Here are some renders of Todd. I made up some textures for you, but mostly it's colors. Would you like me to load the textures for you? Sorry this took so long! I was having weird problems trying to render Todd that I hadn't experienced before... 

Just for fun:

Preparing the Model Cont.

1. I have reduced the model to a lower poly mesh but it is still pretty high. It will have to do I guess.

2. Geometry has been attached and mesh has been cleaned up

3.  I still need some renders.

Preparing the model

1. A current problem is that the body mesh is very high poly.  This will make the skinning process very time consuming.  Is there a version of this model that has a lower poly body that we could use? If not, is there a way to decimate the number of polygons while still maintaining the edge-flow? Getting to a lower poly model will save hours and perhaps days on skinning.

2. Could you attach all the geometry to the body object.  There are many things that are separate right now (clothing, hair, buttons, shoe laces, etc.) and it will cause many problems soon.  In any areas that there is not geometry visible because of clothing (chest, back, groin, thighs, feet), please delete the mesh underneath. This will save in having to do deformations for both the skin underneath and the clothing above.

3.  Could you do a front and side render of Todd? I did not receive textures with this model but I can see that there are textures that have been referenced.  If possible, include these applied textures in the renders.  These images don't have to be that special. I just need them to be used as visual reference for my joint placement.

some things to think about

Here at SJSU, we've used the "Morpheus" rig a lot which is pretty good, but has a lot of trouble in the shoulder area. One of the main problems is that there are lots of different controls, and also that the model easily gets distorted and twisted there in the upper arm. Try to keep the shoulders simple, with just two or so controls, but still very expressive because we use them a lot.

It's nice when the hands have controls that move multiple fingers, like to cup the hand or flex it, bring the fingers together, or separate them. It can be annoying having to select each joint for every finger just to mold the hand once, though the individual joint controls should also be included, of course.

Have both IK and FK controls for the hands, feet, and head...

It's fun to have controls on the foot for ball-roll, heel roll, toe pivot, heel pivot type movements...

That's all I can think of just now! Maybe a control in his hat or even his stomach so we can have nice overlapping action.

Video Reference

I think this rig would be very good if applied to mechanics tests like rowing and heavy lifting. It would also be interesting to make an animation test of someone wading through water! Let me know if I need to limit the rig's use to just one of these.



This one bellow would be the most extreme movement you'd need as far as rowing... Also very motivating video, haha.



I really liked this video as an example of wading. Notice how much side-to-side is needed for the spine.



I put a link to one video that's great for extreme lifting reference. This guy has a huge range of movement.

Wall Lift

Reference for Todd

I imagine that our character will be good for showing very physical action. Rowing, lifting, struggling against the flood, etc. Because he is such a realistic rig (and because it would take so long) lets not worry about the face at all, and concentrate on his body.

It's important for any rig to have very expressive, natural hands that don't look stiff. There won't be anything super close up, so we probably won't do anything as subtle as these, but all the same, make sure the hand is totally malleable, and will be able to read and be dynamic.

        

               

Here are some "dynamic hand" and "dynamic anatomy" examples that are more extreme. If Your hands could be as malleable as any one of these or the ones above, that would be more than amazing.

Model: Todd Gambino

The model we will be using for our collaborative project is Todd Gambino.  We will post pictures soon of this character.  Tyler will be rigging the character, while Becky will be the animator.

Tyler has begun looking into the "Morpheus" rig as a reference for the animator and Becky has begun to work on character motion sketches such as: key poses, range of motion, and perhaps several reference animations.  Preproduction is up and running.

There isn't much to show at this point since the project is just getting off the ground.  As the wheels start rolling, we will be posting more updates.