Ziva VFX Workshop on Puppeteer Lounge
The video above is a work in progress from a workshop I took over at the Puppeteer Lounge in 2019, called ZIVA VFX Realistic Character Setup with BCS Facial Setup. The model and motion capture data was provided by the instructor, Suchan Bajracharya.
Due to my computer breaking down and my trial of ZIVA VFX expiring, I have not been able to wrap up the work I did on the workshop, but I will get back to it later and update this entry when I do. From my little time with ZIVA, I was amazed by its power and I am really curious to try different ways of integrating it into a real-time pipeline.
Due to my computer breaking down and my trial of ZIVA VFX expiring, I have not been able to wrap up the work I did on the workshop, but I will get back to it later and update this entry when I do. From my little time with ZIVA, I was amazed by its power and I am really curious to try different ways of integrating it into a real-time pipeline.
Facial Rigging Workshop on CG Circuit
The video above is a simple animation test of the facial rig I built after completing the CG Circuit workshop Facial Rigging with Nico Sanghrajka. I used a model from a facial rigging tutorial by Judd Simantov, which I tweaked a little following some feedback from Nico, whose experience ranges from Dreamworks to MPC and ILM.
It was an amazing learning opportunity and even though a lot of the techniques I learned relied on non-engine-friendly Maya deformers, the vast majority of things could be applied with some creativity to game rigs. What I am most grateful about was the personal feedback on the project for the class, that is by far the most valuable thing I took from the workshop. Seeing what someone with Nico's experience looks for in a rig and how he evaluates not only the functionality but the appeal of it as well made it time very well spent. I also learned a lot from the other students in the class, who came from different types of production backgrounds and always had valuable knowledge to share.
This is the second workshop I've taken in CG Circuit (Character Rigging Production Techniques with Carlo Sansonetti back in 2015 was the first one) and I will definitely vouch for the learning platform, I think it's fantastic!
It was an amazing learning opportunity and even though a lot of the techniques I learned relied on non-engine-friendly Maya deformers, the vast majority of things could be applied with some creativity to game rigs. What I am most grateful about was the personal feedback on the project for the class, that is by far the most valuable thing I took from the workshop. Seeing what someone with Nico's experience looks for in a rig and how he evaluates not only the functionality but the appeal of it as well made it time very well spent. I also learned a lot from the other students in the class, who came from different types of production backgrounds and always had valuable knowledge to share.
This is the second workshop I've taken in CG Circuit (Character Rigging Production Techniques with Carlo Sansonetti back in 2015 was the first one) and I will definitely vouch for the learning platform, I think it's fantastic!
Real-time muscular deformation techniques
For this portfolio piece I explored two approaches for improving skin deformation in real-time:
In order for me to determine if any of these systems represent a performance improvement over traditional morph target pose space deformation systems, I also created and implemented such a system in Unreal Engine 4. However, the tests I did to benchmark their performance did not yield good enough data for me to reach a conclusion. |
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Facial Rig Creation Tool
As part of the development for both Hit and Neon Night Riders, and because it was a project I had wanted to start for a long time, I created this tool over the course of 4 weeks. The system is very similar to the Goofy facial rig (see below) but I tried to incorporate some other things I have learned since then to make the rig easier to improve later on. For example, I created a central node which drives the blend shapes on the curves. By having those attributes controlled by the node instead of directly by the Osipa style interface, I can easily change the way the user interacts with the rig, as demonstrated by the alternative GUI that the tool provides. All the models showcased were created by me. Textures for Hit's Spy and Doctor were made by Maegan Glennon and Patrick Tran, and the NNR character, Drax, was given a color map by Veronica Jenkins. For more information about this project, click here. |
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Cartoony Facial Rig
Created for an interactive screen application proposal meant to exist at Disney resorts so that guests can plan their vacations, make dinner reservations, check the weather, etc., this Goofy rig is completely joint-based to improve performance in engine. It provides the animator a fast and easy posing interface and adds a second layer of fine control with on-face controllers. Animations were created using Faceshift, while clean up and secondary motion was added using Maya. The project's name is Magic Mirror and the team behind it included Matt Immerman and Tim Vensel in production, Tim Korecky and Collin Macket as programmers, and Christina Equels and myself producing the art. I also wrote a shader in Unity to add fresnel and fake subsurface scattering so that the shadows do not appear as dark and desaturated.
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Blue Dragon - Bust
ZBrush sculpture based on a Todd McFarlane Toy. Retopology done using Maya. Texture work was started in ZBrush and finished using Adobe Photoshop and XNormal.
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