weights stage of rigg rev5 Finished!!!

sorry for the delays but working on this other film (latest cut online here) and various other things i haven't worked on this, anyway i have finally finished the weights stage of subzero so now i can pose him around like an action figure :), now i just need to add controls , rigg the face and some corrective shapes :)

well see ya's

new film

Hi all, recently i said i was working on another project and i would eventually tell you about it, well i haven't finished the storyboards yet but i have made one of the main characters and most of the stage, this project will also serve as a testing ground for the production setup i have planned to the MK-fan flick and any others that i will work on, the title of this new project is called "loner", i will publish the screenplay once i have finished it, well i hope you like the test image, btw the lighting will not be the final lighting, that will be done after the animation, as i am using the same production pipeline as the Plumi guys, and lighing will be in a seperate file and will be on a per-shot basis. also my entire production pipeline is completely Linux based, windows will not be used for any part of my blender productions, animations and stills, and im very happy with this setup, i can go on for hours but i wont ;)

well anyway see ya's later

NEW Rigg, Once again

Yes thats right Sub-Zero has a new rigg yet again, using the new rigging tools developed by brecht i was able to get further in 2 hours then i did in 2 months :) thats right is hands are deforming nicely still need some corrective shapes. forearm and elbow working nicely and above all the shoulder's are rigged!!! with only 3 bones (2 deforming), currently i only have deforming bones, as I'm taking a slightly different approach, get deformations working nicely first then add the controls later :)

New Web Site Finished

Hey all, just making a post to say that my new website is finished, Some of my animations are there also on the site there is a RSS feed of this blog, My Ohloh stats and blender's Ohloh stats, and my email address. also when i make a new work that i like, it will be posted on the front page.

See ya's later

P.S
Incase you don't know its at
mfoxdogg.googlepages.com

"The Essential Blender" Blender's new book

hi all, Recently the blender Foundation released a new book aimed at beginners of both 3d and blender.
And i must say it is a very good book. now you ask why am i telling you this? Well I helped write it (Technical Editor), and because i helped I got 2 free copies, one with a thank you note by Mr Ton Roosendaal (CEO of the blender foundation and the newly established Blender Institute and is the lead developer/inventor of blender).
Also thought you guys would like to know, that this book will be used in class rooms as a text book to teach students how to use blender. i don't know about you but i think its very kewl :)

by it here http://www.blender3d.org/e-shop/product_info.php?products_id=96

See Ya's

btw, i will show you my current film once i have finished the story boards and rewritten the screenplay :)

New Rigging tools

once again i will have to make another rigg of sub-zero because brecht of the #blendercoders has developed some really nice weighting rigging features.

which means bye bye weight paint, as these new tools are so good you can do perfect weiughts in one simple ctrl-P->armature->heat equalibrium,

also he has also coded dual quanternoins to avoid the inherant shrinking of joints, which will avoid the use of many corective shape keys.

oh and one more thing, CRAZY SPACE IS GONE!!!! so now when i have the amature modifier enambled in edit mode the verts move where i want them to not all over the place :)

more info and a demo movie can be found here

well see Ya's later

Blender 2.44 Released!!!

thats right Blender2.44 has been released with many new features including SSS (sub-Surface Scattering) which will add alot of realism to my models, this release also includes my wave modifier work, kinda cool hey :) , well any way i stongly urge you guys to download 2.44 as soon as possible :)

get it here
http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/

release notes here
http://www.blender.org/development/release-logs/blender-244/

New website and gallery

hey all soory for no updates i have been very busy with blender2.44 and another film project i'll tell you about later, i have just made this post to say, I have a new hompage with better designs and includes my latest works, and no imageshack links YAY!!!

here it is, please update bookmarks
http://mfoxdogg.googlepages.com/home

P.S. its still unfinished and i need to add a few links to my animations

see Ya's and enjoy :)

just a quick update

hi all, i am making this post to reassure you that i have not stop making this film, i am currently rigging the hardest part of the human body - the shoulder- I have gotten some great advice from bassam and he has allowed me to study his mancandy2 rigg before its release, speaking of releases, Blender2.43 will be released in the next couple of days (we hope) , and due to that i am going to be a little too bus y to work on this rigg, but rest assured i will finish it!, thats all for now

see ya's

Rigg Revision4 (hand)

hey all, I have finally finished doing the weights and shap keys for the hand...again and i tell you thew rigg is holding up quite well with more controls then previous revisions an i am very proud with the results of this rigg

here (.mp4) is a test vid of the final rigg

PS. i have done the upperarm after i made that vid and sreenshot

well cya's later

Stage Update

Latly I have been learning alot about shadow Buffer lighing techniques and i have applied them to the stage for this film, as you can see i have changed the feel of the set to a much more darker, cooler feel.

The greatest aspect of this new lighing setup is the rendertime
This image: 2:39mins
Old setup: ~50mins

I won't be using raytracing anymore as it takes too long to render, may use AO on the characters but not the stage

well see ya's later

Rigg revision4

Here is the crrent state of the rigg revision4

this rig is alot better then all previous revisions as it has a proper bendy spine with 3 controls, inproved foot rigg with alot less bones overall, it contains a hip bone and obviously custom bone shapes which makes it easier to see what postion the bones are in

generally its a great new rigg all over

some functionality needs to be added aswell as doinfg the deform groups and driven shape keys, thegeneral rigg is finished :)

well see ya's later

once again, A new Sub-Zero!!!

MakeHuman is now a standalone app and produces great models, with great topology (edge flow)
and come already UV mapped (alot better then mine).
So i Have decided to to use a makehuman model instead of my crappy thing, this also means i will have to rebuild the rigg again, which is ok as i needed to rebuild the rigg as it would have been a nightmare to animate

the image is a comparsion of ythe new subbie and the old

see ya's all

More Practice animations

yes I have been practising animation lately and i thought i might share my results with you guys

here they are
sneaky
Flying
Ball interaction
Fighting
Jump
walk then jump

they are in .mp4 and was made in blender2.43CVS(testing build) as i used the new renderpasses and render layers and composite node in the rendering of these anims

the character is called mancandy it is a community model and rigg designed to help new commers to blender, made by Bassam Kurdali, director of elephants dream

Fun With Nodes

with the latest release of Blender , came the introduction of node based materials (shaders)/compositing, and during that time i have become very proficient with them. i am hving plans of redoing some of the shaders/textures with nodes like suby's skin (very ugly and hard to adjust.



well i thought i might show you guys the results of my latest exeriments with screenies of the node setups.

Material nodes



Composite Nodes



See ya's later

new rigg update

sorry for the latness as i am now a blender dev, also a member of the Blender Documentation project, i also help administer/compete in #smc (speed modeling challenges), and help maintain the smcIrcbot. and many other things (recent Blender conference) i have just been pressed to find time or Drive to work on this.

now time for some good news. Sub-Zero's Hands are now fully rigged animatable :)

here is a screenie

sorry to say this but with the new release coming up and renderer is being finished and code cleaning and documentation meeting and dev meeting this weekend it will be a little while before i will work on this, but it will be easy to rigg the rest of the arm and i have aquired a tut for rigging shoulders, so look forward to some nice looking movments :)

see ya's later :)

Rigg-Revision3 FINISHED!!!!

Yes My 3rd Rigg is now completed all thats left is to do the Vertex groups and wieght painting and i will have an animatable Sub-Zero Horray!!!! :)

Here are some screenshots of the new rigg

Deforming Bones


Helper Deforming Bones


Contol Bones


Proxy Bones


All Bones




See Ya's

Ps i am always on #Blenderchat@irc.freenode.net if you want to talk to me

A happy Time

as i promised i am starting production back up, My rigging/modeling/lighting/rendering skills have greatly improved, i am also working on a different platform, i am now working under a Linux OS (SuSE 10.1) now

Sub-zero's rigg has been greatly improved and many uneeded bones have been removed as muscle movment is now going to be handled by DrivenShapeKeys, the new rigg is alot more predictable hence removing alot of keyframes, and is also alot more easy to use and animate, but it is far from finished

I will post pics&vids as soon as i have finished the rigg

see ya's :)

Practice animation II

time to show you the results of my second parctice animation
-Model created and rigged from scratch
-Found appropriate 'Base' composite setup
- more then a simple walk cycle
-worked with limbs that have more then 1 control point
-worked with limbs that have a high number of bones (18)
-found out rendering timeframe (> 3 hours rendering required)

the animation can be found here (DivX 1.2Mb) .blend file can be found here

See Ya's

Practice animation

Just because production has stopped for the time being doesn't mean i should stop practicing
Here is a small vid (divx 300Kb) of a practice animation using one of the 'ducks' from Elephants Dream

enjoy

see ya's