The Morpheus Rig - and How To Use It

There are plenty of free rigs available these days for the use of students. One of the best is Morpheus, created by the prodigiously talented Josh Burton. It is used extensively by trainee character animators hoping to polish their skills and get better at their craft. Morpheus is an excellent rig but, like all free rigs (and, frankly, like all rigs), it does have a few quirks. Below is a guide for animators to some of the main problems that we have come across, and how to fix them.


Problem 1: Hand IK Orientation
Morpheus's Hand IK control is parented to his shoulders. This means if you animate the shoulders you will animate the hand IK controls, which, mostly, you don’t want.

Solution:
Under the hand IK control, change the value for Parent in the channel box to world, not shoulders.
Also, the elbow pole vector controls should be set in the channel box (under parent) to world, not to the hand.


Problem 2: Vanishing or invisible skin textures
Morpheus' skin textures can be a bit tricky. You may have trouble making them appear, or when you render a frame Morpheus, sometimes his skin comes up black or invisible. If this happens, it is because the skin textures have become disconnected from the source image.

Solution: To solve this, follow these steps:

1. Make sure you created a new project and set to it correctly.
2. Make sure you have copied Morpheus’s textures into your source images folder. Now do a test render again
3. If the textures still don’t show up, open up the Hypershade and look inside for the faulty materials. These will appear black in the Hypershade, meaning no data. Let your mouse hover over the black materials and find the ones named skin materials (it is usually Morpheus’s skin that causes problems).
4. Double click on the material so that its attributes appear in the Attribute Editor.
5. Now, in the Attribute Editor, try to re-connect the material with the source image. Open up the file3 node under the materials tab, then scroll down and re-establish the connection to HeadTextureLight.png, or whatever the file is that the material is searching for.
6. Keep doing this for all of Morpheus’s textures until they are all working correctly. 
7. Don’t forget to render in Mental Ray 
8. If you're still having problems, try using a different lighting setup.

Still can’t make the skin texture work? Animation Apprentice student Giuseppe Candido says:

"that's because it has been used a subsurface scattering material, this is the kind of material to reproduce the skin effect. To avoid that just assign a standard material and reapply textures, it should work then."

Problem 3: Slow Playback

If you turn Morpheus's mesh smooth control to 1, this will slow down the real time playback on screen. Under his God control you'll find the attributes to smooth or unsmooth him.


For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. 

Free Jason Ryan Masterclass from Brown Bag Films

Brown Bag Films

It's amazing how much free material there is on the web nowadays for learning animation. Studying at University gives you a formal curriculum, a (hopefully) properly thought out program for your studies and your eventual maturity as a well-rounded digital artist. But your tutors at university won't teach you everything. Along the way, doing tutorials online is a great way to learn and improve your work.


Below is a free animation masterclass by Jason Ryan, offered through Brown Bag Films from Ireland. Jason Ryan is a gifted animator who is also a great teacher - a superb combination for any student. We recommend that all our students do online tutorials to help them grow and improve as digital artists.

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.

When Should an Animator Animate on the World Control in Maya?

When Should You Use the World Control to Animate in Maya? The short answer is: "never". But, as with most rules, real life is not quite as simple as that, and there are exceptions to the rule. Since this is an area of some confusion for animators learning to to use Maya, here's a brief outline of what the rules of World Control Etiquette really are.

What is the world control?
The World control is the control on a character or creature rig which allows it to be moved into position. It is also sometimes called the World Mover, the Global Control, or the God Control. It is at the very top of the animation hierarchy, and supersedes all the other controls, hence its name.

What is it used for?
The World Control is used to place your character in your 3D set. That is generally the first and last time that you will use it.

Why should you not use it for animation?
Because it creates confusion. If you set keyframes on your world control to move your character, you will have to counter-animate other controls such as the body and the feet. This will create two sets of curves which counteract one another, and make it very hard to edit your curves.

So why in the Animation Apprentice tutorials do you sometimes animate on the World control?
Good question. The reason is that sometimes you have no choice. For example, if you are animating a walk cycle "on the spot", you may need to set a keyframe on the World Mover in order to create a sense of forward movement. This is because training rigs are generally highly simplified to make learning Maya easier. On production rigs, which tend to be very complex, there would likely be a series of controls below the World Control in the hierarchy which perform the same function as the World Control, but are called something different, such as the "Direction Control". So, on a production rig, you would use one of these other controls to create the same function, while leaving the World Control untouched.

So it is bad to animate on the World Control?
Generally, yes. But when you are animating motion cycles with simple rigs, then you may have no choice.

----Alex

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. And find out about how our online video tutorials work.  

Hair Simulation in Maya 2014

Rapunzel - great hair!

One of the best new features of Autodesk Maya 2014 is a big step forward in its hair simulation capabilities. The new tool is called XGen, and it comes free with Maya 2014. It was developed by Disney/Pixar and was used on their recent film Rapunzel, to generate the heroine's gorgeous, bouncing tresses.

At the BlueGFX Expo in London last month, Autodesk demonstrated their new hair simulation tool, giving us a step-by-step tutorial in how to go about creating great hair effects in Maya with this new instancing system. So how exactly does it work?

XGen is found under the Dynamics tab in Autodesk Maya. You go to Create/XGen/description, and give it a project name. Pick groomable splines/create to create your new hair map.  You can use the Density slider to add to or reduce the density of the follicles.

Using the brush tool you can paint the hairs to make them bigger or smaller. You can pose them too, grooming the hair to make it follow the contours of the body, growing out in different directions, just like real hair.

On a facial rig, you can add stubble, a moustache, a beard. You will generally do this on a separate mesh. Underneath the hair mesh will be the original mesh, which will have its own skin shader.

You can also use XGen to create other effects, such as long grass waving the wind. You can use the same system to propagate trees in a landscape, or grass over a field, or roof tiles on a roof.

So, next time you're working on a character rig, have a go at XGen and see what you can create.

---Alex

For more about free online tutorials, see our post about Andy Sykes' excellent tutorials in Flash, and check out the free Maya tutorials at Animation Apprentice. Be sure to take advantage of free life drawing classes at Pixelovely.com. For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. And find out about how our online video tutorials work.

Playblast/Reference Viewer for Maya

Playblast/Reference Viewer for Maya from Chris Zurbrigg on Vimeo.

Mike Walling: Body Mechanics

Hey everyone, this was just sent out in the latest Jason Ryan newsletter.This is what Jason had to say.
 

"New Awesome Walk Through Video  

When I first started in Disney Animation Studios back in Dec 1995, I was really inspired to see legendary animators such as James Baxter, Glen Keane, Andreas Deja, and Eric Goldberg host a series of demos called Chalk Talks.  We would all cram into a theatre and the directing Animators would talk about how they approached animation.  This very event was the spark that lead me to record my own Tutorials back in '07, Webinars in '08,'09,'10 and now create the ianimate.net One of my Instructors for ianimate.net has recorded an awesome Body Mechanics Quicktime Video that is now available for purchase and download from http://jrawebinar.com workshops. When ever I start to show my work flow, I tell animators that my workflow is just one approach of many, it is so important to see and learn from as many professional animators as you can so that you can develop your own approach.

Mike Walling Body Mechanics

Mike is amazing at communicating very clearly how he approaches animation.  In his first Video he shows how he uses live action reference as inspiration for his planning and blocking stage.  In his second video he runs through how he polishes his shots into full feature level animation.  We are making these quicktime videos super affordable and downloadable so that anyone who is learning animation can avail of this resource.  Mike really enjoyed the process of making this video so much that he has already planned out his next video"


So check em out and enjoy! You can also check out Mike's site
JP

How to Modify Norman Rig: Modification Tutorials

Hey Everyone

A good friend of mine pointed me to this blog coming to us from the Academy of Art University. It seems to be started as an Animation Forum for them. I know by now most us us have used or at least seen the Norman Rig (click for previous post on Norman Rig) that they released last year. It's amazing and there is so many different variations of it. Did you ever wonder how??? Well there is some posts on the site that explain just that...how to modify the Norman Rig.




There is three parts:

Part 1 of the Norman Modification Workshop

Part 2 of the Norman Modification Workshop

Part 3 of the Norman Modification Workshop

These are some quick and easy ways to spice him up and doesn't seem to be all that complicated for a great and different end result. Also check out the rest of the AAU Animation Forum for some good animation content.





Also Animation Buffet has a link to download Norman and shows some great ways to modify him.
Check it out here.

Enjoy

Animating a facial "TAKE"

I ran into this post on Victor Navone's site. I wanted to point this out because you see takes in almost any film out there. I think it is a very important part of acting and there are soooo many different kinds of takes. (Fast, slow, big, small, etc...) But check this out he does a great job of breaking down his process of a take that he did of Dash from the Incredibles. While you are there check out the rest of his tutorials and notes he really has some great ones.

Enjoy!