Component Editor
If you encounter areas where a few vertices are not behaving like you want, consider using the Window General Editors - gt Component Editor. This editor allows you to manually set the weights of vertices to their influences. PolMira I rtt I Wntffcd Ootanrn Rod Skm BtadSh . Orfc ,, 5moo 51 Spnogc P 1cl., HHII itaolAl HRR . WB IHRR JC IHRR -1 Tip You can zero an entire unwanted influence simply by selecting its column and setting it to 0.
Extra controls
Every animator and studio is going to be different with what they want and need for controls in a rig. bat is not even including the different needs for every creature for every shot. Just like the rest of this book's techniques, each of these steps can be customized to achieve different end results. This section will not cover how to create different types of controls, but that doesn't mean that you can't experiment and add your own favorite control into the control rig. In fact, you are...
Rolling lips
The idea of a rolling lips setup is to rig a joint hierarchy that can be used with Set Driven Keys to create the effect of rolling the flesh, which would be hard to achieve otherwise. The following explains the basics of creating a rolling lips setup. First, you must create a joint hierarchy that will be able to do the motion that you need. Open the scene 16-rollingLipsjOl.ma. The lips joints are already created in that scene file. You must now spend some time painting a small amount of weight...
Final checklist
Before you can pass the model off to the texture artists and character set-up artists, you must first make sure the scene follows some basic criteria The hierarchy of models is well organized and will remain in a consistent order throughout the pipeline. All geometry in the scene has a unique name following a naming convention. All geometry has frozen transformations. All history has been deleted via the Edit - Delete All by Type - gt History command. All geometry has the default lambert shader...
Lesson Preparation 1
This lesson explores the different ways of approaching facial rigging. You will see how to mix a joint driven setup with both blend shapes and clusters. Combining these techniques can greatly improve your facial animation since they increase the level of realism of your character's face. In this lesson you will learn the following Reasons for using joints for facial rigging Reasons for using blend shapes How to set-up cluster controls.
Lesson Modeling
You will now begin modeling the beast. To do so, you will start by importing reference images in Maya software and then blocking out the character. Once that is done, you will be able to refine the beast by gradually increasing its geometry and using some simple tricks to generate a good topology. In this lesson you will learn the following pose is the pose given to a character modeled. This pose will then be used else in the pipeline. For instance, the i artist will start from this pose to...
Head joints
in this exercise you will create a head setup that will allow you to animate the jaw and the head independently from each other. Open the scene file 13-jaw_01.ma. This scene contains the beast's head along with the neck joints and a few selection sets. Select Skeleton Joint Tool. From the side view, click on the headJA_l bone. Doing so tells the Joint Tool that you want to create a joint chain starting from the head joint. Create a joint as the jaw pivot. The pivot of the jaw almost always...
Lesson The jaw
Now that the specific muscle structural details, challenges and difficulties, as well as explanations for the motivations and techniques has been laid out, the next lessons will provide more detailed insight into the specific rigging techniques used to create these facial rigging and deformation effects. In this lesson, you will add a jaw bone to the beast, and then add a corrective blend shape setup with driven keys to make it move in a realistic manner. In this lesson you will learn the...
Lesson Preparation and theory
Prior to modeling in 3D, it is important to understand the various concepts involved in your project. First, you should have a good idea of what you want to do and where you want to go. It is not generally recommended to dive directly into Maya software and work by trial and error until you reach a decent result. Here is a definition for hyper-real Above or beyond the quality of convincing existence, to the point of fantastic disbelief. Something imaginary or incredible portrayed in a vividly...
Realistic Werewolf Maya Tutorials
In Project One. you are going to model a werewolf style beast as a full polygonal character. This project will demonstrate effective, flexible and efficient techniques for creating hyper-real organic models. With an emphasis on polygonal modeling, this project will explore the modeling process from the concept stage through to pipeline integration. You will learn strategies for creating creatures and characters with an emphasis on anatomy and realism. This project will cover effective...
Cut the UVs
In order for the UVs to be properly unfolded, you must first cut the UVs into UV shells, which will define the different parts of the body to be textured. UV shells should be cut and unfolded so that they can lie flat without overlapping, much like a cloth pattern is laid prior to sewing. The location of the UV cuts requires some planning to obtain the best unfolded result. The better the UV cuts, the better the correlation between the original polygons and their corresponding UV shell. In...
Lesson Final Touches
There are always improvements to bring to a model. This lesson will explore some workflow tips and tricks for making your model's topology as great as possible. In this lesson you will learn the following Where to hide triangles Polishing the model P Rotate To Stroke Sculpt Parameters Operation C Push C Pull C Smooth C Erase f Auto Smooth Smooth Strength l 'J- Reference Vector Normal Fist Normal C View r XAxis r YAxis C ZAxis Reference Surface W Update On Each Stroke Update Erase Surface F...
About This Book
Thank you for choosing Maya Techniques Hyper-Realistic Creature Creation. This book is intended to provide the intermediate 3D software user with an inside look into professional techniques and workflows for modeling, and rigging a photo-realistic character quickly and effectively. This book moves at a fast pace, and is designed to help you, the intermediate user, improve your understanding of high-end production techniques for modeling and rigging, and to help you understand how they relate to...
Creating the final facial setup
In the examples of this project, you have created all the different setups into separate files. You shall now combine them into a single character setup file. All that needs to be done is importing each one of the separate rig files into the rig with the jaw joint in it. Most likely this file will already have the cluster on meshes rigged into it as well as the sticky lips. So, you will need to import the blend shape models, the blinks, the fleshy eyes, the rolling lips, and any other facial...
Lesson Expanded topics
This lesson covers additional tricks and techniques to potentially raise the level of realism of your rendered images. You will first learn about creating a realistic skin look using render passes and compositing. You will then learn about faking an iris refraction using a simple trick that will allow you to see the effect of the refraction without having to render your scene. In this lesson you will learn the following Concepts of a realistic skin shader How to fake an iris refraction.
Shading network
Now that you understand the necessity of having good UVs and a skin shader that reacts appropriately and can give the appearance of fine skin wrinkles when it deforms, you are faced with the challenge of rigging it up altogether. Luckily, the process is made extremely easy using built-in shading nodes. Similar to how deformers work automatically on every vertex in a 3D model to deform it, a shading node works on every sample in an image to process it much like a compositing operation during...
Project UVs
The first thing to do when you want to texture your character is to put some order in the UVs of your model. Usually, when you finish modeling, the UVs are completely disorganized. This is because you started modeling from a basic primitive and have extracted, split and deleted several edges. Projecting UVs will give you a good starting point to unfold the model. Continue from your own scene file. Or Open the scene file 05-texture_01.ma. Select Windows gt UV Texture Editor. Doing so will show...
Model deformation integrity
How the surface of the facial model is built is probably the single most important aspect of the rigging process. This is true for character setup in general, but is particularly critical for facial setups. Facial muscles and skin wrinWes lead to good topology Examine the above illustration from left to right. The image to the left is a simple face illustrating basic shadow planes. The second image from the left shows the muscle structure under the skin. Then comes an example of the wrinkle...
Pupil dilatation
The pupil dilatation can be done very simply, depending on the way the eye of your character is set-up and the quality of the effect you want to achieve. For instance, you can do it with a couple of blend shapes on the iris geometry. The iris dilatation done with blend shapes The iris dilatation done with blend shapes Movie Check out the movie file iris.avi. Basically, all that is needed to achieve this look is the creation of two modeled blend shapes on the eye geometry. The modeling should...
The amazing face
The face is the single most expressive, complex and recognizable feature of almost any living being. The amazingly wide range of emotions, ideas and suggestions that even a subtle change in facial expression can communicate are almost as broad and powerful as the spoken language that it articulates. Millions of years of evolution have trained human beings to quickly and easily recognize and read the expressions of the face. The meaning of a spoken word can be completely redefined through the...
Adding the control attributes
Since you added hidden attributes to the bound rig joints, you need to add some to the control rig as well. This will add both the hidden attribute and the name of the joint to be driven. Note The tool will automatically add the HRR_ prefix the name needs. Open the scene file 08-controlRig_03.ma. Source the HRRaddControiAttrs.mei. Execute HRRaddControlAttrTo in the Command Line. This will find all the joints and add the new hidden attributes, as long as they don't contain JCon or JOri. You can...
Local rotation axis
Every joint has a Local Rotation Axis that defines now the joint will react to transformations. When you create several joints in a row, the joint orientations can automatically be set to point down to the first child joint. A joint's orientation is defined by its local rotation axis, which is, by default, pointing the X-axis toward its first child joint. Note Local rotation axes are aligned according to the left-hand rule, which are the three axes defined by your index X-axis , thumb Y-axis...
Clusters
The final setup involves one more set of controls. These are the cluster based shape controls. These will be covered in more detail later, but it is important to note what they are and why they can and probably should be used. Clusters are very similar to joints, except they have some nice transformation capabilities that give them a bit more power when it comes to the particular challenge of regionally based facial controls. First off, they can be used and rigged up in such a way that...
Testing the facial setup
Once you have all the blend shapes, joints and cluster controls set-up and everything is running well, you must put the rig through an extensive animation test where it is ideally tested by multiple animators. This test should have the character speak all the possible phonemes, as well as going through a full range of emotional shifts combined with dialogue. The combination of individually moving muscle based motion should begin to make more sense as you see the control it gives animators to...
Hiding triangles
r almost any case, you will have triangles in your model. Since you cannot get rid of all of them, it is commended to at least hide them as much as you can. that the two problematic triangles are side by side, you can simply use the Split Polygon ol and delete the triangle edges to correct the problem. r rder to remove all traces of the correction you just made to the model, use the Sculpt Geometry Soot to smooth out the polygons. Note Triangles may cause texture stretching and flickering and...
Driven displacement theory
Nowadays, in order to create believable hyper-real 3D characters, the effect of skin deformations should be synthesized as much as possible to achieve the desired look. High-end 3D characters must make use of driven displacement maps in order to recreate the phenomenon of deforming skin properties when animated. It is possible to realize this powerful level of behavior with utility nodes, and then output a multi-pass render to an advanced photoreal film quality raytraced rendering engine, such...
Corrective shapes
Modeling corrective shapes to fix deformation when joints deform the face is the perfect techniques combination to achieve the exact pose you are attempting to reach. To do so, the corrective blend shape needs to be animated using a Set Driven Key that is activated when the joints rotate. Probably the most obvious and expected corrective blend shape is one driven by the jaw's rotation, which will allow the mouth's natural 0 shape to appear and stretch in a visually appropriate way, as though it...
Skinning the head
The main skeletal hierarchy for weighting the jaw can consist of two joints, both having pivots in the exact same location at the jaw, and both being children of the same parent, at the main head joint. This allows you to rotate the head upwards from the same single pivot and not change the jaw location, as well as conventionally rotate the jaw. Select the neck joints, the jawLowerJAJL and jawUpperJA_l joints, and then Shift-select the head geometry. Select Skin gt Bind Skin - Smooth Bind....
Corrective blend shape
The corrective blend shape will allow the mouth to stretch to maintain volume. It is easy to create by simply duplicating the un-deformed base model and making a front of chain blend shape. Continue with your own scene. Or Open the scene file 13-jaw_02.ma. Duplicate the head geometry without any deformations. Rename the duplicated geometry to OpenMouthCorrective. Even if the shapes are currently identical, you will create the blend shape deformer right away. This will allow you to see the...
Lesson Workflow
Now that you have covered the first step of establishing and preparing your project, you can start looking into various tools and workflow techniques available in Maya software. Doing so will get you started in no time and will speed up your everyday tasks. In this lesson you will learn the following The Soft Modification Tool How to use the Split Edge Ring Tool How to use a MEL script to select edge rings How to create custom hotkeys and Marking Menus. With the Soft Modification Tool, you can...
Naming convention
Every studio, if not production, will have its own set of naming conventions. It is extremely important to have a general set of rules everyone follows so that anyone can jump into any rig and find what they are looking for by simply glancing at the names. ng is an example of the naming convention used this book The name starts with a description of the node group or o nt chain. R is followed by the type of node it is, such as J for a joint, G for a group node, etc. then has a node letter. For...
Lesson Face controls
In this lesson, you will create face controls attached to the skin surface. These controls will make usage of clusters on mesh, which are really handy to use as additional translation controls to move the mesh around. Face controls are special because they will stay stuck on the mesh's surface, even as it deforms through other deformers. In this lesson you will learn the following How to create surface dependent controls How to paint cluster influence.
Challenges
It is nearly impossible in the current computer industry to build an analytical model of something as complex as the human face, and engineer it in such a way that it is capable of a broad range of mechanical behavior that passes as the real thing. Erick Miller facial expressions references Erick Miller facial expressions references Maya software technology does make it possible, however, to achieve believability. The face has many unique challenges, and because of that, there is no one golden...
Joint rotation order
The joint's rotation order is just as important as the joint's local rotation axis. It determines in which order the X, Y and Z rotations are applied onto the object. The best way of understanding the rotation order is to use the Rotate Tool with the Gimbal option turned On. Using the manipulator that way, you will see that X rotations do not affect the Y and Z values, Y rotations affect the X values but not the Z values, and Z rotations affect both the Y and X values. Mathematically, this...
Connecting the rigs
Now that the control rig and bound rig are complete, you can go through an example where you will connect the bound rig to a posed control rig. By using the workflow shown throughout this project, connecting the rigs is only a matter of executing a MEL script. The following example shows how to connect two rigs that are imported in the same scene file. The bound rig connected to the control rig The bound rig connected to the control rig In a new scene file, select File - gt Import Turn Off the...
Lesson The eyes
The eyes of a character are arguably the most emotive part of the face and they must be carefully set-up in order to achieve hyper-realism. You will now be shown techniques to rig the eyes so that they look as dynamic and fleshy as human eyes. Doing so involves eye blinks, eyelid deformation and pupil dilatation. In this lesson you will learn the following How to create a fleshy eye setup Mixing deformers and blend shapes Eye blinks are actually a straightforward set of shapes. In this example,...
Realistic skin shader
The goal of a good skin shader is to achieve what is called sub-surface scattering. Sub-surface scattering is the technical term for the effect of light reaching the skin, penetrating it, getting scattered in the flesh and then emerging with a fleshy color that may vary from place to place on the body, especially in the facial area. Although there is no direct mathematical calculation for explicitly calculating a sub-surface algorithm, you will now learn about building your own skin shader...
Twist bones
In the human body, the rotation of the wrist is spread across the entire forearm due to the radius and ulna bones twisting. Note The same type of spreading along a bone is also true elsewhere on the body but less apparent , not only because of bones twisting, but because the flesh is stretching when _ rotating a bone on its X-axis. If you open the file 09 boundRig_05.ma from the previous example, you will see that the wrist reacts correctly when bent on its Y and Z axes, but if you rotate it on...
Fleshy eyes
The fleshy eyes are an important part of the facial setup, because they add a necessary level of realism. Basically, the setup will have the eyelids moving and following the eyes as they look up and down, just as eyes do naturally. There are several ways to rig fleshy eyes, and some are more complete than others. The technique described here details a combination of skinning, Set Driven Keys, vector utility nodes and sculpt deformers. Open the scene file 14-fleshyEyes_01.ma. This scene contains...
Lesson The lips
In this lesson, you will create a rolling lips setup with joints and driven keys. You will also rig a system to reproduce sticky lips. Implementing one or both of these techniques will significantly improve the quality of your character's facial animation and is well worth the time you spend applying It. In this lesson you will learn the following How to create a rolling lips setup How to create a sticky lips setup An overview of combining the rigs.
Definition of character rigging
Before you can animate, you need to have a rig built for your creature. Many terms are used for the process of character rigging you may hear it called set-up, rigging, or puppeting, to name a few. Rigging is, by far, the most confusing and typically misunderstood procedure in the 3D pipeline process. It can be the most challenging, yet you may find it to be the most rewarding as well. As a rigger, you will most likely find that you are the one everyone relies on to solve problems, create...
How blend shapes work
A blend shape is really a very simple, but powerful linear deformer. The way that a blend shape works is first it subtracts the original model points from your newly modeled shape, leaving only the difference values for each point. It then simply multiplies these differences with the blend shape's weight value for that shape. Next, it adds the result back with the original vertex point. For each point on the model, calculate the resulting deformed position p as follows P Aa Wa Ab Wb Ac Wc Porig...
Fake iris refraction
The difficulty of realistic eye refraction done using real bent rays and raytracing in a shading model is not its ability to look real instead, the problem is that it is near impossible to be previewed by the animator, who is the one setting the exact position of where the eyes will be looking. The possibility exists to realistically fake the eye refraction directly in the scene, using simple deformers and some vector product nodes. This is possible since the eye is basically a spherical...
Joint chain creation
Before you can learn the automated way of joint creation, you need to understand how to layout joints the hard way. Based on the rules explained in the previous section, only the parent joint can have values in the Y and Z translation attributes. Also, you have to have the joint's local rotation axes lined up correctly with your model's bending orientations. Open the scene file 07-beastModel_01.ma. This scene contains the finalized beast from the first project. 2 Creating a simple joint chain...
Animation Face Topology
In this lesson, you learned about facial behavior, its underlying structure and the challenges that arise when rigging a face in a computer. You also learned the roots of creating good facial topology based on muscle and wrinkle lines, which is the key to good facial deformation. In the next lesson, you will explore two different ways of rigging a face blend shapes and joints.
Scripts for automation
Now that you have learned the true workings of how to create the ideal joint chain, here is a much more visual approach. The templateSkeletonLE.mel script should help you quickly edit the names and orientations of joint chains with just a few mouse clicks. This automated tool will make the creation of your joint chains or any creature rig much easier. Source the templateSkeletonLE.mel script in Maya software by doing one of the following Drag drop the script from the support_files directory. Or...
Low resolution model
Before you can hand over the control rig to the animators, you first need to insert a low resolution version of the bound model so that they can get an idea of what the character looks like and still have a decent playback rate when animating. You will now use a partially automated MEL script that will help you model the low resolution proxy geometry. Tile posed low resolution control rig Open the scene file 09-boundRig_06.ma. This scene contains the bound high resolution geometry from the last...
Character hierarchy
Now that you have built your creature's rig, you need to place the nodes and chains into an easy and clean hierarchy that is standardized so that anyone can find anything they are looking for quickly and easily. It is recommended to set and use standards for every creature and make sure every animator knows how to use and find things. The following steps explain how things should be organized in your control rig. Open the scene file 08-controlRig_01.ma. There should be only a single top node...
Lesson Control rig
In this lesson, you will be creating two distinct rigs. One rig will be used for the bound character and another will be used as the animator-friendly control rig. These two rigs will then be connected together with useful MEL scripts. You will also learn how to structure your hierarchies in order for everyone working with you to easily find what they are looking for. In this lesson you will learn the following Some more automation with MEL scripts Hierarchy structure convention Semi-automated...
Basic joint creation rules
Following are the general rules for a basic joint chain Only the parent joint can have translation values in X, Y and Z. Every other joint in the chain should only have a Translate X value. All joints in the chain should have 0.0 values in all the Rotation attributes. Joint rotations are only used to initially rotate the joint into position. All joints in the chain should have values of 1.0 in Scale. Joint orientation should be adjusted so the joint can rotate around the positive Z-axis in a...