Magicman Update: He Lives!
May 3rd, 2006 by Jason
Alright… so maybe that title is a *bit* over the top. However, I’ve been having a lot of fun getting this little guy to act. He’s turning out to be quite a pleasure to work with. He’s fully rigged now and I’ve completed most of my tests with him, so I’ve begun work on a short (25-30 second) animation with him. To the left is a screen capture of Blender at about the halfway point in the animation. Magicman’s rig is heavily influenced by Bassam’s (slikdigit) very excellent Mancandy rig… namely his foot and hand setups. They really are brilliant. I got some ideas looking at Sketchy’s Ludwig rig, but haven’t implemented many of them in Magicman. Of course, Magicman’s rig is a lot simplier than either of these, but it gave me the controls I need to give him that desired Muppet-like feel.
His face, in particular, has substantially fewer controls. That said, the rig still allows him to convey a fairly large range of emotions… and he can even get a little cartoony. As an example, here’s a quick facial animation test. The left one is the finalized render and the right one shows the rig in action.
And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t show him moving his body at least a little bit…. so here’s the first few seconds of the animation I’m making with him.
May 4th, 2006 at 5:39 am
Looks more like Muffin animation than Muphet animation.
May 4th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Well hello, clever anonymous citizen! Could you expand on your comment, please? Are you saying that Magicman has the same vibe as the muffins in the Son of the Muffin Project? Does he need improvement in his model or his movement? What would you suggest that might help?
May 4th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
I’m afraid I cannot clarify at this time. My QuickTime Vehicle appears to have sunk into obsolescence.
May 6th, 2006 at 8:08 pm
Sadly, I’m not as clever as the last poster - but you need to post him again now that he’s almost finished - I want to show you off.
May 7th, 2006 at 4:50 am
@Wise Old Anonymous Concerned Citizen: looks like you’re going to have to fix that Quicktime thing, then.
@Angela: Have patience. The animation is nearly complete. I’ve been adjusting render settings and lighting between yesterday and today. His shirt was blowing out (they always tell you not to wear white in front of the camera) and his shadow needed some tweaking. The second pass of the full animation is rendering as I type. Tomorrow, we should be adding sound to it. I’m pretty excited. My hope is that we’ll have something to show by Monday. That’s the plan, at least.