Shannon Falls, Squamish BC

Over christmas I spent a few days in Squamish seeing the sights and skiing whistler. I visited Shannon Falls, it was fairly spectacular.

False Creek @ Sunset

Taken with my Nikkon D80, polarized filter, Sigma 10-20mm f5.6, ISO 100, 3 sec shutter, f 22, manfrotto tripod and standard nikkon remote shutter release.

Quadruped Character Update

So I've started putting together the wings. It's going to be fun making these work properly, but the aim is to have the wings rigged up so they can completely fold down onto the creatures back and have the feathers slide correctly into place.

To Keep Myself Busy - Quadruped Character

While I'm job hunting in Vancouver I'm going to build a few character rigs to test out some different concepts and to keep my skills sharp. Therefore I'm also going to have to model the characters too - but this is kinda cool as I'm getting a good chance to really think about edge loop flow and how this will effect the way the mesh deforms.

I have been paying close attention to two particular areas that have commonly caused issues on characters that I have previously rigged. These areas are the "pit" areas under the front legs and the rear legs. Previously I have had mesh cause really bad tearing through these areas and it has required a lot of corrective blend shapes to get certain poses looking nice. So I'm just working out the correct edge flow to resolve this issue before the rigging stage so hopefully the default deformation will be way nicer.

Follow the whole modeling and rigging process here.

Heres a WIP image after a few hours of modeling.

Vancouver

Vancouver is shaping out to be a super fun city - not that I expected anything less. Where else can you snowboard only 30 mins from downtown. Anyway the job hunt is now on and with such a vast array of amazing companies in Vancouver it will keep me busy just applying for places. In the mean time I aim to build a new creature rig that I can utilise muscle, cloth and hair sims just to test a few cool things out. I'll post the progress of the rig as I go.

For the time being check my photos out at flickr

Go Pro and Snowboarding

Now I'm in Vancouver I've been hitting up Cypress Ski Resort a fair bit. I tested out my new Go Pro helmet cam the other day when we had some fresh snow. I'm super happy with the results for a cheapish camera.

remap value python setup

this video demonstrates a python script that I wrote to automate the setup of a series of remap value nodes to any attribute. I use this set up when rigging anytime that I would normally use set driven keys mainly because it enables me to connect custom attributes to the upper and lower limits of the remap node output value. This enables me to give animators controls to change the limits while animating without having to find the set driven keys and manually change them or having to get the rigger to change it for them.

relocating to vancouver

i am making the big move to vancouver, canada in december to further my career as a character rigger and VFX artist. I am currently looking for employment opportunities in rigging or technical 3D positions in Film, Gaming of Commercial production.

Quadruped Muscle Setup

Just a quick playblast of a rig I have been working on. The main purpose of building this rig / modeling the skeleton and setting up the muscles was to get a good idea of the creatures anatomy. I did a lot of research into the anatomy of the bull and bison when building this rig. The rig is set up with a scapula that simulates the natural sliding movement of the shoulder back and forwards over the rib cage.

squishy eye test

this is just a quick squishy eye lid test that I was trying out. Joint and blend shape driven. All connections driven with utility nodes, no SDKs or expressions.

squishy eye test from Tim Forbes on Vimeo.

face pose management tool

This is an example of a work in progress pose manager that I am building. I know there are a few available out there, but I wanted to learn how to make one myself.


tf_manageFace MEL tool demo from Tim Forbes on Vimeo.

cg society hardcore modelling challenge

This was my first attempt at a HCM and also the first time I had really modeled anything organic in zBrush for a few years. zBrush has come a long was since I last used it. I had a month to complete the image, hence with full time work it was hard to spend a lot of time on it.