Update | 01 October 2011
When I started my lipsynch tests, I found a very useful and free maxscript plugin - Pose Store - written by a Character TD, Jeremy Massey. Pose Store is very pratical for quick pose saving and keyframing. Basically, it is a physical helper that you create in your scene which, on selection, opens a rollout dialogue. From there, you store the transformation (position, rotation and scale) of your controllers and blend between them using a multiplier. Above are the poses I choose to store in the tool and Below is the demo of the first lispynch animation done with it.
Scripting | Jeremy Massey
A very good practice when setupping a skeleton (well, when dealing with game objects demanding strict axis' rules and so on ; in my case, I deal most of the time with skeletons) is to have, as often as possible, your object's local axis displayed in your viewport. Not only when these are selected, but especially when they aren't !
In Maya, there already is that option called Local Rotation Axes. You can either access it from the Display menu :
Display > Transform Display > Local Rotation Axes
Or access your node's attributes (Ctrl + A) and check Display Local Axis in the Display tab.
Crtl + Shift + Right-click lets you to drop a tool in your Custom tab as shown below, so as to fetch it at any time.
Now, activating the localRotationAxes on an object displays the axis as long as you don't desactivate it.
In 3DS Max, you don't have this option in the core module. However a collegue showed me a wonderful maxscript tool written by Martin Breid called showBoneAxis. A very useful script which I plugged on a button and which I constantly use while working my setups !
The only thing is that 1. It is limited to objects of Bone Class. But with some code, it might be easily extended to other classes (not tried yet, but will certainly do) and 2. It shows the axis of all the bones found in your scene (selected or not, and even hidden ones) which might look a little bit messy if you have ... a messy scene. This too can easily be cleaned up.
Anyway, 3DS Max users, here is the link to fetch it ! showBoneAxis v1.0
Scripting | Martin Breidt
Little tool I scripted for Motion Builder to navigate quickly through my scene Takes within a single window. I was fed up of grabbing takes from the Timeline window ... The character you see in the demo is a foe from the soon-to-come Black Death from Darkworks team!
Scripting | mlle lafortune
The function ExecuteScript() lets you execute python script files.
# Calls my_script.py -------------------- #
def fn_ExeScript (control,event) :
ex = FBApplication()
ex.ExecuteScript("my_script.py")
I started to use this method to launch my scripts more quickly. Instead of drag-and-dropping the production scripts from the Asset Browser, I would have a single rollout to launch with buttons calling the scripts. Below you'll have a simple example of my UI.
For that to work, you'll need to have a master file (sGrid_Tools.py) and all the production scripts (ExportTakeNames.py, TakeNavigator.py, etc .. ) placed in a folder. If you share a database with your team, they'll only have to update the database and launch the master file to access the production tools.
Scripting | mlle lafortune
Rigging tests and Animation.
Modelling | David Bole
Face setup done in Motion Builder for the crowd of a game prototype.
Modelling | David Bole
What an interesting exercise to work with BMP when keyframing an animation. The idea, although some (and other some) have figured it out long before I was born (even if that doesn't make me a youngster), came from my Project Director who wanted our character to have a music-clip-like approach of our gameplay moves and actions.
Research on this subject was as exciting as fulfilling. First and above all, Tools , a so sweet sound to my ears.
Tap - Tap - Tap on your keyboard and you get the BMP of your music, and most interesting, the rhythm (BMP) you want to give to your action(s) : http://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm
Wanna convert the BMP to Frames per second - Two solutions - First ...
- BPM: Beats per minute for some music
- FPS: Frame Rate of your video>
Math:
Beat Number(FrameNum) = Integer( ( FrameNum / FPS ) * ( BPM / 60 ) )
... kidding.
or you can use another tool from All8 here : http://www.all8.com/tools/fpb.htm
Modelling | David Bole
Ok, the umbrella at the back, the beautiful one, is purely Reator(ed) and was done by my pal Olivier Fleurette - Cinematic Lead ! What we wanted to have was a realistic wind-simulation (Reactor-like) on a bone based set-up for our game engine. We came out with 2 solutions.
Simulation directing Bones
Set-up a cloth and wind simulation on the wings, the ribs and the tilt mechanism for the first render. Then retrieve the animation by snapping, constraining and skinning (a large number) of bones to the vertices of the mesh. We got a final skeleton that we could use at pleasure for other simulations. The bad point with this method was that, well, our umbrella had a LOT of bones !
Simulation directing Bones directing other Bones (...)
Have a bone-based skeleton with the main (and so, minimum) bones (the rib assembly, the tilt mechanism, relevent bones on the wings and the root). Skin and constraint these bones to the simulation skeleton ones and let the animation be retrieved automatically (ok, plus some tweaking ...).
Modelling | Manuel Pires
Modelling | David Bole
Modelling | Pascal Lefort