Applying Mocap Data to Nora

Was testing and learning about adding mocap onto models without custom rigs for a project.  Ended up learning a ton about human IK and more about how to set up mocap in both Maya and Motionbuilder.  The only model I had at hand was Nora so that's what I used and I thought it was a neat end result without any polishing on the animation.  I also learned a bit about batch rendering and ended up doing a quick practice with it for this video.

Blend Shapes with Nora

After receiving our Nora model in my school group project, I dived straight into learning how to use blend shapes for our model.  It was one of my first time using Zbrush so there was an infinite amount of troubleshooting.  Also, at the time I stumbled upon one of Blizzard's articles about updates on their new Tauren model and really liked how simple and nice looking their mouth chart looked so I pretty much copied the color scheme and layout.  You can never have enough reference pictures!

Posing Rigs

In this assignment we were to find some famous character poses and try to mimic them with the rigs that were provided.  This was a fun exercise for animation because I got to try out a few different rigs and got a feel for each one's different controls.  This gave me some ideas of how the controls should work and look.

Most rigs were provided in class.  Finnion can be found here.

Done in Maya.

Run Cycle with Sword and Shield

This is a run cycle with a sword and shield I modeled real quick for.  I learned to parent the sword and shield to the joints so I could move the whole arm with the weapons.  This is definitely a work-in-progress project that I am going to continue adding more animations to.  I plan to have him attack with his weapons after this run cycle.

Reference picture I used is from The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams.

Done in Maya.

Dr. Orpheus Head Animation

References like this helped tremendously.

When I took CGT 241 I was a little bummed that they decided to leave out the head animation from the course so I made one on my own.  I chose something comical so I could have a bit more fun with the facial expressions.  Aside from listening to the audio a hundred times, I enjoyed working on this project.

Reference picture I found was from Thinking Animation Blog.

Animated in Maya.

Walk Cycle

I wasn't too happy with the results of my first walk cycle, so I made a second one with a tutorial that I found, but unfortunately it still was not as smooth as I wanted.  This blue guy is a model and rig made by a friend and it is the third walk cycle that I've made thus far.

Reference pictures I used are from The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams.

Animated inside Maya.