SIGGRAPH - Take 2

Last year I really wanted to go to SIGGRAPH and pass my demo reel around, meet new people, see the sights and all that jazz, but my truck decided to DIE and the $1,100 dollars I'd saved vanished over night.  Well, I hope I can make it this year.  I'm working on a Python/MEL tool that will be the crown jewel of my demo reel if I finish it.  If I don't get hired or anything, I hope the pro's can give me tips on my demo reel, which I hope I can finish updating by the end of April.

~Melissa

P.S.  I haven't forgotten about that nCloth for Novices video.  I'll fix it, I swear!

AMAZING facial rig

I love everything: animation, hair/cloth simulation, lighting, rendering... but I have such a soft spot in my heart for rigging.  Admittedly, my knowledge on the process is pretty basic but I know enough to know something amazing when I see it.  The Cenk character by Ozgur Aydogu is great on it's own merits, but this facial rig is one of the best I've seen.  I absolutely LOVE the procedural breathing and free transform head parts features.  The character itself is very expressive, facial deformations are spot on and the animation... so, so good.  It's a shame to see good facial rigs subjected to horrible test animation and I'm so glad that doesn't happen here.  From beginning to end, every aspect of character development and creation looks like it was handled with great care and the result is a top notch product.

I'd LOVE to see a full body rig at some point.

I'll stop gushing now.

Be sure to check out his site!

http://www.ozguraydogdu.com/

~Melissa

Ranting and Raving! nHair!

I'm excited about the nHair test the Autodesk people have released.  Have you seen it?

If it comes with styling tools, I'm pretty sure I'd just die of happiness.

Why should we care about this?  Because Maya hair/fur, as it is now, sucks.  And not in the fun way.

[Begin incomprehensible rant]

1.  Maya hair and fur distribution is TOTALLY UV dependent.  You have to spend hours laying out UV's if your character has full body fur.  If you just have to tweak your UV's, you run the risk of destroying your hair/fur style.  I don't want to have to layout UV's just to style hair!

2.  Styling Maya hair and fur requires the patience of Job.  It takes forever just to figure out how to do it.  In fact, I'm convinced that it's impossible to style Maya hair just using Maya hair tools.  There are no styling tools whatsoever.  Ok, yes, there are constraints, fields, collision objects (they suck)... but there are no brush and comb  to help move hair around.  Adjusting length is a pain.

There are two ways that I've come across that make for good styling (you're welcome internet):

A.

• Model a lo res hair volume with NURBS (the man in the example video uses curves, but my way is faster).
• Draw guide curves on this surface.
• Convert these curves to hair guide curves.
• Color, texture, simulate the hair.

I commented on the video above.  This method is brilliant.  You should look at his demo reel.  (He worked on Harry Potter: Deathly Hallows pt. 1 which is so cool!!)

B.

• Model hair patches using NURBS.
• Duplicate the curves.
• Convert these curves to hair guides.
• Simulate the hair.

While this is a video demonstrating a MEL tool that a man wrote, everything that's done there can be done manually, and he pretty much follows the method I outlined.  The great thing about this is, you can change the hair on the NURBS level and the actual hair will reflect this change.  This method takes longer, but you have the option of rigging this hair which is a HUGE plus.

I wish I could figure out how this man scripted finding the center curve for each hair section, but he speaks Japanese so I can't ask =(  Really, I'm stumped.  The center curve can't be the same value all the time, so how did he do it?!  Grr...

C.

• Style a series of curves.
• Convert these curves to hair guides.

I don't have a video for that one.  I find that this is what most people do so.  This way is the hardest to me.  I don't like doing it.

The problem is, you shouldn't be forced to do any of those things.  Shave and a Haircut allows you to style and cut the hair right out of the gate with actual styling tools (taking the hint yet, Maya?).  UV's?  Fugetaboutit! Just style the hair and get to UV's later!  This isn't to say that UV's don't matter at all, but Shave does an amazing job of distributing hair when UV's still look like this:  "RTEBNHREREBTRtrntiorngreoin02942"

I'll admit that Maya's hair system is still top dog when it comes to simulation, but I don't even care at this point.

So why not just get Shave and a Haircut?

People shouldn't have to!  Maya costs 3x more than the average computer.  It has a hair system.  The hair system should work!  Shave and a Haircut is good, but if I want to style my hair with it, but simulate it using Maya's hair system, it takes an act of congress.

I'm not even going to dignify rendering with a rant.  I just hurts too much.  Just bite the bullet and get Renderman if you can.  I can't, so all my hair looks like crap.

Fur.  Oh fur.  Your UV's have to be impeccable, like the Queen of England, or your fur will look horrible.  The only way I know of to style fur is to paint maps and icky things like that.  Bleh.

[End rant]

What was I talking about?  Oh.  nHair.  I'm happy for it.  It's been on my wish list for 5 years, so I hope it does come out with Maya 2013, as well as a collapsing feature in the script editor, nFur, burn Mental Ray at the stake, and create an nCloth Deformer.  I'd looooooove that.  I'm tired of using Wrap Deformers.  They get the job done, but they're not the most accurate things in the world and you can get weird problems with them.

~Melissa

Discouraged

The title says is all.  I'm a little discouraged today.  Why?  I feel like no one wants a Hair/Cloth/Fur TD.  I love what I do and I think I'm good at it.  I'd love to work on hair, cloth and fur for ever and ever, but I see so few people looking for character fx artists.  I love effects (especially particle effects), I love rigging, and I think if I were to buckle down and do absolutely nothing but FX tests and rigs for, like 9 months, I could build enough on what I already know and produce good results and find a decent entry level job.  But I don't want to get a job doing something that I just happen to know how to do well.  I want to get a job doing something that makes me happy.

Maybe I'll find something at SIGGRAPH this year.

I'll stop whining now.

~Melissa

MEL Script -"Unfreezing" Transformations

Someone on CGTalk had 100+ objects in their scene where the transformations had been reset.  He needed their world space positions restored.  Plainly speaking, he needed to unfreeze transformations.  Technically that isn't possible, but there's a way to cheat everything.

There's probably a more efficient way to do this.  If someone reply's to my post on CGTalk with a better version, I'll post their version, credit them, and provide a link to their post.  In any case, here's the "Unfreeze Transformations" script.  I hope it helps someone.

//Get all of the selected items, and the size of the selection
string $selection[] = `ls -sl`;
int $size = size($selection);
int $i;
//for each object in the selection, do the following things:
for ($i = 0; $i < size($selection); $i++){
     //Create two locators.  #1 stays at the origin (0 0 0) while #2 moves to the center of the selected object.
     string $zeroLoc[] = `spaceLocator`;
     string $loc[] = `spaceLocator`;
     string $ptCon[] = `pointConstraint $selection[$i] $loc`;
     string $orCon[] = `orientConstraint $selection[$i] $loc`;
   
     //Get the translation and rotation values of the locator we just moved.  These are the values that we'll give to the object in a few steps.
     float $tran[] = `xform -q -t -ws $loc`;
     float $rot[] = `xform -q -ro -ws $loc`;
   
     //Delete the constraints, we don't need them anymore
     delete $ptCon;
     delete $orCon;
   
     //Move the selected object to the 0 0 0 locator (that's at the origin), then delete the constraints.
     string $ptConZero[] = `pointConstraint $zeroLoc $selection[$i]`;
     string $orConZero[] = `orientConstraint $zeroLoc $selection[$i]`;
     delete $ptConZero;
     delete $orConZero;
     //Freeze Transformations on the object.  Now the objects values are zeroed out and it's at the origin  
     makeIdentity -apply true -t 1 -r 1 $selection[$i];
   
     //Move the object back to it's original position, using the translation/rotation values from the first locator we created and moved.
     setAttr ($selection[$i] + ".translate") $tran[0] $tran[1] $tran[2];
     setAttr ($selection[$i] + ".rotate") $rot[0] $rot[1] $rot[2];
   
     //Delete the two locators we created, we don't need them anymore.
     delete $zeroLoc;
     delete $loc;
}

Two new MEL scripts

I recently finished two MEL scripts that I hope will help you guys out.  Both of these are for Windows users.  Thanks to the kind people at CGTalk that helped me when I was stuck.

Snapshot

1)  Snapshot.  Creates a snapshot of the active viewport and saves the image in a Snapshot folder, located in your project directory.  This should save you the hassle of taking and editing screenshots.

NOTE:  Because of a glitch in Maya 2012, the only image format you can have is an .iff.  I'm working on this.  Hopefully I can get a workaround working soon.

Match It!

2) MatchIt!  Will match the translation/rotation of one or more objects to your source object.  You're able to choose the affected axes.

Let me know if you want one of them and I'll send them to you.

~Melissa

PS  Sorry about nCloth for Novices #2.  I noticed and error and deleted it.  It should be up again shortly.

Two new cloth tutorials

I told you I'd post these eventually.  Two more nCloth for Novices tutorials.  Watch them in full HD!

#2 just talks about setting up your scene for cloth simulation.  #3 talks a little about modeling cloth and if you should use quads or triangles.  I think digital tutors did something like this, but I rambled on about other things during my tutorial/talk.  If you have any comments or questions, let me know.  If you want me to do a tutorial on something, feel free to ask me.

~Melissa

Catching Up/3 Random Tests

Wow, it's been a WHILE hasn't it?  Well, what have I been up to?  Lots!  I got a new laptop as a late graduation present, and I've been doing a lot of fluid and particle tests with Maya.  I've focused on character effects for so long, and I want to jump into something new and exciting.  It's been fantastic struggling with particles and fluids.  They have the potential to produce phenomenal effects, but you have to know how to manipulate the 4903583095804802 attributes in order to create them. (Well, maybe not, but you should at least know what 20% of them do, and I don't lol).  Remember that nuke I said I wanted to make?  I started re-familiarizing myself with making nukes so, hopefully, it's only a matter of time before I can recreate that one.  We'll see.

Also, I DID finish that one of the nCloth tutorials I wanted to make.  It's on my old laptop (oops).  So I need to get it, export the video and upload it.  I need to create the painting attributes one.  I also want to talk about keying attributes.  I have no idea when I'll get around to that one.

As always, I'm here to learn, not just share and talk to myself.  If you have any constructive feedback on anything I say/do, I would absolutely love to hear it.  I'm always willing to share my test files if you want to help me, or learn from them.

~Melissa




I'm trying to get familiar with rendering particles with mental ray.  I've learned a little, but I still have a LOT to learn.  If anyone has tips or suggestions, I'd LOVE to hear them!



100k particles

2 minutes a frame

1 point light with Ray Trace shadows enabled



Pretty new to nukes, thought I'd give them a try.  I've got a very basic set up.

Container 20 40 20
Resolution 140 180 140
High Detail Solve on all grid except Velocity

1 lonely surface emitter

I think it's pretty cool for a second attempt, but I don't know why it looks "chunky" or pixelated or whatever.  It's like you can see the grid in the fluid or something.  Tear it apart, I'd love some critiques/suggestions.

Yay! I'm a graduate!

So I walked in December. Officially graduated in May. I'm just now getting my diploma. Why am I getting this so late?  Well, it turns out that I forgot to take my exit interview for one of my student loans.

Oops.

Well, I did it and now I have my diploma! Yay! I wish it had the name of my major and minor on it but whatever.

^_^ Yay!

~Melissa

Spell check

I noticed three typos on my resume that must have been there for a year. I'm so embarrassed. I typed my resume in Adobe Illustrator but even then, I converted my PDF a Word document and ran spell check. I know I did. How in the world did I let three typos slip?

Whoops.

~Melissa