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View Full Version : May10: Sometin'... sometin'... balls



Dule
05-15-2010, 02:23 PM
Hey, I'm nearly done constructing a pretty basic ball rig I plan to use in this months contest.
Now since this is an animation contest rather then a rigging one, and the rigging part might drive some people away, I figured I'd make the rig public for everyone to use or analyze.
So before I post anything.. Im basically wondering if thats ok with you Mr. DJ Voyager.

And in case it is, what do you guys figure a basic ball rig should consist of?
At the moment, it has:
-Basic translation/rotation/scale controls
-Custom rotation control with a movable pivot point
-Squash and stretch in all directions
-Some basic twisting support
-A look up/down control, which bends the ball to achieve this effect

stwert
05-15-2010, 06:28 PM
Hey that sounds like a pretty good rig. Mine is very basic, just controls for various horizontal sections, which I should be able to achieve all those, just maybe taking a bit longer.

Dule
05-17-2010, 10:28 PM
I didnt exactly add all that I wanted to, but I'm eager to start animating so I rounded up the rig with just some basic functions.

http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/7361/ballb.jpg

1. Basic move control with adjustable pivot for fancy rotations. Note that if you rotate the ball using this control and then change the pivot, the rotations offset. So I suggest you use the rotation part of this control only when you need these fancy rotations.

2. Global position control, useful if you want to have double transformations. Say your ball runnin' around on a moving surface. Global scale in its channelbox uniformally scales the whole rig.

3. Squash and stretch rotation control. Allows you to have the squash/stretch in any direction.

4. Rotation control

5. I call this the "Face control" even tho the ball is obviously faceless :). Lets you achieve this nice look up/down effects. Yellow is for up/down, blue sets the position of the "face".

6. These are the actual controls for squash and stretch. Move em, rotate em...

LINK: http://rapidshare.com/files/388596163/ballRig_ver1.0.ma.html

Link for older Maya users:http://rapidshare.com/files/388600746/ballRig_ver1.0.ma.html

deni
05-18-2010, 07:20 AM
Just wanted to say...Wow! This looks great, so complete!

Dule
05-27-2010, 02:28 PM
Was planing my animation, and the best concept I could come up with involved a crazy robot chasing the little bouncy ball guys. So I ended up making a brand new character for the past week 'n' a half.. which kinda puts me in a tight spot now for the actual animation :frown:

Here are some pics:
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/3740/characterse.jpg
http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/6192/charsu.jpg
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/1203/robolol2.jpg

Dule
05-28-2010, 12:36 AM
First playblast... just a few seconds: http://www.vimeo.com/12100736

Blodiiks
05-28-2010, 03:24 AM
Hey nice work dule
I like

Dule
05-28-2010, 09:26 PM
Thx man, glad you like it :)

Heres playblast 2. :http://www.vimeo.com/12124916

Fusedgore
05-28-2010, 09:42 PM
Dule those models look really good .That one thing looks almost like a webcam character .Good work keep it going.

Dule
05-31-2010, 08:41 PM
This is all the animation I managed to do until the deadline. I did the whole 2nd part of the animation in one day so I simply didnt have time to refine the timing.

I'm rendering the thing now on my "commodore" so god knows when it'll be done.
Feelin' exhausted now.
Next time I decide to do a scene for a contest about god damn balls... Ill just use 2 spheres and thats it! No more bloody robots and time consuming riggin' :mad:

Ah, well.. guess I learned a lot :redface:

Final playblast: CLICK (http://www.vimeo.com/12190712)

stwert
05-31-2010, 08:44 PM
Your link just goes to htp://w/ and your video on vimeo appears to be private :p, but looking forward to seeing it!
Edit: I see it's fixed now :)

Dule
05-31-2010, 08:53 PM
Fixed. Thx, for telling me. Vimeo is still converting the video tho :)

stwert
05-31-2010, 09:02 PM
Ah, same with mine :)

DjVoyager
05-31-2010, 10:07 PM
Still private, can't access :)

Dule
05-31-2010, 10:10 PM
Uhm, and now?

DjVoyager
05-31-2010, 10:24 PM
Working now.

That's excellent, Dule. Though submitting the playblast is just fine I hope you'll get around to properly rendering it. That's good demo reel material :).

Psst, I can see a bit of the robot in the crevice (1:03).

Dule
05-31-2010, 10:34 PM
Thanks, glad you like it!
Its rendering atm, but on my ancient, virus driven machine so I really have no clue when it'll be done.

stwert
05-31-2010, 11:22 PM
Haha, sweet! Really dynamic and great animation. Thumbs up.

deni
06-01-2010, 09:31 AM
that's really great Dule!! Very nice paced story...fun to watch :-)

Dule
06-08-2010, 05:09 PM
Never managed to render this scene in the end. My pc is just too slow and sadly I couldnt afford to just leave it to render for days, since I had stuff to do.

I did do a small brake down of the chase scene tho, just as a test for some future renders.
Who ever is interested can check it out here: http://vimeo.com/12407015

deni
06-08-2010, 07:10 PM
pitty u didn't manage to render it, but it looks really great! The future renders will be nice :-)