OVAL shaped EYE setup tutorial here . You may have to use a set driven key instead of a constraint which works well on spherical eyes
BASIC CARTOON EYE spherical eye
May 4, 2009
DREAMWORKS CHARACTER TD answers your QUESTIONS!
A while back we asked Dreamwork’s Kemer Stevenson a few questions about being a technical director. Kemer has worked in the visual effects and animation departments of films such as Monster vs Aliens, The Golden Compass, Night at the Museum, and Happy feet. you can check him out at kemerstevenson.com Here are his answers:
How long do you typically work on a project?
KEMER: At a visual FX company like my last job the schedule is rushed. As little as 3 months. At DreamWorks, about a year give or take for each film.
How often do you get breaks when working or how many hours do you work a day?
KEMER: As often or as little as you like. No one babysits you. You’re judged by what you get done. If you can be valuable and take breaks every 10 minutes, that’s okay. If you have to plant yourself behind your keyboard until you finish something, that’s okay too.
Whats would you say is the most difficult part of your job? The most rewarding/ best thing about your job?
KEMER: The difficulty is when directors and supervisors start art directing to an annoying degree. (how about a minor wrinkle exactly here… and we know the cloth wouldn’t normally do that, but can you make it blow this way…). It gets frustrating because they aren’t the ones working closely with the scene and don’t always understand what they’re looking at. In the end, you have to remember that the have a bigger vision for the film and you need to trust their judgement. A good director or supervisor gives you freedom to try new things and do what you want, and also tries to work that into the end-game of the movie.
As a current CG student, what do we need to keep in mind and look forward to in future?
KEMER:
– You are never as smart as you think you are.
– Your job will be miserable at times. It is not non-stop-rewarding.
How long did it take you to find a job?
KEMER: I was lucky and found a job in a few months and managed to skip many of the smaller CG sweatshops and started working for a big name right away. This is extremely uncommon, and you can’t go by my experience here. The majority of my friends searched for work for months and years before landing a spot at a large company. I also sent out over 100 reels in 3 weeks when I first moved to California in order to get a job. Of those, two called me back.
How much of the current economic situation has affected the CG and how long do you think it will take for it to be normal?
KEMER: It won’t ever be normal. It’s not a normal industry. And, it’s also minimally affected by the bad economy in the rest of the world. People always want to go see movies. There’s only a recession for things people don’t really want.
Do you prefer Smooth Binding or Rigid Binding?
KEMER: This question is probably more geared towards thinking I’m a rigger. While I did rigging in school, now I’m a cloth, hair, and finaling artist. We do still need to use some of these rigging techniques at times though. And, to answer your question… I prefer the method that gets the shot out the door as efficiently as possible. Because, there’s always another shot waiting to be done.
Do you have a prefered setup? Does it change from job to job/character to character?
KEMER: This ties into the previous question. The answer is essentially the same. We see so many shots come in through the door and so many different things that need to be done, that what it really comes down to is “just making it work.” If the director looks at it and likes it, it doesn’t matter if I spent 10 minutes with a cluster pulling verts around and setting keys, or if I spent an hour working out a complex expression to evaluate properly based on some other variables in the scene. Once you’re in the industry, you’ll learn to “just get it out the door.”
Does what the animator/director/supervisor want, dictate the visual look of the character setup? How mcuh room for experimentation do you have?
KEMER: This varies show to show, person to person, place to place. I feel like I have more freedom here at DreamWorks than I did working at Rhythm and Hues. Usually visual FX houses are bound by what the studio is asking for. And usually people from that studio who have little exeprience, or don’t really know what they want… are the ones telling you what to do.
How hard is Hair/Fur/Cloth- really?
KEMER: It takes a considerable amount of time to wrap your head around. It’s not a typical animation process. And, even though you’re running simulations which are dynamic based… you still have art direction you need to hit. It’s a balance of technical skill and artistic ability.
Do you like to script? Do you use a lot of MEL or expressions?
KEMER: I script enough to make my everyday tasks simplier. Not enough that I automate everything. Scripting is like hammer. You can’t build the entire deck with it… but it helps gets some of the job done.
How important are artistic or drawing skills when it comes to TD work?
KEMER: They’re not. I can’t draw to save my life. Though, I have coworkers who wouldn’t agree with me. Ultimately, I think it’s more important to be able to recognize when something doesn’t look right… and figure out what you can do to make it look right. That’s more important than being able to draw things yourself.
Do you have any advice or tutorials about creating killer face rigs/setups?
KEMER: Sorry, not really. Most of what we do here is very proprietary, and wouldn’t help you.
What kind of energy drink do you consume?
KEMER: Gatorade and Everclear. I’m still waiting on the patent to clear.
Did you get to meet any celebrities?
KEMER: Not because of my job, no. I have the same odds of meeting anyone on the street that you do. In fact, we’re instructed not to talk to any of the celebrities that are visiting the DreamWorks campus. I think they’re scared one of us will say something to offend them.
What was your favorite project to work on?
KEMER: I really enjoyed working on Monsters Vs Aliens best I think. Well, and Happy Feet too. I really like the fully animated flicks. Though, Hulk was really rewarding too because I got do the R&D for the ripping cloth and figure out how to do that. Every project I’ve worked on has had it’s cool moments when it comes down to it. Golden Compass was fun because that was the first project I rigged hero characters for. It just depends.
What additional skills does one need (that are not obvious) if modeling is their main focus?
KEMER: I am so not the right person to ask this. I can say that to get any job in CG the most important skill is to be extremely persistent. Persistent to call places and sent out reels, and persistence in trying to learn new things once you get there.
Did you take any type of internships, if so where?
KEMER: Nope, I got lucky enough to avoid any CG sweatshops.
What to TD’s do when they aren’t at work?
KEMER: Risk our lives trying to save the world.
Would you say it’s better to stick to one aspect of computer graphics, such as rigging, modeling, animation, lighting, ect.. or is it better to be better well rounded?
KEMER: This is tough and also depends on you personally. If you want to work for a big company on feature films… then you basically need to specialize. Places want people to hire in one department and who can do that job well. If you want to work as a generalist, then you need to be much mroe diverse… but you’ll end up working at a smaller company on smaller projects. For me, I specialize in cloth, but I spend a decent amount of time researching other topics that vaguely relate to what I’m doing. Like rigging for example. Or FX. Many of the principles carry over.
Are you glad that you’ve chosen the path of Technical Director?
KEMER: Extremely. There’s nothing better.
I hear you were the “hair model” for The Hulk- how was that? What did you have to do?
KEMER: This is more a joke than anything. When we were doing look development at Rhythm for Hulk… before Marvel knew what they wanted the Hulk to look like, I happened to have longer shaggy-ish hair. One of the lighting look-dev supervisors passed me in the hall and said they were looking for someone they could take pictures of their hair. So, one day we went out behind the building with a few dozen bottles of hair gels, mousses, and other misc products. Then a bunch of dudes lathered up my hair with different concoctions while someone with a camera took pictures of it for reference to see how it fell, reacted, clumped, etc. It was a weird experience because people kept walking by while it looked like a bunch of dudes were playing with my hair in the back corner being all secretive. Very sexy.
If you could switch, now that you’ve seen all positions in the field, what would you switch to?
KEMER: I wouldn’t. A lot of people in my department move from here into FX. A few switch into rigging. But I love working with cloth, hair, and finaling shots.
What is your favorite movie/animation/video game/commercial/whatever-and why?
KEMER: I actually watch less and less movies these days. I do play a lot of Halo, but more for the social interaction than anything else.
What is your take on extra-terrestrial life?
KEMER: Don’t tell anyone I’m not human. Please?
Just how much Halo do you play?
KEMER: It depends on how busy we are. There are days that we do nothing buy play Halo. Other days, just over lunch. Overall… way more than any other workplace would let people get away with.
Why do you think playing pranks on your co-workers is such a integral part of the animation industry?
KEMER: Integral to the animation industry, definitely not. Integral to my enjoyment of life… absolutely.
Are you working on anything outside of work that you want to share?
KEMER: I actually try to seperate my life so that outside of work, I touch a computer the least I have to. I like to sepnd my time outdoors. During overtime you absorb so much monitor radiation that you really have no desire to work on MORE 3D when you don’t have to. Everyone’s different though. Maybe you’ll have a different experience.
April 13, 2009
DYNAMIC/FX setups
COLLISIONSusing softbodies -written tutorial
say you’re on a medical animation/project heres a useful one: THE INSTANCER… written tutorial
April 13, 2009
FRONT-BACK chicken tutorials
April 13, 2009
ik SPRING SOLVER!
GETTING STARTED with the ikSPRING SOLVER video tutorial
USING the ikSPRING SOLVERvideo Tutorial
April 13, 2009
MOTION PATHS
Early on we discuss deformers as animation and modeling tools that can be worked into your set up. Motion Paths are a similar/easy to use tool that allows the animator to get work done quickly and could be set up ahead of time.
USING MOTION PATHS
April 13, 2009
QUAD/MECHANICAL RIGS
Video overviewQUAD AND VEHICLE RIGS
1) PELVIC LIMB RIG for a DOG
part 1
part 2
part 3
2) DRAGON
Written Tutorial for Dragon Set up
3) MECHANICAL/ROBOT RIG
written tutorial
April 13, 2009
More Skeleton/Setup Tricks
REATTACHING a HEAD with BLENDSHAPES to its BODYvideo tutorial
SMOOTH vs RIGID BIND:
Rigid binding can only distribute the weight of a specific CV to one joint. Then the deformation corrections are set up with flexors. One advantage to this is Maya can calculate the rigid binding much faster than smooth binding.
Smooth binding allows a CV to be affected by more than one joint at a time. The deformation correction is done by painting the weights to determine how much influence a single CV receives from multiple joints
Before Maya 2.0, there’s only one skinning system that is Rigid bind. As new technology evolves through out the years….Smooth bind has been introduced and in most cases, Smooth bind replaces the role of rigid bind as the main skinning technology. There’s one big difference between rigid bind and smooth bind. The relationship between Vertices/CVs and bones are one to one. That is each CV/Vertex will be driven by one joint only and it’s weighting will affects how much the CV/Vertex follows a bone. While smooth bind will become much more complicated that one CV/Vertex can be controlled by more than one bone. Some game engine will support rigid bind only as it is a relative simple calculation than to a smooth bind.
SMOOTH AND RIGID BINDING video tutorial
BINDING MULTIPLE SKELETONS video tutorial
USING THE INSERT JOINT toolvideo tutorial
DISSCONNECTING JOINTS in MAYAVideo Tutorial
REMOVING JOINTS toolvideo tutorial
USING THE MOVE SKINNED JOINTS tool video tutorial
