Johnny Textured

Recently, I've been working on my animatic or movie reel now that it's called. I haven't been posting it on here, because the movie has to be a really small size. Besides that, I've been working on character texturing and here is some pictures

Only a few more weeks of classes left. Got a lot of work to do.

Johnny Blendshapes and Animation

I've spent the weekend cleaning everything up and getting ready to be used in the animation. I'm currently using the Set and the Character as references. I got the first few shots in and will continue working on it throughout the rest of the semester.

I fixed the TV to make it look more 'real,' the idea of the cartoony TV didn't go down too well, but really, this is actually how I originally going to have it, so ya.

I've also been working on blend shapes:

Overall, I'm liking the results. Although the smile isn't quite what I want and the angry eyebrows seems a little too boxy.

Update 7/17:

I updated the TV to just two simple knobs

Johnny Rig Complete

After a few hours of trying to figure out how to work the eyes. I finally figured it out. Instead of orienting the eye mesh to a joint or locator, I aimed the mesh directly the control. Wasn't something I wanted to do, but it was the only way it would work. So I cleaned it up, I just ran into one problem: If the spine is twisted far enough back, then some of the neck joints flip. So, that's something I'm going to have to fix, but it's ready to be used in referencing

Here's some color tests:

Rigging Johnny's Eyes

Over the past couple of days, I've mostly been working on the eyes. This is becoming the most challenging part of the entire rig. Because I have the joints influencing the individual eyelid meshes, it's making things very difficult, because I can't mirror or copy the weights over. So, I discovered how to duplicate meshes that still has history on it. So in a sense, I've been able to duplicate the eye over to the other side with the joints skinned to the meshes. However, this puts translate values in some of my groups, which I don't want, but unfortunatly they're there. So, I put all the translate valued groups into their own groups with no translates, which I guess is a cheat way of getting around it lol.

My next problem is connecting it to the main rig. Because it's in a lattice, it's going to make things a bit different.

But good news is the rig is almost done, apart from blendshapes, which is my next task. Which means about half the control curves in the face are going to be gone.

Body UV, Environmental modeling, Organizing the outline

So since the last update, I've been reconsidering my joints vs blend shape ideas for the face. I've already said I was going to do the mouth in blendshapes, well I'm not considering doing the eyebrows, cheeks along with it. I think this way I would have more cleaner expressions, but it's going to take a little while to make the changes.

Anyways, this is what I've been working on:

finished modeling the body, then I UV mapped it

I also readjusted the Face UV map. This is as far as I can go with it, otherwise I'll have to start shrinking things down.

Along with that I've also worked on some modelling work. I fixed the chair so that the back is slanted backwards.

I modeled the TV. I went with a cartoon-y, classical, yet modern style, because I see my character as a reflection as myself and I consider myself kind of a traditional but yet modern kind of guy. I also modeled further the plane cockpit and redid the pilot's chair:

I also added rigs to everything, chair, boxes, shelves, doors, ect. Not the buttons, switches, and the cockpit. There are over 50 buttons, and I know I don't need that many controls.

I also organized the outline of the plane which is the first time I really touched the outline, so that took a lot of time. I also tweaked the character rig. Parenting things up, organizing the outline again. Just getting everything ready for referencing: background and character. Which that too is something I've been researching: how to reference.

I've ended up doing a lot of wrong during this week off, but I was still hoping to get more done than what I did... but, I am on schedule. So that's a good thing. For the most part I've finished modelling,  I'll just adjust models and add little miscellanous items here and there. Camera's have already been established. Rig and UV is almost done, which would make those things ahead of schedule. Blend shapes might carry me over to being done on time.

Face Binding

I started working on binding the face. I figure in order to get facial animation, I need to skin the face up. I think it would be difficult using proxy for it instead for the timebeing. This is my first time skinning as well as learning to skin, and I know it's not perfect, I'll modify it further later on in the project. I'm finding this portion to be really demotivating. I don't know, parts of it is coming out right and others I'm not getting what I'm wanting.

Anyways, here's some pics of the skinning process:
 Here's base pose

Here's skinned, what's skinned: Hair, Ears, Eyebows, Lower Eyebrows, Snout, Ulva, Cheek, Lower Jaw (lower jaw has a stretch, like the cartoons where the jaw would drop to the floor. I don't really plan to use it too much, but it's there just in case.






Here's with Tongue and Teeth:

I think it looks weird with there being no eyes yet.

I think when it comes to the lips, I'm going to need to do blend shapes. I was kinda hoping not do it, but I feel like it needs it instead of joints. I was hoping to have the rig totally done by the time I got back to school, but now I have to learn how to do blendshapes now, but I'll see what happens.

Johnny Face UV Mapping

So, yesterday I've been working on UV mapping the face, but for some reason I was not getting the results I was wanting and started thinking how to UV map. I was  getting extremely frustrated, working on it the whole day, the picture below is the results I was constantly getting, half of t was good, then the other half was a mess. This morning I finally thought, I wonder what the normals are like. So, I turned on the normals and somehow when I duplicated the mesh and then froze transformations, the normals reversed, so I had to reverse the normals back. I finally started getting what I was wanting.

So, I spent the day UV mapping the face correctly. I built a few color maps for the face, but unfortunately when I export the map, it brings along an alpha channel. Because I have Photoshop 'Elements,' I can't access that information. So, I have to wait until I get to the school to get rid of that. I've been thinking about getting Gimp (free program equivalent of Photoshop), but I haven't done it yet, which then I could probably access that information. This is a few pictures of that UV map and how it looks with a checkered file. I might try to reorganize the UV map arrangement a bit.

Eyelid Work

I haven't done what I was hoping to get done, instead I've been working on an instruction guide on how I did this rig. Which I believe will help me if I need to go back and edit the rig or for future rigs. I think it's a good idea since I'm already forgetting some of the things I did.

Although I have worked on the eyelid. I added a few joints to further control the eyes' expressions. I was hoping I would I wouldn't have to skin yet, but in order to get any facial animations... I need to. This is the first time skinning, didn't really know what I was doing, but honestly, it's not really that hard. I picked it up pretty quick.

The eyelid still needs a bit more work, maybe eliminating the middle joint and just leave the right and left joints, or mess with the skinning a little bit or blend shapes instead, which I kinda want to stay away from.