animation

technical

BREAKDOWN

Body Rig

For the short film "Witch's Cat" I rigged the Prince's body. I built a IK/FK spine, which were usable at the same time. A "reverse foot" system to make foot animation quicker and more controllable. The rigging team developed a style, which this rig followed, to give animators confidence using all our rigs.

Doll and Prop Rigs

I rigged these three dolls and all the props for "Witch's Cat". The dolls have a similar IK/FK spine as above with simple limbs. The other rigs were simple multi joints props for basic animation staging for the effects animators to use later in the pipeline.

Python Import and Constraining

I built one tool to import all my prop rigs and another that allows the animator to select any control on any rig and constrain the prop to the selected control. The script also created an attribute that allowed animators to blend between the constraint and global positions. Animators could continue to use all controls independantly as desired.

Python Constraining

This tool allows the animator to select and constrain up to three controls to a root. A locater is created, placed, and oriented to the selected controls. Each locator is constrained to the root; the selected control to the locator. The locator is used to animate shifts in position, in relation to the root.

Python OpenGL Render Pipeline

This renderer was hand coded in OpenGL. Using linear algebra and matrix multiplication to take local positional data, convert it to world position, place a movable camera, and render only the data in the view frustum.

MEL Monorail Generator

A simple MEL tool that takes a curve, creates a track, and places and animates the train