| "Spinnaker"
from the "Sky Jammers" Trailer:
Bob
Forward, a long time writer of decades worth of well known children's
shows, came up with a great new concept for an animated CG series for kids:
"Sky
Jammers." Several people at Foundation
Imaging were involved in creating the trailer to get the show
sold and produced. My contribution to the effort, was to model and
texture an athletic female anthro rat character (without adding breasts).
The model is about 4 feet high, to match the scale of Bob's son, who did
the motion capture for the trailer.
In
the fantastic world of "Sky
Jammers", Spinn is an athletic female jackrat who serves under Captain
Rak, who is human. She manages the daily operations of their ship,
and can aggressively battle to defend her friends and crew-- even on behalf
of Rak's girlfriend.
Eve
Forward, Bob's sister, is responsible for the Jackrats, which had
their origin in a race she created for her book, "Animist".
You
can take a look at an example of a typical UV map that was used to create
the details on the surface of the fore and hind paws of the character,
by selecting the thumbnail to the lower right.
"Spinnaker"
required a custom bone rig. After looking at several setups, I decided
to base much of the structure after the very successful "Bolg Warriors"
from "Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future", since the jack-leg is very similar.
The big difference between the two, is that the Bolg's thigh came down
at 90 degrees, but the rat's is 65 degrees for Pitch. It's a far
less human structure overall, but that's part of this character's charm.
Some
of the things to remember for doing a setup are:
A.
The modeled pose is not the start pose for the mocap filtering process.
The bones are rested on -1, then moved into position on frame 0, with all
mocap pivots zeroed out on their rotations.
B.
Expressions or Motion Modifiers (like Follower) are added to toes or fingers.
I highly recommend using Relativity 2 for Expressions. It's very
easy to work with and STABLE.
C.
IK, or Modifiers must be OFF when resting bones, so that they properly
bind to the mesh and deform it in predictable ways.
D.
Fingers are modeled in a splayed position, then formed into a relaxed pose
for the animators, on frame 0. Bones with limited range (25 mm min,
25 mm max), are used to prevent bone cross talk.
If
there is more interest in me adding additional character rigging information,
please let me know. Ed Note: Ancient Invalid links are left for posterity. Change is part of life... Enjoy. |
WAS
MEGA NEW!
Render of default pose,
shown with her boat hook, for reference. Ouch! |
Close up pose from CG Trailer. |
X-RAY
VIEWER!
Tips on making a Mocap Rig:
This
page is large (400+ k), so please wait for it to load.
IE,
& Netscape only.
UV Mapping Example:
 |
People
have said they liked the details on Spinn's paws. They were painted on
UV maps using a tablet, which saves a huge amount of modeling time.
Click
the image for a larger view. |
Clip from CG
"Sky Jammer" Trailer:
 |
QuickTime Animation
[2.07 MB ]
There
are few things so satisfying, as seeing your work in motion and doing what
it was designed to do. |
OLD! QTVR
of "Spinnaker" [2.5mb] |
