Demo version available for “Bonyface” Facial Rigging Script

Filed under Computer Graphics

A demo version is now available for Fx Lda and Scriptattack’s Bonyface system.

This looks like a really promising tool for setting up facial rigs in 3D characters, animating or posing them, and then storing expressions the same way you might store morph targets, in a library.

What I really like about it is that there’s an underlying network of splines which you fit to the surface of your model. Along the splines there are bones which you use to skin the model to the rig. Then there are a smaller number of controllers that move the splines around… which move the bones around… which move the face around. There’s a fine level of control where it’s needed while you’re given a high level system for using that control. Yet the setup of a character’s face is just a matter of editing those splines to match the model.

Skinning is always traumatic for me because it takes me forever and, truth be told, I’m just not that good at it – and faces are one of the most difficult parts of a character to skin. So when I tell you that this looks like a very clever and powerful tool for 3DS Max… well, I’m coming from a highly motivated place.

And a disinterested one, unfortunately! The script doesn’t claim to be compatible with versions of 3DS Max older than Max 2008, and I’m running on an older version. Something like this might make me a lot more interested in an upgrade.

Found via Max Underground.

Doctor Rognvald’s Lab, from the other side

Filed under Computer Graphics, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I’ve spent some time working at the far end of the laboratory, and pretty well wrapped that up and added some clutter here, at this end of the table. Finicky, finicky.

The dusty old Interociter doesn’t have a thing to do with the story; odds are Doctor Rognvald just picked it up second hand. You find those things in labs all over the place, of course.

I really need to wrap his one up soon. I keep making the mistake of approaching my test views as though they were actual pictures, which leads to all sorts of little adjustments that simply waste my time until I catch myself at it.

Another day or two and I’ll have to set the laboratory aside while I work on the last couple of props I’ll need in there… and then – finally! – I can concentrate on the illustrations themselves.

Out of all the crazy stuff in here I think I’m getting my biggest kick from the high voltage Frankenstein switches with all their gauges and dials, which only serve to flick the lights on and off.

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Doctor Rognvald’s Lab: Now With Practical Lights

Filed under Computer Graphics, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

I’ve worked out the basic lighting setup for Doctor Rognvald’s lab, and added practical light objects to match them (well, except for that door up on the catwalk, anyway). So far I’ve only got one "cheat" light in here – that’s premature, really, since I’ll mainly add the cheat lights when I’m setting up shots for the illustrations I need. But I wanted a little rim light on that floor lamp.

What we’ve got here is a pretty realistic general lighting setup that I’ll mutate and change and modify for the individual shots I need for the story.

What’s left to do is to add two more light fixtures, and then have a look at the camera angles to decide what other clutter I need on the table, and what indistinct shapes I want to add in the shadows… at which point the lab itself will be pretty much done, and I can move onto a couple of important props. Altogether I’m dangerously close to being able to make pictures in here. Muahahahahaha!

The more time I spend in here the more I find that I’d kind of like a room like this to work in. It’s well equipped: you can’t tell in this shot, but that’s an espresso machine at the far end of the table. What more do you need?

The downside of working on a project of this scale is that it takes so long to get everything done. But part of the upside is that I’ll have such cool sets and props to use in other pictures. I know I’ll want to revisit this lab when I can. I’m really looking forward to making poster-scale images of this one.

Even at high res, though, you’ll never be able to make out the ridiculous labels on the dials and buttons. There’s a "Hyphenation" dial, not to mention the "% Froglike" one. I guess those are just for me.

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

Mad Doctor Rognvald’s Laboratory, in progress

Filed under Computer Graphics, Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual, Works in Progress

Here’s where ‘ve been for the last… oh, I have no idea. It’s the laboratory of mad Doctor Rognvald, creator of the Toaster With TWO BRAINS. It’s the second mad scientist’s lab I’ve built for this Thrilling Tale. The two are quite different.

That’s because Cornelius Zappencackler’s lab is sort of a pleasant place for tinkering – one that you or I might like to work in. Oh, you’re right – some of the things he gets up to in there do sort of threaten to destroy the planet. But he’s an affable old gent, and he means well.

Okay. Maybe "well" isn’t the word I was looking for. But he doesn’t mean harm. It’s just that sometimes harm happens anyway.

But this! This is a laboratory that you or I might like to tinker in only if we were evil geniuses! This place is a textbook example of the kind of room where you Meddle In Things That Man Was Not Meant To Wot Of! This is the sort of lab where every now and then you just have to throw your head back and crow: "It’s ALIIIIVE!"

I’ve been having a great time with the glassware and instruments. This is just the point where I’ve dropped a real light source into the scene so I can get an idea of what to do next; but it’s well on its way… it’s…. nearly…. aliiiiive!

See what I mean?

Update: the Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual web site is now alive (alive, I tell you!) at thrilling-tales.webomator.com

“Neo City”, an animated short film by Hao Ai Qiang

Filed under Computer Graphics, Found on the Web

Neo City is a wandering, beautifully visualized animation by Hao Ai Qiang (and company) that seems to show us what a futuristic city might be like if it had decided, one way or another, that we weren’t all that necessary. Or maybe we callously took off for parts unknown, leaving the city to evolve and amuse itself in ways that make sense to a futuristic city when it’s on its own. I couldn’t say, but I enjoyed viewing it anyway.

It’s a student film, and I haven’t had much luck digging up any more information about it. But the image below apears to be by the same artist, and it’s a lovely one.

Everything Old Is New Again – a new, old Retro Rocket

Filed under Computer Graphics, Works in Progress

Here’s something I don’t often do. No, not the rocket. I often do that. Nope, what I’ve done is to go back to an old rocket model I made back in 2002 (I think!) and I’ve reworked it in a higher resolution and with higher resolution textures and better materials – so it’ll look like it belongs in the same universe as my more recent rockets, characters, and other objects.

It was an interesting process. My recent models and materials are way, way better than what I was doing seven or so years back – and processors are so much faster – and addressing larger amounts of memory is so much easier – that I spend a lot more resources these days on an object like this. So whereas the old model used a bit less than 80,000 polygons, the new one weighs in at over 417,000. There’s Moore’s law for you.But quite a bit of the difference is in my self, not in my stars. I did see clearly that there was a lot about 3DS Max materials that I didn’t know yet when I built the first one.

The Hepmobile, I’ve found, is a vintage rocket in Retropolis. Although it always seems to be 2039 there, the Hepmobile is older than that: it’s pretty much the Volkswagen Beetle or the Morris Minor of the retro future. Everyone’s owned one, and they just keep going forever with a little TLC.

They’re still produced (in 2039) in limited numbers – mainly because some agencies, like the Retropolis Civilian Conservation Corps, continue to use them for their official vehicles. And how do I know that? Well, for now, I just know.

In Progress: An Ominous Hallway of… Tubes

Filed under Computer Graphics, Works in Progress

So this whole “women in tubes” thing was preying on my mind, and apparently my mind wasn’t careful enough down by the waterhole… judging by this in-progress scene.

What I’m liking in here (though you can’t really see why, yet) is that it’s a setting that’s guaranteed to seem ominous and sinister, but it won’t be. In fact it’ll be sort of cozy, in an unlikely way. And so, much more Retropolitan in character.

Just a pretty rough layout so far, though I have been experimenting with the lighting because that’s going to be pretty important to the picture. It’s a slow rendering already even though I’m not including the more distant tubes that’ll stretch down the hallway, which will just get composited in at the end. Many lights. Many reflections. Much glass.

I’ve already chosen a title, which is the name of a 1936 song by Milton Pascal and Edgar Fairchild.

“Just Around the Corner” – the diner of the Retro Future

Filed under Computer Graphics, Works in Progress

Here’s the first of what I think will be three pictures set in my retro-futuristic Astro cafe. That’s a scene I started working on in 2004 and plugged away at for quite awhile (in the shadow of the then Day Job). I dusted it off and found to my surprise that it only took about a week to finish it up.

Oddly (or not) I once lived just around the corner from a coffee shop called Astro in LA’s Silverlake neighborhood; and there was a hostess there who was not unlike Mabel, in some ways. But although I did once see a rocket go by, I never saw anyone wearing goggles in there.

This one’s available as an archival print, a poster, on blank books, and a postcard – the sort of impulse buy you’re likely to make at the counter, no?

In progress: Diner scene from the Retro Future

Filed under Computer Graphics, Works in Progress

Okay, I’ve explained before that I hate posting work that’s not finished, and I speculated about what deep seated psychological warpage that implies – but I’m just having too much fun with this and I’m going to risk the damage that my rampaging Id may cause to me and to you and to anyone who gets in its way.

This is a rough layout. It really is. The figures are just blocked in (mainly), the lighting needs tons of work, and there are all sorts of things wrong with it.

But I like it already. So there.

This is the first of what I think will be three high resolution pictures for prints, all set in the Astro Diner. That’s a 3D “set” I worked on for quite awhile back in 2004 but then set aside till about a week ago, when I dug back into it. (I posted some small shots of the diner here, when I’d finished the robot waitress we see in this picture.)

I have the same problems a camera crew has in a tight space – for many of my shots in the diner I’m going to have to cut out parts of the set that are in the way. But this one hasn’t required any major surgery yet.

Okay. You’ve seen it. That will be all.

“Reach” Robot Animation

Filed under Computer Graphics, Found on the Web

“Reach” is another lovely short animated film about robots and the things that drive them – this time, both figuratively and literally. This one’s by Luke Randall. The film’s won a number of awards and about a month ago Luke took off for Tinseltown… or at least for Dreamworks Animation.