Minor Disruption – Weekly Update May 3, 2016

Posted on May 3, 2016 by SusanG

Last week was vacation from the day job. Or as my co-worker called it ‘my stay-cation’. I had no plans to go anywhere just time off so I could work on the Birthday Card, sleep in a bit and get a few things taken care of, like having the car serviced. I was also expecting family members to arrive from the Pacific Northwest. Kind of a full week for a vacation without travel. I had it all worked out though and managed to get the Birthday Card done but not much else.

I worked pretty intently the first couple of days of the week to finish up the rigging on the robot hands and get the weight painting completed. I wanted to show that I really did rig them for animating so I created a short video, not even 2 seconds long, of the hands moving from one pose to another and put it up on YouTube. Don’t blink when you watch it.

After that little diversion, I imported the hands into the scene with the balloons. I scaled them to a size that looked right and then positioned them. I was able to get them both in roughly the correct places just using the global control to position them just behind the strings from the balloons. It wasn’t perfect just a good start. Then I had to move each, one at a time, as well as rotate them so they would look right when I closed them up to hold the strings. Once I had them in about the right place and at the right angle, that’s when I started posing them. As I was posing the hands to hold the strings, I found that the strings weren’t quite long enough. Instead of moving the hands up I just lengthened and adjusted the strings to fit down into the hands better. In some cases I also had to make adjustments to the angle of the string to make it look more natural.

When I tested some of the rigging controls I was a little concerned that my angle of the thumb controls might be really off, but I decided not to try to correct it. When I got to posing the thumb it finally clicked with me that it was the space I was trying to rotate in that was more the issue than the angle of the rig control. Normally I work all my translations (moving an object), rotations and scaling in what is called World view. So all those actions happen in relation to the scene. What I needed to do for the thumb was to rotate it in either gimbel or local view. With local view that means that it is rotating in relation to the control that I have selected, this includes it’s angle. As an example, if I had two boxes one box that I rotated 30 degrees and then froze that so that became it’s default position. If I select it to rotate it in world view, it would look a bit like it was tumbling. The other box, if I left it as I had created it and decided to rotate it in world view, it would look more like it was spinning. If I want to rotate that first box so that it looks more like it is spinning then I have to choose the local view to rotate in because then the gizmo for rotating will have the same orientation as the box.

I know it’s confusing. I usually forget to use the local view for rotating or even scaling. When it came to posing the thumb, especially, it was important to use local view for the rotation. This allowed me to get a smoother and more natural looking pose of the thumb. I didn’t have too much trouble with rolling the fingers down and in to complete the fist look. I just had to do it finger by finger and joint by joint. Then I found that the strings were breaking the surface of the hands. They looked like they were going right through the hand. So I had to adjust the placement and angle of some of the strings again. I was going to have the hands at the same height but it didn’t really look right, I think it looks more interesting with them just a little off from each other. So here’s a shot of the final card in case you didn’t see the announcement post. You can see it on my Zazzle store. I have a link to the store on the right.

CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04262016c_Final_small_wm

And as an additional little treat, here are a couple of stills of the hands from the animation I posted to YouTube.
Robot_Hand_Style1_04262016a_c_sm_wm  Robot_Hand_Style1_04262016b_c_sm_wm

That was all I got worked on this week. By the time I got that completed and posted and announced everywhere, I had house guests coming. This was my minor disruption. My house guests are family members that have decided that the Pacific Northwest is not for
them so they are moving back east. Most of the family is either in the Midwest or in the east, primarily southeast. They were kind of off on their own lonesome out there and after a health issue last year as well as not really enjoying the area they decided that maybe being closer than a 9 hour plane ride would be a good idea. They had been in Florida before but really wanted some place different so since I’m in the Carolinas and I have a sibling that flies through here a lot, they figured it would be a good place to shoot for. No matter how much we love and enjoy our family and guests, they do tend to bring a minor disruption to our routine and that has been the case for me. As a result I don’t have much else to get to share this week. I got the card done and posted and that’s been it.

I am optimistic that I will get to work on something this week. I’m a little between working on the Sticks animation and starting on the Halloween Card. Yes, Halloween. I may try to work on both. At least get started on the card and start to get Sticks set up. That would be cool. And since it is May, I should probably start thinking about the Holiday/Christmas Card for this year. I’m thinking of using the sleigh I was working on last summer. I could put Sticks in a Santa hat handing out presents, or something like that. What do you think? Maybe? Maybe not? I’ll figure something out. I have bits and pieces of ideas floating around in my head that might manage to put themselves together. Check back to find out what happens next.

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Birthday Card 2016 Now Available

Posted on April 27, 2016 by SusanG

Ok everyone, the Birthday card that you’ve been reading about is finally complete and ready for you. You can check it out at: Happy Birthday Balloons Birthday Card or browse my Zazzle Store just use the link at the right.

For now here’s a look at the finished design.

CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04262016c_Final_small

 

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I Think I’m Going to Make It – Weekly Update April 26, 2016

Posted on April 26, 2016 by SusanG

I think I’m going to have the Birthday Card done by the end of the month, which turns out to be the end of the week. I was a little slow getting started on the robot hands this week but once I finally got focused, it went pretty quick. Mostly. I’m not quite done with the hands but close enough that I can see the end of this project. And I learned something.

I got to thinking about the material I had selected for the hands. I started thinking that they would really overwhelm the look of the balloons. And someone might think they looked a bit like C-3PO. I didn’t want that. So I spent a bit of time finding a better
material combination. I ended up with a stainless steel and titanium combination. It works for me. I really like the subtle difference between the two materials. It helps to add a little definition to the different parts.

Robot_Hand_Style1_04212016b_c_sm_wm Robot_Hand_Style1_04212016c_c_sm_wm

I had to go back and re-watch part of the rigging tutorial. Just for the hands. Oh, and I think last week I said it used 3 fingers and a thumb. I was wrong, it uses 2 fingers and a thumb. So, I had much more work to do to set up the bones for each hand as Robot_Hand_Style1_04212016d_c_sm_wm
compared to the tutorial. Fortunately I didn’t have to follow along step by step this time. I left off any arm or wrist bones since I really don’t need that functionality for this. I did add a global control so that I could link everything back to it to make moving and scaling things easier. I tested that just with the bones. I’ll want to test that again once everything is skinned.

When I set up the controls I did add a wrist control for each hand, even though I didn’t add a wrist bone. I figured it would make it easier to use that to rotate a hand up or over or whatever instead of trying to do it from the hand bone.

Robot_Hand_Style1_04242016c_sm_wm

As you can see there are a fair number of controls for the fingers. The most challenging part with this setup is remembering what to link to what. Because it uses a double joint Robot_Hand_Style1_04242016d_sm_wmsystem, which I think works really nicely for what I’m doing, the controls don’t link just to the one bone they are aligned to. The orientation constraint links from the bone to the control. Then there is some position constraint linking to the bone or control above it. Then to control the trailing bones wire parameters are used to get that added bend. It will take some time before that becomes second nature to me. Here’s a look at the hierarchy of the left hand bones and controls.

Ok. So I did procrastinate a lot when it came to starting the rig. Even though creating the bones turned out to be really fast and easy. Then I delayed again with setting up the controls. It’s really silly that I did that because once I got going, it went pretty quick too. At that point I was pretty well into getting this done so I reviewed the skinning step. I wasn’t entirely sure it was as easy as I thought it was. Sure enough, it was. However, I had one little question. When I did Sticks, he was all one piece so I just followed along with the tutorial. In this case I have two separate objects, the left hand and the right hand. So I had to figure out if I was going to be able to do each as it’s own entity. Turns out, it is sort of covered in the tutorial. That has the eyebrows as separate entities so they are skinned separate from the rest of the character though their rig is connected to the global control. I didn’t remember this because Sticks has no facial features so I didn’t pay attention to that the first time through.

Since I was going to skin each hand as a separate entity and they both have so many bones, I got clever and set up two selection sets, one for the bones for each hand. This was really easy since, as you can see in the picture of the hierarchy, I used a good naming convention. So I searched on “Bn_L” and was able to select all the left hand bones. Then I added them to a selection set for the left hand. For the right hand I searched on “Bn_R” and was able to create a selection set for the right hand. This made things a lot easier for skinning. I applied the skin modifier and when I went to add the bones I pulled up the
appropriate selection set and clicked the select button and I was all set.

The last step in the rigging for the hands is setting up the bone weights. This is the most fiddly part. I did like the tutorial shows, and setup a pose using key frames so I had an animation that I could scrub through. Once I got the hang of what I wanted to do, and saw that it worked, it was fairly easy to get the weighting for the fingers, and part of the thumb. Unfortunately the hand and the first thumb joint weren’t so easy. These were the particularly fiddly bits. I spent the most time on these parts.

So far I’ve got the right hand rigged and skinned but not weighted. I have the left hand rigged, skinned and weighted. I even rendered a couple of frames so you can have a look.

Robot_Hand_Style1_04252016a_c_sm_wmRobot_Hand_Style1_04252016b_c_sm_wm

And here’s where I learned something. I discovered that I don’t really have the angle of the thumb quite right. I don’t have the base model at the correct angle and as a result, I didn’t get the bones at quite the right angle. It means my controls are a little off so the thumb doesn’t behave quite as you would expect. Fortunately, it’s not a big problem and I can still work with it as it is. However, it is something I will want to remember for future rigs.

What’s left is to set the weights on the right hand and then get both hands into the Birthday Card scene and pose them. I think I can have all of that done and a final render completed by the end of the week. I’m on vacation from the day job this week so that
helps. And I don’t have a lot of things planned to get done so I don’t have much in the way of excuses at this point. Look for an announcement when I post it on the store. And then check back next week to find out what’s next.

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Not Very Effective — Weekly Update April 19, 2016

Posted on April 19, 2016 by SusanG

So it’s allergy season here. Honestly with the way the weather has been messed up I think it’s been allergy season here since Christmas. I feel like I’ve taken so much allergy medication that maybe I should buy stock in the company. It can be a little
frustrating to need to take something so often and after a while I wonder if maybe I’m taking it out of habit. So this past week, I tried to cut back. I’m one of those people that the stuff that works best for me, and causes me the least amount of other side effects is the stuff that puts me to sleep. I figured if I could cut back and not take it as often I might be more alert and get more done. As it turns out, I have the choice of fighting off the sleepiness from the medication or the tiredness caused by the allergies. So, yeah, not taking the sleepy allergy medication so I could get more done, not a very effective strategy.

I guess, if I had to have a week that lost productivity, better it be this past week instead of next week when I’m on vacation from the day job. I’m hoping to have larger chunks of time to work on something, anything, and make big progress.

I was having an email conversation with a friend today with regards to creating the balloon letters and the math of it. My friend said that the balloon letters were basically cylinders and that I should be able to make the base shapes and then merge them together. This isn’t wrong. It’s true. It could work, sort of. The way I was reading and understanding what my friend was saying, didn’t seem like it would work. And the way I was understanding it, I don’t think it would. However, manipulated slightly differently, it might. Or at least it would be closer to working. That aside. As I was trying to explain the caveats to what my
friend was suggesting, I came to realize that I might need to make a small demo video of some step or steps of modeling something. I’ve got to figure out how to do that so don’t expect it any time soon. It also made me aware that I might need to put together
some sort of primer for reference. Again, probably not too soon. Or maybe start it and keep it as a work in progress until I can get the whole thing really polished. One more item for the list.

Now on to what I did manage to get done over the week.

I finished modeling the Robot Hand. It needed another joint or knuckle for the fingers andRobot_Hand_Style1_04162016a_c_wm the tips of the fingers. Not too difficult. For the most part I’m working with base shapes that have a small amount of transformations applied. I used the copy for the last set of knuckles and then scaled them to fit the end better. Then I copied one set of bone cylinder things and added them on top. I spaced everything and did a little bit of scaling. Probably the most difficult, and it wasn’t very difficult, was getting the tips rounded. The copy I made had the top concaved to cradle the sphere being used for the knuckle. I needed that top to be convex and rounded. I don’t have a lot of edge loops there so I could do the whole thing manually and it worked out a little easier than using the soft select for this. I selected one edge loop at a time and transformed it into it’s place and then for the very center I just selected the vertex and moved it. I did a little more adjusting. Again, not too many edge loops, so it wasn’t an arduous task.

Robot_Hand_Style1_04162016d_c_sm_wm

I did a little more adjusting before I attached all the parts. I tightened up the bone bits that the knuckles sit in so that you see a little less of the knuckle. I also adjusted some of the sizing a little. The main hand part got some refining. I moved some edge loops a little to help soften the corners some. Not too much, just a bit. With that done I selected the hand part and attached the knuckles and the finger bone parts working from hand to tip. I just attached. I didn’t join or weld any of it. I want to try to keep some of the mechanical with the bones looking like they are sliding over the the knuckle spheres.

I decided to work on the materials for the Robot Hand next. I want it to look mechanical and a good way to do that is to use a metal material. I tried using a brushed metal but it was so flat that an aluminum or stainless steel looked like a flat dull grey. Even a brass or copper didn’t really come off. So I adjusted and chose a semi-polished finish. That helped mostly. I probably won’t know for sure until I get the hand in a scene with something other than the default lighting. Polished metal needs light and other things to reflect for it to be most effective. Right now things look a little dark.

Robot_Hand_Style1_04162016f_c_sm_wm     Robot_Hand_Style1_04162016h_c_sm_wm

Ok. Almost there. Two more small things before I start creating bones for rigging. I want the hand in a position as if it has a body attached and it was standing in a T-pose. So I rotated around the x axis and then around the y axis to get them in the right position. The last thing. I need a second Robot Hand. To get that I used the Mirror Tool and made sure to make a copy while mirroring in the x axis. Now I have two Robot Hands that need bones and rigging.

Robot_Hand_Style1_04172016a_c_sm_wm Robot_Hand_Style1_04172016b_c_sm_wm

The letter balloons are modeled, they all have strings, I have two Robot Hands, and nothing to do that I could use to as an excuse to keep from starting the process of creating the bones and setting up the rig. Guess that’s what I’ll be getting started on next.

The hand rigging will be a little different than with Sticks. Even accounting for the difference in the hand shape and the missing body for the hands. With Sticks, though you can’t see it because of his hand shape, he does have 3 fingers as well as a thumb. That’s what the tutorial used and it worked ok for Sticks even with his block hands. This hand has 4 fingers and the pinky finger isn’t going to need quite the flexibility as it would with a more organic hand. It doesn’t really need the ability to roll inward. I don’t want it to look too “alive”. I don’t know if I will leave that ability off or just not use it in the posing process.

As you can see, as close as I am to being able to set up a final render for the card, I still have work to do. I think I will stay on the allergy medication this week. Even with having to fight through the sleepies I have a feeling I’ll get more done. At least I hope so. Check back next week to find out how this experiment works out.

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Getting Closer – Weekly Update April 12, 2016

Posted on April 12, 2016 by SusanG

Really, I am. I am getting close to having the Birthday card finished. I’m excited to be this far along. But there are still a few things that need to be done to really finish it up.

To start with, after I got the materials all applied to the balloons, I repositioned the balloons more like they would look if they were floating in the air and being restrained by strings. Then I added a background. I wanted to see how it was going to look. At first I set it up the background with self illumination like I had the balloons. I sort of had to in order to compensate for the self illumination in the balloons. But that was too much. It managed to make it look washed out. Something was going to need adjusting.

CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04052016b_c_sm_wm CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04052016c_c_sm_wm

As I was setting up the background I tried the Autodesk Standard material and played with some of the different shaders. I tried a couple of different options and settled on Phong and then set the color and left the self illumination off. As I was doing that I noticed I had the option for a translucent shader. So I decided to see how that would look on the balloons. I started out testing how the red would look. Part of why I went with the self illumination on the rubber material originally was because with the color applied to the
rubber shader, I couldn’t really get the color vibrant enough. With the Standard material and the translucent shader I was able to get the red more vibrant without washing out. I kept on setting up the other colors to see how they would hold up using the same type of
setup. Before I knew it I had set up all new materials for the balloons. They CardBdayTake2_2016v2_04062016b_c_sm_wmlooked pretty good so I added an area light to the scene to make it look more like it is outdoors.

Wow. At this point I was in a bit of shock to realize how close to being finished I was getting. But first I needed strings or ribbons, something attached to the balloons to hold on to them. I had to figure out how to create that. I thought about trying an extrude along a path or maybe a spline. I finally decided to try something that sort of came up in the rigging tutorial I watched. In the tutorial, lines are used for some of the shapes and helpers. The thickness gets adjusted so they aren’t too big but are just the right size to be able to see them, and select them when doing the animating. And then the line is set to so that it can’t be seen when rendered. So I decided to try creating a line, giving it just a bit of thickness and setting it to be viewable in the view port and also to be renderable. Of course then I had to get all the lines set up so they started at a balloon and then came together as if being held by hands or something.  I was able to do this fairly easily because when I created the strings I created them with multiple segments so I had enough verticesCardBdayTake2_2016v2_2_04062016e_sm_wm to work with. Once the strings were shaped correctly it was time to try applying a material to them. I gave the strings a canvas material. I figured it would give them just enough texture, even as small as they are, to add to the scene. I think it worked.

I could stop here. And I have thought about it. But I don’t think it is quite there yet. It needs just a little something. I think I’m going to add some hands holding the strings. I have thought about making these the hands of Sticks. But his hands are more like blocks than hands. They would be difficult to recognize for what they are at the moment. Maybe later, when we all get to know Sticks better.  For now, I need something more hand looking. But I don’t want to create realistic looking hands and I don’t really want cartoon hands. I know. Mechanical, or robot looking hands, that’s the idea. So I set about creating a robot hand with a wrist and part of the forearm. I’ve made pretty good progress with it and I’ve just about finished modeling most of the first one. I need to add the finger tips, the wrist and the forearm, and then attachRobot_Hand_Style1_04102016c_c_sm_wm all the pieces. But, like with Sticks, I will just attach the pieces and not weld anything. That should allow me to maintain the shapes and the mechanical feel when I pose it. Of course I will need to rig it and then skin it to make it easier to pose. So I will be revisiting the rigging tutorial.

I expect I will be revisiting the rigging tutorial often, at least until I really get down the concept or have done it enough that I have the whole process memorized. I have several projects in mind that will be needing that sort of rig.

Things are moving along nicely and I have a feeling I’ll be rigging the robot hand by the end of the week. Who knows, I might even have it all rigged and posed by the next update. Wouldn’t that be exciting. Of course I’m always planning on getting to the animating of Sticks. And if I do manage to get the hands completed and rigged, there are plenty new projects to start. Check back to find out how far I get and what happens next.

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