrees. I applied hip translation SDKs onto separate folders and then combined them with PlusMinusAverage nodes before applying them to the joints.

                I'm not sure if the PlusMinusAverage node strategy is any more stable or possibly redundant, but at any rate I used it as an exercise in organizing SDKs and translations. I saw another method of adding translations using conversion nodes, but I also wanted to edit the curves in graph editor. So I stuck with SDK.

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                These are the result of the simpler option of moving the hip controller's pivot to the rib cage. The controller behaves a bit differently, and in this case I might add some extra rotation to the hips at the extremes (also using SDK). Despite there being a very quick option for achieving the hip sway, this was good practice for those times when I might want to hide the pivot of a joint, or when making a joint rotate correctly is more involved.

                hula


                tick tock


                I'm working on some arm rotations and blendshapes for the armpits and lats. I still have a lot of facial expressions to add too. Professor Li said advanced rigging will include cooler techniques, so I guess I'll keep this rig as like a Terminator 1 version, and then I'll have a Terminator 2 rig all the way down to LIQUID METAL RIG T1000
                Last edited by MorganD; November 27, 2016, 17:47.

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                • #9
                  On a side note, I'm starting a mech to experiment with mechanical rigging. I want to "hit" certain items like vibrating thrusters, panels that flip open or slide open, and joints that have the appearance of damping (like in the ankle).

                  mecha blocking. I'm looking forward to a rig that uses parent and orient constraints rather than skin binds. There are design changes I'd like to make, but I'm continuing through to the rigging for now. If I can swap components later on with constraints that would be excellent.
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                  I plan to do a male model and rig too, most likely Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 4. The contours of his body are very unusual and defined, and he has a cool visor. I also like how his posture is unabashedly heroic. If the model is successful I'd like to texture it next semester.

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                  If it's not Raiden it'll be a different male character. I've spent a lot of time on this female model and I kind of feel like I need to prove I know how to model men too lol
                  Last edited by MorganD; November 27, 2016, 16:54.

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                  • #10
                    I guess I'll just start making this thread my general stuff thread?

                    Sometimes I trace over photographs to get my creativity going. If I see an image that catches my eye, I save it for a quick exercise in photoshop later on.

                    It's basically tracing, but it's more than that. I think of them as miniature studies. Sometimes it's the light that stands out to me, and other times it's the shapes, or maybe the expressions. When I run my stylus over the photograph I notice more about the thing that caught my attention.

                    I also try to emphasize something in the image or even embellish. I pick one specific thing and try to call the viewer's attention to it.

                    I try to end these quickly, five or ten minutes max. There are very fast artists who can accomplish wayyy more in that time and they're amazing, but I don't do these to get faster. I just think it defeats the purpose of the exercise to spend more than that.

                    What grabs me about an image happens in an instant, after all. Analyzing a photo with my stylus doesn't take very long, and anything beyond that becomes active drawing.

                    SO yeah I'm going to post these randomly when I do them. Here's the first of my ten-minute trace studies.

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                    Last edited by MorganD; November 27, 2016, 21:31.

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                    • #11

                      heyyy so I'm linking the Motoko character. This is where I think I will take the lessons learned and move on to version 2.

                      This week I naively re-UVed the mesh and started painting it in Quixel. Very cool. However, I learned you're not supposed to re-UV a mesh after it's binded to a rig and has tens of blend shapes. I asked professor Li how to fix it and the moment when I explained that I just finished a new UV that day...

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                      There are some improvements I'm looking forward to on V2, such as twisting bind joints on the thighs, calves, forearm, and humerus. The knee and butt, in particular... the hip is a ball joint but the buttox receive too much influence from the femur joint.

                      Integrating the clothing into the mesh was simpler, but Carlos told me about using separate sets of textures on a single mesh to change its look at will. I like that idea more than a little bit.

                      Professor Li also told me about a blended vertex normal strategy for hair, that will make alpha cards look like a smoother mass. Very excited.

                      The rig is structurally sound, however, and aside from the utility belt items, the whole thing receives scaling properly, from the master controller.

                      To view the scene as it is shown in the screenshots, use Viewport 2.0 and set lighting to show all lights.
                      Attached Files
                      Last edited by MorganD; December 1, 2016, 13:26.

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                      • #12
                        Something pretty great happened a few days ago. The mesh I mentioned in this write-up, the digital maquette that I used to apply Professor Li's topology, was originally a free mesh I downloaded from a website. Turns out its creator was none other than Eugene Fokin.

                        When I downloaded the mesh, I had a semester of Introductory Maya under my belt and needed a mesh that was even remotely viable. Some type of structure for a model of a female. I picked it because it looked structurally sound, and as I altered the shape, I discovered there was a lot of thought and experience was in that mesh. The amount of skill in it is profound, and I still can't comprehend it, it blows my mind.

                        The model I downloaded, and the edits I made to it (Left vs Right).


                        I found the mesh's creator on facebook and left them a gushing thank-you message. I didn't recognize the name and it dropped out of my mind pretty quickly. He replied to my message after all this time, and of course I know who he is at this point, so imagine my surprise.



                        I tried some modeling of my own for the GITS model, but in the end I decided to use a version of an edit to Eugene's mesh. I'm making this post because I want to give Eugene Fokin credit for the immense help his mesh has been over the last two years. It allowed me to continue my education and exploration in 3D modelling, and I'm still learning from its edge loops.

                        This is Eugene Fokin's gumroad, and it looks like the topology is offered there with a slightly different shape.


                        Even for this project, Eugene's mesh influenced my strategy for modeling a body. I also used the face as a study of facial topology.

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                        A test of the hip motion I wanted. In this rig I made the spine as a tail starting from the chest joint. It's what I ended up expressing using Set Driven Keys and translations on the hips based on controller rotations.



                        And now it's the weekend before finals and I'm using the GITS mesh for my Principles of Animation final. Eugene Fokin's mesh and Professor Li's topology had a baby, and my part in it was a series of adjustments. I couldn't have achieved this result without their help and of course the programs made by Autodesk, and Adobe, and several others. And I want to be as forthcoming as possible about how I used them.

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                        • #13
                          Heyyy so I came up with this solution to IK arcs on the legs, while retaining IK functionality. It's sort of a mix between FK and IK, and there is a quirk where you need to place a locator when you want to plant the foot.

                          The basic setup is a rotation controller parented to the pelvis joint, that pivots at the hip joint. In my version I also locked the translation and scale values.

                          The pole vector is also parent constrained to the rotation controller.



                          If you need the foot to stay planted longer, you can adjust the key on the locator constraint. If you need to move the position of the foot, you can move the locator (or the IK controller itself).

                          It's a bit quirky because you need a locator every time you want the foot planted. But I prefer that hassle very much compared to the task of producing good arcs in IK without an arc controller. I will probably also make a button to automate this process of creating a locator, matching transformation to the IK handle, and then applying a parent constraint to the constraint buffer group.

                          Here's the hierarchy on the rig we learned this semester



                          I didn't figure out this setup til today, and my animation final more or less got hung up at the legs. So. The result was trash but I ended up with this IK setup so I'm happy.

                          There's something I noticed about the gymnast's momentum that I'll post later, for now I have to study for period styles because I'm not passing yet :-/ I'm looking forward to the write-up, though. It was very fun imitating her motion in maya.
                          Last edited by MorganD; December 7, 2016, 17:00.

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                          • #14
                            Yooo congratulations on finals, stay safe over break and Merry Christmas

                            Especially to professors Li, Tovar, and Watkins

                            I want to post about something I'm trying to solve. I've drawn 2D art for quite a while and about a year ago I ran into a wall. Professor Li has asked what we're looking to achieve in this program and I think I have an example of my answer.

                            I made this drawing for a friend, of her video game character. The face was made from a screenshot and used as a traced reference. The rest of the body was built from a sketched pose, with a lot of different influences as "off to the side" references. Plate armor, feathers, and paintings.

                            some of the references I gathered for the drawing
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                            some intermediate steps of the drawing
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                            I worked out the structure and the proportions quickly, and there was some experimenting with the materials but I knew what I wanted for the most part. If you get the structure right, dressing the character with an outfit is as easy as placing clothing on a mannequin. The composition of the image was easy to imagine too.

                            But then there was a point when the image transitioned from experimenting with details to rendering the light and reflections in the metal. A turn from concepting to rendering. Creating light from imagination is a fun exercise, but there are some fundamental limitations. Not being able to produce many images is the first problem. How can an artist make a living on images that take a hundred hours to complete? And can the light be as good as something painted from real life?

                            The gap I'd like to bridge is imaginary forms and vividly rendered light.

                            If I was able to create this scene in real life somehow, I might have a decent shot at painting it. Perhaps if I got the clouds to part just right, and the weather and sun to stay at 20 minutes prior to dusk. But I can't. I need something like Maya where I can place lights and materials and forms that I want, and then have them simulated for me.

                            (Huge props to the people who create these programs)

                            Initially I was just looking for a way to render things accurately for one frame. But ANGD is one step further (or more?), and is a way to take one asset and render it over several frames and convey the look of motion. I thought I just wanted to make drawings, but now I want to make that and a lot more.

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