Creating a Custom Jiggle Deformer
I have created another video series over at CGCircuit.com. This one is titled Creating a Custom Jiggle Deformer and goes over the creation of a custom jiggle deformer that you can use in your projects. Check it out here. And here is the intro video: ...
Creature Art and Mechanics
We've launched! A group of artists and technologists that helped bring “Davy Jones” to life in “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and made everyone's favorite childhood robots leap into action in “Transformers,” have launched a new studio based in Marin County, CA. The men, formerly Creature and Character Designers from ILM, Digital Domain, and Imagemovers Digital, have launched “Creature Art and Mechanics Digital” (CAM Digital or CAMd). The announcement was made today by the new company's founding partners Scott C....
CGCircuit Open to the Public
CGCircuit.com is now open to the public. My Maya API video series and Applied 3d Math series are now available for purchase without the need for an invitation. Check them out if you haven't already....
CGCircuit.com
The site creators of CGCircuit.com are ready to let more people in and buy my videos! The videos are finally ready to be sold. However, you still need an invite to register on the site and buy the videos. I have a new set of invites to give away so use my contact form to send me your email if you want in and I'll send you an invite. The Maya API class is still discounted at $80 until a month after the full public release....
Maya API and Applied 3d Math Videos
My Maya API videos will soon be released. I've gotten word that they will be open to the public very shortly. The Maya API series is about 6 hours worth of video covering several topics from creating commands, contexts, locators, deformers, file translators, and dependency graph nodes to working with callbacks, multi-threading, attribute editor templates, and distributing your plug-ins. I've also created an Applied 3d Math video series. This series is a little over an hour and covers how to actually use 3d math with practical examples....
Reflection Locator
Here is another sample from my upcoming Maya API video series. In the video I discuss custom locators and go through how to implement them. The video series should be available around January 2012. ...
Draw Curve Context
This is a demo of a Maya context that I developed as part of my upcoming Maya API instructional video series. It draws curves from a mesh. It could be used to draw hair curves or something along those lines. The video series should be available around January 2012. ...
Maya Move Brush
For some reason, the Maya artisan tool does not have a move brush so I wrote my own. ...
Free cvShapeInverter Tool
I put up a free shape inversion tool available here. cvShapeInverter is a script and deformer that can invert a shape through a deformation chain so the shape can be applied as a front of chain shape. This has the same functionality as Christian Breitling's correctiveShape plug-in. He stopped providing it after Maya 2008 so I'm providing a Python version that doesn't need to be compiled....
cvShapeInverter
Direct download Starting in Maya 2017, Maya comes with the equivalent command, invertShape.``` import maya.cmds as cmds cmds.loadPlugin(‘invertShape’, qt=True) cmds.invertShape() Description =========== A script and deformer that can invert a shape through a deformation chain so the shape can be applied as a front of chain shape. This has the same functionality as Christian Breitling's [correctiveShape](http://www.b-ling.com) plug-in. He stopped providing it after Maya 2008 so I'm providing a Python version that doesn't need to be compiled....
Short Animation
A few former coworkers of mine worked together to put together this little animation using a couple of rigs I made. Check it out: Animation - George Aleco-Sima LookDev/Rendering - Brad Falk Textures - Terry Molatore Rigs and Creature Model - Chad Vernon Matte Paint - Alfonso Villar Sound Effects - Kyle Gray Technical Wizard - Geordie Martinez ...
New Job at Digital Domain
I'm happy to announce that last month, I accepted an offer to work at Digital Domain‘s new San Francisco office as a Rigging Pipeline TD. This was my first week of work and it looks like it is going to be an amazing opportunity. The small talented team is lead by Academy Award winning VFX Supe, Stephen Rosenbaum. With solid leadership and a talented team, we should be churning out some great work in the future....
Updated Sticky Lips Deformer
This is an update of my sticky lips deformer. In an attempt to make the deformer more automated, I've implemented a mode where the vertices stick on contact and then fade off with time. The original mode is based solely on distance and so would stick together even if the mouth was on its way to being closed. The frame stuttering is from the Camtasia settings. The deformer runs in real-time....
UV Blendshape Deformer
A deformer that blends one mesh to another based off of UVs. Mesh topology can differ and you can optionally maintain the initial offset between the two meshes. Uses include transferring existing work onto another mesh. The demo shows transferring shape work from one face to another. The faces have different vertex counts and topologies but share the same UV layout. ...
Vertex Snap Deformer
A deformer that can drive subsets of a mesh with other meshes. Uses include driving a body with a blendshaped head or driving larger meshes with a heavily rigged subset of the mesh. This can increase performance as the heavy rigging isn't affecting the larger mesh. ...
Motion Blur Deformer
A deformer that simulates motion blur geometrically. The amount and falloff of the “blur” can be adjusted with keyable attributes. ...
Sticky Lips Deformer
This shows a deformer that attracts vertices to a nurbs curve using a distance-based falloff. It can be used to create sticking effects like sticky lips. Various attributes can be adjusted and animated such as falloff, distance threshold, magnitude, etc....
Spherical Radial Basis Function Driven Corrective Shapes
This shows an implementation of a Spherical Radial Basis Function node. SRBF is commonly used in lighting calculations like this http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~ttwong/papers/srbf/srbf.html. I am using SRBF here to track joint position and orientation. This gives me a weight value per target that I can then use to drive corrective shapes. Each target point has its own falloff and twist attributes to adjust the triggering sensitivity. The rig is my free quadruped rig, Nico, which you can download here:https://www....
Maya Technology Demos
More technology demos! First is a dynamic transform node. The node is applied to various joints and IK handles. The node can also drive arbitrary attributes so they behave dynamically as well. Next is a custom jiggle deformer. The reasons why I created my own jiggle deformer as opposed to using Maya's jiggle deformer is because of speed and ease of use. Mine runs a lot faster and is easier to use....
GPU Blendshape Performance Comparison
This is a performance comparison between Maya's blendshape deformer and my GPU-based blendshape deformer with 1000 targets on a 30,000 vertex mesh. The test is using an Nvidia Geforce 230M video card. ...