Back in June, while helping Dave Spamer with the Tron remake, he asked for some help creating a medical animation. Now that all the secret parts have been removed from the animation, here’s the part that I worked on. My contribution was rigging and shaders for the vessel animation.
Medical Animation
The CGTalk FX Wars are held about every two months, and this time they held a competition in honor of the new Tron 2.0. Dave Spamer invited me to help him participate in the challenge. We have created the Tron style light cycle battle (part of it). Dave has been interested in Tron for years, and saw the CGTalk FX Wars as an opportunity to finish what he started years ago. I was responsible for the light trails effect and the setup of multi-pass rendering. I designed a tool that would allow Dave to draw the curves that he needs, select the curves, and generate the trails. I also created the material effect for the glow in the trail.
Click the image to see the animation.
Courtesy of the David Laser Scanner project there’s a way to do real-time 3d in Flash. It’s called Mesh2Flash. This tool was originally designed to showcase polygon meshes generated using the David Laser Scanner software, but I think this is great way to show off models made in any software. All you need is the .obj or .dae format, and the Mesh2Flash.swf takes care of the rest. You can find more information about Mesh2Flash here.
My biggest problem with this is that the .obj file must sit on the server with the Mesh2Flash.swf. I’ve very little means to protect these objects from being stolen. I tried password protecting the directory, but this only protected the directory. With a direct link to the .obj file a person could read the file with a simple text editor, and take the object. I think this is a dead end until I can find a means to secure my objects. My objects are far too valuable to have hanging out on the server for someone to take and use or sell. My understanding of the web is, “If you don’t want it stolen, then don’t put it on the web.”
Regardless of my fears, just imagine the possibilities of being able to pre-vis the 3d models a vendor might sell online. What a fantastic way to “see” the mesh before purchasing it. The Unity game engine would also be a viable way of showcasing real-time work in the browser, perhaps even more secure.
This model is not a scan, but is a primitive from XSI. It’s was then triangulated, and exported as an “.obj” format for use with Mesh2Flash.
Click the image to launch the Mesh2Flash.
Example of Real-time 3d in Flash
Click and drag in the view to rotate it.
Arrow keys: Rotate view
+/-: Zoom in/out
Z/z: Zoom in/out
f/F: Decrease/increase camera focal length
s: Start/stop continuous rotation
a,r: Reset camera
q,e: Roll camera
More AS3 fun.
Fireflies. Ok. Not fireflies, but it reminds me of them.
Fountain.
Notice the scale change from birth to death. It adds a nice dimension.
Dump Bucket. I imagined a bucket of bouncing balls dumped onto the floor. Classic bouncing ball from traditional animation ramped up.
Ulysses Unzueta is a student at Animation Mentor, and was a student of mine. He needed the bag rigged for his scene, so I helped him out. After studying his blocked shot I decided it was best to treat the bag as though it were a spine rig. Only thing missing is FK joint chain for the spine. I’ll add it later. Here is Uly’s work in the refining stage.
Bag Rig
In this shot, the bag and the rig for the bag is my contribution. The character, Stewie, is a product of the Animation Mentor online school.
You all can have the bag, too. Cheers. 
Download it.
Here’s a demo on the rig.
Bag Rig Demo
After a conversation with my student, Jake, I was reminded of some old research and experiments I did between April and July 2007. I spent my summer off from teaching trying to recreate Bernard Haux’s excellent rigging work. I don’t think my work was nearly as clean as Mr. Haux’s, but I was tapping into some good ideas for character freedom. The traditional animators of Disney were free to draw and not be limited by the technology’s or the technical director’s limitations. They could make marks on paper, over and over again. Their two primary tools are the pencil and the paper. Simple. Of course, I’m oversimplifying the traditional animation methods, but it is clear they were not bogged down by lists of tools or the failed design of a rig. One of the most challenging principles to include in a rigid 3d character is appeal; I’ll refer to appeal as the quality of the contour lines. Another challenging principle to include is squash and stretch; both automatic and manual S & S controls. In fact, most 3d I see floating around the web lacks this essential principle. In fact, often the animator is blamed for the lack of principles. Yet, it’s not necessarily the animator’s fault, and is most likely the rigger’s engineering of the character’s movement failed. It took me years to realize I was leaving out squash, even though I had achieved stretch. Sigh.
This rig design would adapt to the needs of the shot and scene. Allowing an animator to stay true to the storyboard and character designs. This gives tools for the animator to “free” the character from conventional methods of animating a rig.
In this concept demo I had a laundry list of options I was trying to achieve. Again, inspired by Bernard Haux’s demos. The arm had to have: 1. IK/FK switching for the whole arm, 2. Independent IK/FK blending for upper arm and lower arm, 3. Independent scaling of upper and lower arm, 4. Each node can be “torn away” from it’s parent, 5. Reshape the arm with a curve and objects along the curve, 6. A free elbow achieved by having IK enabled for both upper and lower arm , 7. Blend in standard corrective shapes, 8. Independent stretch for upper and lower arm. 9. Finally, Re-sculpt the mesh at any point during animation and key the sculpt. Take a look.
Adaptive Rig Prototype
The most successful outcome from studying Mr. Haux’s work, which I didn’t originally intend, was my step into object oriented programming or OOP. After creating my first successful “arm” rig I decided to automate the creation of this complex problem, so I could modify and recreate it without the need to repeat a list of steps in the software. Unable to automate the entire rig due to time constraints I completed one facet of this problem. That facet being the rig that runs along the curve. The “back bone” of my rig. Curve rigging has led me to some wonderful work, and has even changed the way I model. Now it’s possible for me to draw any curve or curves, and apply a rig to the curve with the click of a button. I build several features into this rig, and more recently have added sine wave auto-animation feature into it. Probably the strongest feature is the built in squash and stretch based on the length of the curve, and based on the compression of the object along the curve. Take a look at the curve auto-rig.
Rig From Curve
Programming the remaining rig setup was the next step, but I lost steam and time. Why did I lose energy? Well, I attended SIGGRAPH 2007 shortly after completing the demo reel. While there I learned from a few Dreamworks and Lucas Arts riggers that Python is THE programming language of choice in the 3d entertainment industries. That’s when I lost steam. I was doing ALL of my programming in J-script. Pfft. (I discovered years later, after trying to find info on how to use OOP in J-script that it simply is impossible to have true OOP in J-script). I stopped pushing this rig after running out of energy, and running out of time, and a new semester was about to begin. Regardless, here’s my demo reel from July 2007.
Demo Reel 2007
My dream is to return to this problem, and complete it in both XSI and Maya.
My most recent use of the curve rig is in Red, the Ball with a Tail. You’ll find superior squash and stretch with both the ball and the tail.
Waves Experiment
In August 2008, I was experimenting with building sine waves into my rigs, and I used this weird cactus object for the testing grounds. Click the image to see the results and the control panel. I was able to offset each wave to a unique object along the branch. In case you’re wondering what the weird surface is, it’s a cube instanced onto the surface using a hair object. It’s all very simple and fun to play with.
Later, around April 2009, I created dynamic tree branches that had secondary animation. As the root was oscillated with a sine wave the branches would respond dynamically. Each branch can be animated manually and can have the dynamics blend in and out. I never did get to the stage where I could build these things automatically. At least, not this dynamic branch. This branch was made in an hour, so it’s not very usable. It’s purely for experimental purposes; sketching, if you will.
Dynamic Branches Experiment
Here’s work completed for my client, Maria Sclafani, in 2006. Maria asked me to create a visualization of her invention. She came to me with a homemade modified swimming fin. It had cloth super clued to a cut rubber fin to demonstrate to me what it should look like. In addition she had a few crude drawings I then interpreted to create the visual below. It’s fun and challenging to create something from another person’s mind’s eye. Maria is seeking a manufacturer to build her product, and uses this visual to promote her ideas. She now owns the patent to her invention, and has given me permission to share the work I’ve done. I look forward to seeing her make her first sale, and look forward to the next invention!
I’ve included the three variations of Maria’s design from 2004 – 2006. Click the images for the movies. The first, 2004, was modeled in Lightwave and rigged, animated, and rendered in Messiah (back in my “test-every-software” days). The second, from 2005, was rendered, modeled, and animated in Lightwave. The last, from 2006, was completed in XSI 4.2.
The Thera-P-Fin, by Maria Sclafani, 2006
Aqua-Thera-P-Fin, by Maria Sclafani, 2005
Aqua Thera-p-fin, by Maria Sclafani, 2004
I think this is pretty cool stuff, and I’m proud of my work on this project. In October of 2008, I was invited to collaborate with Steve Mehallo, Jim Cassio, and Michael Scott to animate a prototype of a new website standard. I was responsible for creating and programming the animation. I was also responsible for following Steve Mehallo’s design of the interface to the pixel.
I hadn’t used Flash since AS 1.0 days, so I had to learn Action Script 3.0 programming very fast. I used research material published by Keith Peters to achieve my goal in one month (all while teaching full-time). Big thanks to Keith for being a great author and teacher! I used to dread programming in Flash, but now it’s one of my favorite things in Flash and is thoroughly satisfying. Animating with code is very cool. I retired from this project in December of 2008 to take on a part-time position teaching at the Art Institute of Sacramento from January 2009 – June 2009.
You can shift + click the circles to have them drag about. Also, alt + click to enable gravity, then you can shift + click to throw them around. See a larger version for the website prototype.
This is exciting! An old friend of mine, Brian, found me on facebook.com recently. He happens to be the person that built my first computer back in 1998. But not for free. I promised to complete this six foot by three foot charcoal drawing of a dragon in a landscape. The drawing was so heavy I used grommets on the top and bottom border to ensure he could mount and remount the drawing without damaging the paper. Then we did a swap. Well, that was it. I’ve been working with and playing games on computers ever since. I hope to get a higher resolution image from my friend Brian, but I’m super happy to be able to tell my story AND have the drawing to prove it. Thanks, Brian!
Dragon on the Shore
6 | Unique Visitors |
