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Monthly Archive: November 2015

Maya Monday – Maya 2016 parallel rig evaluation 1

Animation / Education / Rigging

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Maya Monday – Maya 2016 parallel rig evaluation

3dsmax TD have become increasingly envious with the release of Maya 2016 and the parallel rig evaluation toolkit allowing Maya TDs to finally use all the CPUs and GPUs cores in parallel, in order to speed up the viewport display but until now I hadn’t see such a thorough demonstration as the following one.

Have a look it is really interesting for both TDs and animators as they give some really good tips on how to speed up rigs for animators. Also, have a look at the related Rigging Dojo article which is pretty funny:

http://www.riggingdojo.com/2015/10/22/blazing-fast-character-rigs-with-maya-2016/

 

and here one new article from Autodesk

http://download.autodesk.com/us/company/files/2018/UsingParallelMaya.html#overview

I can’t wait to use Maya 2016 in production!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJFTPDYLHV4[/youtube]

Maya parallel evaluation

 

 

 

 

Have you ever been tempted to use…? 0

Animation / Education / Fun

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Have you ever been tempted to use…?

I was watching this today and couldn’t resist highlighting the following. I could watch this in loop so I made this a loop! 😉

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb6PY4le_5g[/youtube]
More seriously, I am depicting the situation as being black or white at Disney when the reality is far more complex.

Some movies like Pirates of the Caribbean are well known to rely heavily on motion capture and Disney research has published several papers featuring attempts to replace keyframe animators. The following one is particularly chilling as they are trying to prove how human motion capture can even be used to animate Non-Humanoid Characters with Human Motion Data using Pixar’s Luxo as an example. If someone called this blasphemy I would probably agree…..

http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/animating-non-humanoid-characters-with-human-motion-data/

 

Absolutely-not

 

Academy Creative Spark: Simon Otto 0

Animation

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Academy Creative Spark: Simon Otto

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNvXFz1tsF4[/youtube]

Academy Originals just posted an inspirational video interview with Dreamworks Head of Character Animation Simon Otto which in the Dreamworks lingo would probably translate into HTTYD HOCA 😉 (click above for the video)

As a fine art hobbyist and compulsory doodlers I couldn’t help smiling throughout.

“Animator Simon Otto (“How to Train Your Dragon”, “How to Train Your Dragon 2”, “Kung Fu Panda”) takes viewers inside his creative process in an exploration of where ideas come from”

Simon-Otto_creative-spark_01

Simon-Otto_creative-spark_02

Simon-Otto_creative-spark_03

Related post:
Premo, the Dreamworks animation software

“Messy goes to Okido”. Lolly’s Ice Cream van (environment rigging) 0

Animation / Character design / Comics / Education / Portfolio

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“Messy goes to Okido”. Lolly’s Ice Cream van (environment rigging)

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/138861480[/vimeo]

At the begining of Messy goes to Okido”‘s production, our TD needed some help to rig various props and environment so I gave him a hand for few weeks and mostly for the “Taste buddies” episode. I never got credits for this but I don’t care much since I don’t really want to advertise those skills too much. I am an animator and don’t want to land rigging jobs.

Among those props was the rigging of Lolly’s Ice cream van which was a lot of fun.

It was a bit of challenge as I hadn’t done that kind of stuff in Max for a very long time but at the end of the day it didn’t take too long since I was able to use the exact same techniques I would have used in Maya. I could have spend a bit more time on some areas but TV series require a really fast turnaround unfortunately so the entire rig had to be done and tested in less than two weeks I think I remember.

If you live in UK, you can see the rig in action on the BBC Iplayer right here:
bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cbeebies/episode/b069r3gk/messy-goes-to-okido-4-tastebuddies

Enjoy!

Lolly's van