#killingfloor2 teaser trailer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUJZW9Wqckg&feature=share

Killing Floor 2

Here is it!  I joined Tripwire about a year ago and it's been an amazing year working with the brilliant artists and gamers.  So the news is out - Killing Floor 2!  This is my first IP since graduation and I couldn't have asked for a better game to work on!

http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/05/08/killing-floor-2-exclusive-first-look-co-op-fps-horror-with-the-most-advanced-gore-system-ever/

Made it to Academy of Art's Spring Show 2013

I heard that I made it to the Spring Show for 2013.  My friends told me that I made 2nd place!  Good to hear!  Here is the poster that I made for the school.  Cheers!

Now in Georgia!

Thanks to all my friends and family for their support over the past few months.  I am now starting a new journey working at Tripwire Interactive!  The people here are super nice and great at what they do.  I'm lucky to be part of the team!  Plus Georgia is a beautiful place! :)

Just arrived last night for GDC!  I attended a networking event today and met some really great artists and programmers.  I'm super excited to attend GDC tomorrow!

GC DevKit for HTML5 Games

Check it out:  https://vimeo.com/59646792

UI Design Links

I started looking into  UI designs for games and came across some cool articles that I would like to share:

http://gamedev.tutsplus.com/tutorials/aesthetics/game-ui-by-example-a-crash-course-in-the-good-and-bad/

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/#popular-alertboxes

http://carynvainio.com/?p=1028

Digital tutors has a nice UI design course for mobile devices:
http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?vid=12210

Chimera nCloth Wing Sim Draft

I performed this ncloth wing simulation on the Chimera a while back but never got around to posting it.  It definitely needs a lot of work.  The Chimera had a really high poly count and I remember the render took nearly two hours to simulate.  Because the original Chimera had a double sided wing, I had to simplify it so the simulation would not take so long.  To accomplish this, I made a copy of the original creature but deleted everything except the left wing.  I used the top portion of the wing and deleted the bottom.  In hindsight, I would have made a simpler geometry with less polys to reduce the run time.  This wing geometry was made into nCloth where I ran the simulation.  I used the simplified geometry to influence the creature.  I painted out the influence of the wing simulation on the geometry (white or black depending on the areas that I want simulated).    The settings need tweaking to get the right deformations.  At the time of simulation, some of the attributes that I adjusted included:  thickness, input mesh attract, deform resistance, drag, lift, friction, collision interations and max iterations.

A trick that I learned to get the right deformation is to create several nCloth simulations that are piped into the mesh.  From that point,  you can paint out the influence of the blendshape.  The idea is to get varying simulations that give you the look that you want.   You can paint in the influence of the simulation (paint blendshape weights) and also change the weight of the blendshape.  Pretty nifty trick.

Free Rigging Webinar!

Escape Studios is hosting a webinar with Jakub Krompolc on his work in Total Recall! And its free!
http://www.escapestudios.com/the-vfx-behind-total-recall-rigging-the-synths/

Right Mouse Button Convenience Functions

For my two sea otter thesis projects, I added right mouse button accessible IK/FK Switching, Dynamic Parenting for the IK arms and for the Arm Pole Vector controls. These were convenience functions that were added for the animators. I used MEL scripts to add the custom feature on the Right Mouse Button menu and used Python scripts to run the commands.

Face Shape Corrective

I've been meaning to post an example of a face shape corrective. Here is the oo + frown shape when added together and the shape sculpted to look better using zbrush. I used some face tools and logic to trigger the corrective when both the oo and frown face shapes are activated.

Some Key Auto-Rig Features

I noticed that my showreel was quite fast and some of the rig features were not showcased. Some of features for the autorigger are shown on the poster.

Anatomy/Sculpture Links

Some great videos put together by John Vukelic on sculptural techniques:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL50AD31FBDF02239D
AnatomyZone:
http://www.anatomyzone.com/
General Skeleton Basic Tutorial - Anatomy Tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIoBoGSPkws&list=PLwd7gXkWHeN6wT4CTi1MtT1vS9UyS_vW8

UI created for my Thesis Character

I created the UI using QT designer and then I wrote some code using PyQt so that the interface worked in Maya. The GDC 2011 Masterclass: Creating QT Interfaces for Maya and Motionbuilder was a good tutorial that I used to get the ball rolling.

I am now an MFA Graduate!

It's been a while since I have posted on the blog. My semester has been quite full finishing up my thesis and my last semester at AAU. I posted my thesis presentation on my riggingdiaries website. Its over 5 minutes long but I will update my showreel to be a lot shorter (about 2 minutes). In the meantime, here is a photo of my ecorche that I finished during my last semester. I loved my ecorche class and I learned so much about anatomy but will continue to keep learning. Its important for riggers to know about figure and facial anatomy.

Rapscallions Thesis

The Khassay sea otter rig is complete except that I need to add the PSDs and continue working on the face. The animators are animating and hopefully I will get to post some playblasts in the next week or so.

The "War of Evolution" project that I worked on is making some progress. Here is the link for scene updates on the trailer. http://woespring.blogspot.kr/p/visual-development-dragon-and-sapo.html

My Summer Internship

Its been a long time since I've posted on the blog. I've been busy working at Volition for my summer internship. The internship has been great. People are super nice and the company is working on some cool games that I can't mention about. :) I've been learning a lot of things. I've coded up their prototype autorigging system using Python in Maya. Its almost done. I will definitely post up a demo video of the rigging system at the end of the month. http://www.volition-inc.com/staff/eugene-yanza/

Left Mouth Widget Success

My test script was successful!

This script builds a square nurbs control widget that will automatically build blendshapes from sculpted shapes that are selected by the user. This script allows the user to enter in eight mouth face shapes plus the base shape into the UI’s text fields and allows the user to name the blendshape before creating it. The script builds a node selection system that knows what shape to trigger on(and how much weight) depending on where the nurbs controller is at. Limitations: The script needs to be expanded for the mouth open scenario. This script is only for the mouth closed scenario. I plan to expand this script to mirror the control on the right side and also so that it can be used when the mouth is open.

This script is useful for automating and speeding up the face rigging process. The concept can be used to build other specific face controllers such as the eyebrows, forehead, nose and cheeks. By building pieces of the face controllers, one main script can be made for the entire face.

Thanks to my friend Les Bogert for providing the the head called "Gilbert". The mouth shapes were quickly created only for testing the script.

Left Corner Mouth Widget Control

I revised my idea for the face UI I was working on. Instead, I created a left corner mouth widget maker. It creates a controller for the left corner of the mouth. All you need to do is add your blendshapes to the text fields, name your blendshape, and press the buttons as you go down the UI. I coded about 50% of the tool and need to work on the remaining portion. It works pretty smoothly. It will build a corner controller, make the deltas needed when two shapes are turned up to 1, and rebuilds the blendshapes but adds a node selection system to know how much weight of the blendshape to trigger depending on where you are on a square controller. I will post a demo once I finish coding the remaining half. My test was successful on dummy shapes I used for the Base, Mouth Up, Smile and Mouth Wide shapes. I will need to code one for the right mouth corner once I finish this portion. Version 1.0 will be the closed mouth version of the widget. Version 2.0 will add the mouth open function and I will have to adjust for the mouth opening as the jaw control is rotated. This widget is great if you can't use a plugin such as the Blendshape Combination System. For me, it was a great way for me to learn how to have two blendshapes at value 1 but trigger the desired shape you want rather than the typical blendshapes resulting from the additive behavior in Maya.