Tech
ICE
ICE is an advanced auto rigging system that employs a module-based approach to generate top-quality rigs comparable to those used by leading animation studios such as Pixar and Disney. The system's early versions have been extensively utilized in various projects and received high praise from seasoned animators within the industry. The concept behind ICE continued to evolve until it culminated in the release of Ice 1.0, which marked the first complete version of the auto rigging system.
Crystals
I have designed and developed an IDE called Crystals to be used in conjunction with my rigging pipeline ICE. Crystals serves as a robust integrated development environment for the ICE system.
Advanced Facial Rigging
Jane Porter
Facial rigging is the process of creating a digital framework, such as a set of control curves or bones, that allows animators to manipulate a character's facial expressions and bring them to life in animations and visual effects. It involves a combination of techniques, such as joints and blend shapes, to create realistic facial movements, including lip sync and expressions.
In my experience, I spent approximately 6 months working on Jane's facial rig during Chris Pagoria's class at AnimSchool. This was my first attempt at creating an advanced facial rig, and it involved a lot of trial and error. However, I learned a lot of incredible techniques during this time.
I used a combination of joints and blend shapes for Jane's rig, with blend shapes being primarily used for appealing facial shapes like the mouth and brows, and joints for technical elements such as the eyes, jaw, and mouth zipper. Additionally, I incorporated blend shape correctives on top of the joints.
The Jane facial rig video received over 10,000 views on YouTube in just the first week of publication, and I received a lot of positive feedback from animators and supervisors at major animation studios like Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks, Sony, and Blue Sky Studios. I am extremely proud of this project and always use it as a reference for any facial rigging work.
Realistic Clothes Tutorial
3D World Magazine
An exclusive tutorial I made for 3D World Magazine, and it got published in Issue 211, September 2016. I talk about my workflow of creating realistic clothes using Marvelous Designer. All patterns, project files and video tutorials are available for download at 3D World Magazine website.
“Making realistic virtual clothes is one of the most challenging tasks since the innovation of CG animation. Clothing is an extremely important aspect of 3D character development, it can tell a story behind the character’s personality. Making virtual clothes became easier because of the advance technology we have nowadays – we can use our creative imagination with the right tools to create realistic clothes in few hours!”
Read more in Issue 211, 3D World Magazine
Clothing Studies
Marvelous Designer
These are some samples of clothing studies and research I made in the 1st quarter of 2016, the idea behind the study is to define a pipeline for clothes creation in CG. I focused on making casual clothing, understanding the real-world sewing pattern and how to use them in the 3D environment.
I believe that the research was very successful; I prepared a documentation and pipeline of making CG clothing. The documentation covers main subjects such as:
- How to prepare the character model for cloth simulation.
- How to use the real-world patterns to design the CG garments.
- How to simulate the clothing on a static character.
- How to simulate clothing on an animated character
- How to use the cloth simulation in ZBrush and the other sculpting software.
- How to rig and/or simulate the final output in Maya.
Marvelous Designer used for the simulation and KeyShot for the rendering.
