Car progress

Hey internet,

Work has kept me busy lately with new internal projects, I haven't had the chance to write up my PyQT tutorials I posted about few months ago, I'm sorry. For now, I'll put those on hold and just talk about the car rig you might've read about a while ago. It was never just going to be a car, I wanted to build on from that and write a transformer rig that I can be proud of. It's not really meant to look like any particular style of transformer (cartoon vs movies) so it's more aimed at being a technical challenge for me to build.

Most of my time has been spent cleaning up rubbish topology on the car, ha. I gotta learn to just say "it's done, leave it!" and move on, otherwise I could spend weeks on fixing the front bumper and end up getting frustrated and leaving the project all together from lack of progress. So far, I haven't got bored of it yet, so that's a relief.

I did some designs of what I wanted the robot to look like too, I kinda just blocked out a biped design and kept adding primitives to it, trying to get a strong silhouette, but keeping in mind that is has to function correctly so as not to have to cheat my way through the rig when I get to that stage. Ultimately, this is a rigging project, not a modeling one.

The car has had some touch ups done to it too, the shell is essentially done, need to build the engine and inside of it next. I'll be working on a basic rig soon as well to test out my rigging pipeline, which I started writing too!

My pipeline has most of it's foundations written, but is missing the controls and rig section of the code. At the moment, I'm only able to start a project and work within that, dedicated data folders and module structure is setup, skeleton generation, export/import position, aim data and publish the current build I'm working on. The skeleton is made with a guide system, which is just a different way to visualise how a skeleton is put together in Maya. From this collection of nodes, you can quickly generate and test the skeleton.

Here, have a look at some images! Here's the car at the moment:

Here's the the mech (with a quick IK rig) standing next to the car. He's got lots of model work to go, so I'll skip the closeups.

Finally, the guide system. It doesn't look like much, but for me it's gonna be super easy to write my own skeletons for each character -- the car and mech in this case -- and any future character rigs I may want to try build in the future.

Righto, that's all for now. Dunno when the next post'll be, probably around Christmas when I go home for the holidays! I'll have lots of spare time to get more of this project done.

More car

Just a few updates...

I'll write up next when I finish the model, will probably be a while away though, still gotta model the interior and connect everything up!

Peugeot 206 WRC

I remembered I bought a toy model last year of a Peugeot 206 WRC and had been meaning put it together. I decided to pull it out of my cupboard and make it in 3D as a weekend project... which I think I'd now like to push towards having a new portfolio piece. My ultimate goal is model and rig, as primarily I'd like to give a decent vehicle rig a go.

I've been learning a lot about topology for hard body modeling, there's a reason why I ended up being a rigger and not a modeler, heh. Anyways, I'm getting better I think, especially after saving some reference images of other artists cars and studying their wireframes.

First up, this is my toy model in the box:

Saturday's effort:

Sunday:

Monday:

Starting to flesh out the guts a bit now and tidying up some edge loops as I go.

Qt Designer

Before I begin writing a new UI in PyQt, I like to use Designer to help design my UI and get some ideas down on screen. Designer is a tool that is part of the Qt download package, you can read more about it here.

It's great for putting some widgets and layouts together to visualise how you'd like your UI to look before writing it in Python. Or... you could just use the loadUI() method in Maya to bring it directly into Maya. I don't recommend this though, it's not very optimised and a bit annoying to connect up to custom methods.

Converting a .ui file to .py:
Save your .ui file you've just made in Designer, then load up command window (Windows) or terminal for OSX/Linux. Navigate to the folder where the .ui file is and type:

pyuic4 example.ui > example.py

This converts your .ui to a .py file, which you can now open and pick out what code you'd like to re-write and optimise. Pretty handy!

Check out this page for a slightly dated but still relevant tutorial: http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~afedosov/qttut/

First PyQt window in Maya

I've been using a bit of PyQt in Maya lately and felt like writing up some of my thoughts and solutions to problems I've come across in learning this module. I'm going to assume who ever is reading this has Maya 2011+ installed and intermediate knowledge of Python. If you're reading this as a beginner, I suggest checking out the following sites:

Python in Maya:
http://www.chadvernon.com/blog/resources/python-scripting-for-maya-artists/

PyQt examples:
http://diotavelli.net/PyQtWiki/Tutorials - A collection of PyQt tutorial websites.
http://zetcode.com/tutorials/pyqt4/ - One of my favourites. Note: These are written as standalone applications so won't work in Maya if you copy/paste. Just run these examples in IDLE or interpreter of your choice. This is what causes Maya to stall:

def main():
    app = QtGui.QApplication(sys.argv)
    ex = Example()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())

Maya already has it's own QApplication running when it opens, so creating a new one isn't necessary.

Maya PyQt window:
First up, let's start with a simple PyQt window in Maya that has a button which prints out a message!

Paste this into Maya:

from PyQt4 import QtGui
# inherit QtGui.QMainWindow class
class Main(QtGui.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self, parent=None):
        # runs __init__ in QMainWindow first, then overrides with Main
        super(Main, self).__init__(parent)

        # make a central widget
        self.centralWidget = QtGui.QWidget(self)
        # attach widget to the PyQt window
        self.setCentralWidget(self.centralWidget)

        # set the window title     
        self.setWindowTitle("PyQt window")
       
        # setup UI method
        self.setup_UI()

    # this method add things to the QMainWindow
    def setup_UI(self):
        # make a vertical box layout and set it's parent to the central widget           
        self.mainLayout=QtGui.QVBoxLayout(self.centralWidget)
      
        # make a button
        helloButton=QtGui.QPushButton("Hello")
        # connect button's click slot to say_hello method
        helloButton.clicked.connect(self.say_hello)

        # add the button to the main layout
        self.mainLayout.addWidget(helloButton)

        # set the QMainWindow's height and width to be fixed with given integers
        self.setFixedWidth(200)
        self.setFixedHeight(40)
        
        # bind this layout to QMainWindow
        self.setLayout(self.mainLayout)

    # make a print method
    def say_hello(self, *args):
     print "Hello, Maya!"

# show the window!
myWindow=Main()
myWindow.show()

There you have it! An example of displaying a simple PyQt window in Maya. Over the next couple of weeks I'd like write about some of the following topics:

• How to work with a QTreeWidget
• Mixing PyQt and Maya UI (reparenting windows and scripted panels)
• Custom right click menus on QWidgets
• Adding popup windows
• Parenting to Maya's window explanation

New project

Lately I've been working on another podcast animation with some friends of mine. I don't want to say who or what the subject of the animation is just yet, but I can share some pictures. You can find these at:

www.facebook.com/balltiggy
https://twitter.com/#!/Balltiggy
www.balltiggy.com

They're all pretty much hosting the same stuff for now, but thought I may as well share all of the links. Balltiggy is the name I like to release my cartoons/shortfilms under, I've only made one so far, that was an animation for Hamish and Andy back in 2010. I also had my computer stolen last year and I lost all of my work on future episodes for that series, so decided to just leave it.

The next animation I'm working on features the talents of 3 of my good friends. Mike Glasswell on animation, Anand Hira on sound and Mike Hardcastle on post. This means I can to focus all of my energy on art direction and my other love; rigging! We're about to begin our first phase of animation next week, all storyboards, rigs and backgrounds are ready to go. I'm very excited and I hope it is received well as it's been super fun to make.

New character!

Been working on a new character model in my spare time, hoping to use this little guy as my first character rig so I can try out some bits and pieces. So far he's coming along great! Still very early, but you can kinda see some of his personality shining through. He's a little adventurer.

Designs were done by my pal, Jesse Oldershaw.

Installing PyQT on OSX

Here are two websites I found very helpful with installing PyQT on my Mac.

http://www.oak-tree.us/blog/index.php/2009/05/12/pyqt-mac

This tutorial would seem like the installation is pretty straight forward... however I ran into some trouble where I couldn't install PyQT4 in the terminal due to an annoying error. I eventually came across this site:

http://www.pythonsummerschool.net/mac_pyqt.html

...and it worked! Here is a link to a forum post I made which has a lot more information on what was happening and what platform I was using.

EDIT:
Or... you could head over here and read this post:
http://www.justinfx.com/2011/11/09/installing-pyqt4-for-maya-2012-osx/

Inside is a fantastic little package that does everything for you from one install! Awesome.

D'aww, my first script.

I've been learning Python for a few months now and have been really enjoying it. To start off this new section of my blog, here is my first script I've written here at home! It's written in Python, using the PyMEL module.

This script will take what ever you have selected, group and add a '_Group' suffix. Very simple, but I use it often.

import pymel.core as pm
import maya.OpenMaya as om
 
# List our selection
sel = pm.ls(sl=1)
 
# Check to see if you have objects selected or not.
if len(sel) < 1:
    # No objects selected? Display this message.
    om.MGlobal.displayError("No objects selected.")
else:
    # 1 or more objects selected? Group all of them and 
    # add  '_Group' suffix
    for item in sel:
        pm.group(item, n=str(item) + "_Group")

It took me a while to get that Syntax Highlighter script working, but it was worth it. Click the little question mark in the top right of the code to find out more. Fantastic!

Update!

Oh man it's been a while since I've written here, oops!

I've been living in Auckland for a few months now and really enjoying rigging. At first, like with most new things, it was very frustrating getting settled in and having to learn a new job. But now, I can happily say that I've found my new passion. Animation was fun, but there's something about the problem solving side of rigging and working alongside animators to make beautiful user friendly rigs that makes this so much more satisfying to me.

I spend each day setting up props, both small and large for Penguins of Madagascar and Robot and Monster, two shows that air on Nickelodeon. This usually involves simple tasks like wire deformers, lattices, FK setups, squash and bend deformers too. Sometimes, I'll get to rig a stretchy IK spline with secondary deformers... oh boy, what a treat! Now and then we have to setup entire sets too, which involves a lot of making new proxy geo, testing UVs and adding in rigs where needed.

During my spare time, I've been focusing on learning Python as much as I can. I do a little bit of MEL now and then, but mostly Python as I find it's a more interesting language to read/write. So far I've written  a few of my own scripts which I'll be uploading to my scripts page when I get around to it. They aren't very complicated and often tailored directly to how I work, but using these scripts has sped up my workflow by an enormous amount. I've been trying to get into programming best I can as I can see how beneficial (if not essential) it is going to be further down my career path.

I haven't really given up animation, I still do some 2D stuff now and then with my flatmate on projects we share. I sometimes make little 3D tests with my rigs, but just haven't done too much more with it. Oh yeah, speaking of animation, I got my Wotwot's - Season 2 footage sent to me in the mail! It's so great to see my old work, especially since it was my first 3D job and over a year ago. I loved working on that show! Met so many cool people and learned an enormous amount.

My goals over the next few months is to get some of my scripts online and start planning out some character rigs. Hell, I'd love to release a free rig to the community one day! Hopefully when I'm a better.

Feb update

I've been freelancing for the past 6 weeks working on a few projects in Aussie. One was a couple of lip sync exercises for a small studio in Sydney and the other is an ad campaign in Bunubry, Western Aussie for a company called Weathersafe. I've been busy with making 4 new TV ads for them and so far I'm really enjoying it. It's basically made just like the Hamish and Andy toon I did a while ago, but with a bit more screen activity and vibrant colours.

Also moving up to Auckland in two weeks! Got a new job as a set/prop rigger at Oktobor working on various shows for Nickelodeon which is pretty rad, perfect for me as I want to take my career slightly away from animation and work more towards learning rigging, ultimately ending in pre-vis or layout. Animation is fun, but I can manage that in my own time while learning new things in a professional environment.

I'll post up the TV ads when I finish them all and the boss is happy with them. Hopefully in the new few months, they take a wee while to make! The best thing about getting a new job is finally having the willpower and time to make more personal stuff in my spare time. I have been waiting to make new Hamish and Andy toons and so many short films are sitting ready in my secret ideas book waiting to be made. 2011 is gonna be a busy year, I can't wait to share things with you again, internet (L).

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

I have eaten too much ham and it's not even dessert time yet. Update time though...

I was contacted by Hamish and Andy about funding a 12 episode web series over 16 weeks for next year, but emails stopped coming in and I'm guessing they found someone else to make 'em or got bored with the idea. Soooo! I'll go back to making my episodes in my spare time (read: gonna take ages). I'm about half way through episode 2, I'll finish it off next year some time.

I've just finished up a 6 week animation course over at AnimSchool. I was lucky enough to be accepted into the beta testing team, a classroom of students from around the world who helped test the technology and general use of the website. It all went fantastic! This is what I ended up with after finishing my class.

Oh, an idea came to me the other day while working on the family farm. I've taken a few steps towards writing my very own short film! It's still in the very early stages of development, but I'm liking where it's going so far. It's about salt and pepper arguing over who is liked most on what food. Pepper is a bit of a dick.



So... year! Not much to show these days, it's all .mb files and WIP pieces of animation. Sigh. Oh wait, look! I drew this for Cory a while ago for his second comic book.



See ya later, internet friends.

I'm back... kinda!

Last day of work tomorrow. It's been amazing, I've learned a helluva lot.

Just launched Balltiggy, a new creative outlet to keep me busy. Check out the first episode of Hamish and Andy!

That's all from me for now, I'll be updating again soon. Byeeee

Just quickly

Going to a weekend Python class taught by Taylor Carrasco, Animation TD from Weta Digital. Lots to learn this weekend!

Update on Hamish and Andy project, just playing with colours and ironing out issues with the rigs.



Next comes the other backgrounds and the bird rig.

Projects

Ages ago, I started planning out a short 90 second clip from the Hamish and Andy show. I wanted to animate one of the stories they end up telling each other, so I found a clip in one of their podcasts about a bird who walks across a telephone line, instead of flying. Andy witnesses this and isn't impressed.

Here is a test image of where I'm at in terms of progress. All characters rigged and tested, assets drawn and backgrounds roughed. I'm due to start animating next weekend, as I'm busy this weekend being a nerd and learning Python (yay!) - but when I do start animation, I'll be able to crank out 90 seconds or so of animation hopefully within the month.

Toy Story 3 is amazing, also life drawing on Tuesday and Thursdays is great too. Ahh, it's 12:04am. I should be in bed, work tomorrow!

Fat bee

Today while eating lunch with Ruby, a bee landed on the custard pie she was eating.

She accidentally bumped the pie as she broke some off, this clearly upset our new bee friend.


What a rude bee.

So excited!

Oops, it's been a while since I've written here.

NEWS:
* Documentary is all done! It's going to be air mid June some time. Struggled through the final stages, but learned lots during the journey.
* Bought a Canon 500D which I am really enjoying. Decided to give photography a try and now I'm spending my weekends taking pictures and learning how things work. Currently shooting through a 18-55mm lens, gonna buy some more lenses as I get better.
* Worked at Tangata Whenua TV for a few months on a show about animals. I was using a program called Anime Studio 6, both rigging and animating characters. I was working there until two weeks ago when suddenly ... I got a job at Weta!
* Started working for Weta on a TV show called The WotWots! I'm working as an animator on season two of the show and absolutely loving it. Hard work, but definitely awesome.

So! In short, now I'm living in Wellington with two bags of clothes, a camera and my bike. Everything is fantastic! I don't have a computer at the moment so I can't upload recent work/drawings/animation/photos. I'll be buying a laptop soon when I move into my new flat, then I'll share some new stuff. Exciting!

New job!

Doco is almost done! Putting on final touches through out this week.

Starting a new job tomorrow working with my buddies Mikey and Dane at Tangata Whenua Television. Working in Flash and animating short stories for kids.

This will be my first time I've worked in Flash professionally, so I've been cramming my head with revision and learning as much as I can before tomorrow.



Tests are fun!

25 days

25 more days left and I'll be finished the documentary! I'm pretty happy with the progress and how everything is looking. I'm looking forward to getting this done and getting back into 3D. I miss Maya! :(

My buddy Rick has been helping me out with some backgrounds for this project as well. I provide him with the layout, he sends them back completed. Here's an example of where we're headed with the first sequence of 3.



Then after a few moments in AfterEffects, we end up with something like this:

SH002_BG.mov
(4.3mb)

Not what I'd call final, but gives a good example of where I'd like to head with all of this!

OK, time for bed.

Merry Christmas!

Oh my, been a very long time since I have updated this place!

Lately, I've been working at home on tidying up my portfolio. I've set myself a deadline to try get everything sorted by early next year, including new website, demo reel and business cards, etc! So far things are coming along well, but still a while to go yet.

I've also been working on a project resulting in me working from home for the next 6 or so weeks. I can't say much about it just yet, but I'm tasked with doing 90 seconds of animation with a lot of creative freedom. It's a bit daunting, but it's coming along well. Attached are some story boards I did to help give me a feeling of some of the scenes I need to create.



Will be posting more work in the new year as I get them done for my portfolio. Until then, Happy holidays, everyone!