CGMan

Feeling Better

I had a rough couple of days there.  But I am feeling better.  My head feels normal again.  Hopefully it stays this way.  I got a bunch of retros sent out yesterday, I will try to get the rest of them sent out today.  Feel free to send me a message if you want to remind me of what you want but I think I took pretty good notes here.  I hope.

Retros

Please be patient with me while I get to everyone's retro requests.  I have a ton of them to send out.. Plus, I am still not in nominal health yet.

Release #055 Talia's Shower Time! Part 1

Bear with me as I post this in advance.  Thank you all for your patience with me and support.  Send me a message if you have any questions.  THANK YOU!!!

I hope I'm not getting sick.

That would be very unlike me to be sick.

EDIT: I am feeling a ton better after getting some rest.  I was really congested and my head feeling tightly packed but I'm 85% better now.

Talia Progress Report

Hey all...  Not a tremendous amount to report.  Her body animation is done..  I've animated the forearm twisting on both arms for the entire sequence, and I have her right hand (wrist joint) animated for half of the animation so far.  Chipping away at it!

Talia Progress and General News

Hello everyone!

Talia's mocap cleaning is coming along nicely.  I think in another day I'll have her body all done minus her hands, face and toes.

I just wanted to let you all know, primarily those who have chosen to get a "retro" reward to older older animations...  Yeah, there are some really cool animations in the catalog there, but Talia is going to be really special.  I consider her a generational leap.  She's the first character I developed after...

Talia Progress Report!

Howdy!

I've been radio-silent for a few days.  I've just finished cleaning up Talia's foot animation for the entire sequence.  I also have about 600 or so frames of her full body (excluding hands and face) animated so far.  The whole enchilada is 8169 frames but after I edit out the pauses it should come out to around 3.5 minutes of animation.

She steps down from a platform in the beginning but my motion capture system is limited the ground being a flat plane.  ...

Talia Update

Howdy.

I'm transferring the raw mocap data over to Talia.  I've figured out a new way of doing the spine that more accurately matches the raw data.

In the attachment the raw mocap data is the blue spine and Talia's is the orange cleaner version.

Talia Progress

Hello!  Motion capture for Talia has been recorded.  I did a trick with Voice Attack to help me.  I don't think this would have been possible without my new mic which is very sensitive.  Voice Attack is a little $10 program that lets you trigger keystrokes or mouse clicks after it hears you say certain words.  It's mostly used for videogames.  I had an elaborate script written out and I could pause while recording and speak out to Voice Attack to have it read me ...

Calibration complete

Tech support for my motion capture system told me that over time the sensors get out of alignment and that would explain why my spine was capturing all twisty.  So I just disassembled the whole suit and manually calibrated every sensor.....one at a time.  Hopefully this will result in less need to re-animate body parts after recording.

Talia's complex eyelids now rigged!!

(See subject... and attachment)

Talia's Neck Re-Engineered

This was necessary now that her neck data was lost with the Metamorphic data disappearing.  Getting those sterno-mastoid muscles moving naturally is a bugger-boo.

Eyelids next.  Then on to motion capture!

Scapula Magic

I've got her (right) scapula all rigged up.  I've never used this approach before and I think it's going to work out really well.  Mirroring the setup for the left side won't take long.

EDIT: Both Scapulas done now.

Talia's Progress

Hi...  I had a frustrating couple of days.  From my last post I thought her shoulders were all done.  I need to explain.  Talia's rig is very heavy... it's slow because there's so much going on.  So I prototyped her shoulder rigging in a seperate scene file.  I was trying a new approach and got it working great in the prototype scene.  But when I brought all of the details into her main rig scene things didn't go as planned.  It didn't play well with IK...

A Note About Comments

Hey all.. I just updated my previous post, showing her arm does indeed twist now.

When someone posts a comment on a post I make, Patreon notifies me.  But it does -NOT- notify me which post was commented on.  I just got a notification with someone asking me a question, and I can't find it.

So the moral of the story is... If you have a question for me, your best bet is to send me a private message.

Cheers.

I Banged These Out Pretty Fast!

Metamorphic was really slowing me down!  I haven't done the twisting of the arm yet.

EDIT: Okay the twisting is done now.  Scapulas next!

Very, Very ANGRY!!!

Please excuse my language in advance. 

This piece of shit goddamn jank software; Metamorphic.  All of my sculpts for the neck and shoulders are GONE!  So much work.. POOF!  I looked back 40 saves ago, the last one I kept and they were gone then too.  It happened a long time ago and there was no warning.

(Sigh)  Just when I thought I was done rigging, I need to now re-do her shoulders and neck.  The only meager consolation is that it won't take as...

Talia's Breathing Rig

I thought I was all done rigging her body but I forgot her ribcage and scapulas.  Here is the new fancy new non-linear ribcage rig, complete with extra expansion via the diaphragm.  Haven't gotten the scapulas rigged yet.

Talia's Right Leg Done!

Whew!  This was a lot of work!  But I think I got it done faster using the old method instead of Metamorphic.

I need to copy all of this for her other leg.  After that I could either record motion capture, or make morph shapes for her eyelids.

Talia Development Update!

Happy October!

I've made seven joint-deformation sculpts for her thigh so far; only two remain.  Then I just need to clone it for the other side.   When I'm all done with that.. I could probably move on to motion capture.

In addition to the sculpting I've also re-rigged her thigh in an all new way.  I discovered a new approach that is very stable and cool...  I'd love to share with you what I figured out maybe only 1% of you would find benefit from it. &nb...

Bend The Knee

Thigh next... This will take a while.

Talia Development Adventures

Hello,

So Talia's deformation sculpts for her elbow was underway and Metamorphic completely shit the bed.  See the attached animation.  Notice the points snapping into place at the last moment?  Yeah that's not natural.  I'm pretty pissed about this because I paid $150 for this tool and it's not doing what it was designed for.  You had ONE JOB!!!

So I decided to go back to the old ways to make her elbow deformations.  I'll keep Metamorphic working on ...

Having a Bad Day

Another Windows Update bricked my computer.  I re-installed Windows and restored a backup made a couple of weeks ago.  Having problems with the computer generating a temporary guest account rather than logging into my account.  So until I get this fixed I can't get more work done on Talia yet.  Fun fun fun... :/

I could just re-install Windows and not use my backup data and that would fix it, but I would have to spend another couple of days re-installing all my shit....

Talia Progress and new feature announce.

Hey!

I've been busy,  I've created and rigged 17 corrective joint rotation sculpts so far.  Her neck and shoulders are all done.  Elbow and legs remain.

Time for another announcement. a new improvement that will be in Talia.  I never mentioned this before, but I've had this in mind since Talia's inception:  In past characters I transitioned the twisting of the upper arm between the shoulder and elbow.  But I recently realized that is not so anatomical...

Talia Progress Report

I've got Talia's arms all rigged with with IK (Inverse Kinematics) and all that jazz.  It's time to create a bunch of corrective joint sculpts.  When that is done, I believe it will be time to record motion capture.

In other news I found a power supply system for my new mic.  And it sounds quite nice!

Hello there

Very pleased with how this turned out.  Now I gotta clone the whole setup for the other hand!

Talia Rig Update

I've got all the bones in place and all of the weight maps for the bones tweaked to perfection.  But her ka-ka doody index finger won't work!  Can't figger it out!

I'll make something to eat then stare at it more.  Maybe that will help.

EDIT: I've got her index finger working now.  I had to write down all of the set-up information, delete all of the bones, and rebuild it.  Annoying, but it worked.

Talia Progress

Hey all,

I've just finished modeling the cage model for all of Talia's body*.  Her hands are all-new models with a higher density of polygons because I want to improve deformation.

I can now start installing bones in her hands and arms and make weightmaps for said bones.

*Certain parts of her body were intentionally left out because they will be driven by soft body simulations.  You may remember long ago I said that Talia's rig will be a hybrid between the recent f...

Am I Posting Too Many Updates?

Talia Is A Real Head-Turner

Neck rigged.  This allows her to now turn her head.