AVTPro

Here's TV News Broadcast. Thank You Daniel, David Wu, Tomas, Igors. News  Coverage

Hey Joseph, Forgive my zeal, I was so ecstatic about the project and animation being released that I wrote a dissertation and I don't believe I ever answered the question. No it was not rigged in EIAS. EIAS doesn't export geometry, caches or FBX for a cloth simulator. So there's no way that I know of off-hand to export a character to Marvelous Designer for the cloth simulation. EIAS has a quick, and fun, but intermediate level of rig tool. It can get most jobs done directly in Animator. This project however was very advanced deformation for a pudgy character. Moreover, even with all the techniques I had to apply to the piggy's shape I still had to be very mindful of the cloth sim. Cloth sims add a whole other layer of complexity. So much so that have to be very mindful of how I animate the characters. I was careful not to let the arm come too close to the body. In some cases it couldn't be help and it nicked and snagged the dress with her hoof. This was a nice effect as long as it wasn't too stretched. If the fatty arms brush too closely to the body it would and could destroy the whole simulation. Ultimately, I had to use Maya and even that was a stretch. The whole project would have failed if Maya hadn't promptly released their update to their Wrap Deformer . It was a hairy experience. (pun). Speaking of updates, if Tomas' development team hadn't fixed a "One Vert" bug in the import option, the whole project would have failed. I tell Tomas he should release it as is, because EIAS v10 is great. But if one bug like that could throw a project then he is wise to make it 100% perfect and not 99%.

https://avtpro.gumroad.com/l/Deformer

Here's the first DVD I did. https://avtpro.gumroad.com/l/Deformer This sold well at the time. One of the goals for this was to make sure all the tricks and tips never got lost or stayed in one persons head. Anything else I find I'll post. AVT

https://avtpro.gumroad.com/l/SkinMan

Here it is on GumRoad. it's been several years so I dropped the price significantly. I'll load the other one soon. https://avtpro.gumroad.com/l/SkinMan

Thanks Joe. I’ve been a Maya/EIAS user for years so I use both. I work as a problem-solver on the front end of a production no matter with what or where the final product is finished. (https://avtpro.gumroad.com/). Normally I rig in Maya. I hate to admit it, but when I first started rigging this project I was rushing because I had so many other parts to do. So I rigged and skinned it in Mixamo hoping to get it done quickly. Tomas once told me Mixamo is good for basic work only. Now I know what he meant. Usually Mixamo is OK for mocap but for key-framing it was problematic because Mixamo gave me weird bone orientations. It may not have been Mixamo fault. I may have caused the problem re-adjusting joints to better fit the character's skeleton. I don’t quite recall now because I was also busy modeling and texturing. The Mixamo skinning was great but the joints were not correct so I may have moved them and didn't reorient them. That was a "No-No". So instead of animating one axis for an arm swing, unfortunately I had at least two axis to manipulate. This is something I would always avoid as a technical rigger had I started the rig from scratch in Maya. I thought I could get away with it and normally I could, but a shuffle dance is a more intricate animation. I keyed it anyway but transferred the rig to a Maya HumanIK (HIK), a Maya auto-rig system. It didn't fix the orientations like I hoped but HumanIK and other Maya tools made it workable. I would never rush a rig like that again. It’s best to slow down and do it right the first time. Clean orientation on a keyframe dance animation is paramount because dancing is so involved. Also, since it was HIK, I also used MotionBuilder to do most of the keying. Yes, I prefer MotionBuilder even over Maya for character animation. MotionBuilder is a great character animation tool not just MoCap editing. I do have access to a Vicon Mocap lab but I forgot the dance steps by the time I got to the animation phase of the project. I really can do that shuffle dance well. However Daniel took one look of me in a mocap suit dancing as a piggy and said "Key-frame". Lol :-) I was out of practice! The real challenge of this project is the skin deformations, not the skeleton rig. EIAS does really good skinning but I needed really hyper-advanced deformation controls not just for the pudgy character but the cloth. I wanted the cloth to be affected by underling jiggling fatty tissue. So I used a lot of Maya skin deformation tools that I have been wanting to try out anyway. For years I have been planning to go “Narnia” or “Lord of the Rings” level character creation. Actually, I threw everything and the whole kitchen sink in at the skin deformation including muscles, Pose Space Deformers (PSD) and other forms of corrective blend shapes. I even took it a step further with "Shot-Sculpting" (cache editing) in an legacy app called ChronoSculpt from NewTek. I went very mild on jiggle deformers but heavy on muscle bulge in the bicep area of the arms. Armpits are one of the most challenging areas of any skin rig. It webs when the arms extends and intersects when passing through. Cloth intersection makes it even more challenging and needs to be compensated for, so I sculpted the shape back when the armpit was too loose or concave and opened the armpits when it convex in on cloth. These two states were triggered depending on the orientation of the arm with set driven keys in Maya. Like I mentioned, I don’t need Maya for most rigs, or rig to this level, but since this was a show case, fine art museum piece for a renown artist Daniel Lee I pulled out all the stops. Daniel never disappoints in the way he exhibits the set design either and amazingly show cases the work along with his theme for the exhibition. David Wu handled the shading and look development. I provided a base texture map which I 3D painted in Zbrush. Daniel had went to a pig farm and brought back great textures to graph on the 3D model. Also, displacement and normal maps were generated in Zbrush. The fur, I groomed in ZBrush. The cloth was Marvelous Designer. I tend to rebuild cloth geo in Maya for quads and thickness as well. Without EIAS v10 I couldn't get this animation to David Wu to render in EIAS. There was only one very small bug fixed to get it done. It was just one vertex that kept popping up but Tomas got it fixed right away. Then the project worked perfectly but I don't know what else has to be done. The big thing is it all worked and EIAS v10 users are in for a real treat. The biggest takeaway is almost anything I can do in Maya can be imported into EIAS for rendering. I also work with Houdini and have been able to get fractured, crumbling effects into EIAS.

Here's the latest project I worked on for Daniel Lee museum exhibition, Shuffle 2021. I modeled, textured, rigged and animated also cloth sims. I worked in Zbrush, Maya and Marvelous Designer. Then everything was passed to David Wu who polished the look with rendering and shaders in EIAS v.10 beta. He also did the music. Special Thanks to Tomas who supported the software with advanced technical features. Enjoy. Character Animation Render: https://youtu.be/dOc-nkHzxjU Snippet from Museum https://youtu.be/N4df6uVdQYg

Amazing! They used Mocap way back then.

Yes, Marvelous Designer. Maya users also use MD.

I'm working on a project and I needed to refresh myself on cloth sim. Here's a sample in EIAS. https://youtu.be/mja9IARxX5w Here's my original sample in Maya https://youtu.be/xWL_buygkYU

Thanks for inquiring. Status: No Momentum. So I sent the videos out as is. It wasn't finished but with good value and "way more" than enough to learn facial morphs in EIAS. I haven't given up on the Face Rig Anim DVD. I will finish it and send out a final DVD but probably after the EIAS 10 is out. if you are interested I can look it over, send what I have, and try to rekindle momentum on a final. I still offer 1 hour or so support with the DVD. In my view, EIAS could always do realistic facial animation with BlendShape Editor. The girl in the video I did in an old version of EIAS. Here's a sample of Maya rig I am doing some facial animation on now, but it's all the same thing as my Deformer Rig DVD. Cartoon Rig

Here's a sample of an animation that only started out as a test but snowballed into a final render. I'm helping with beta as I have with EIAS for decades. ;-) They gave me a model from Mixamo that had facial morphs. I was only testing the face so I used an audio snippet. I set up the voice recognition in MotionBuilder. Then I animated the expressions and eyes. I also added the body motion from Mixamo but edited the fingers and gesture to match the dialog. I used Maya for the hair and cloth dynamics. Tomas and I did some extra researching on caching and I picked up a few new tricks with FBX. Everything was sent to David who is a phenomenal render wrangler. He added lights and adjusted textures. He even did the camera move. I really like the images he saw. It amazed me that this started out as only a test. Thanks. Artistically Yours, Alonzo Von Threet Kami in Kitchen Render or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMK7OWYg9Ck

Pre-orders have been slow and development has linger. However, I'm trying to tie this up by the end of next month. If you're interested order now before the final price. Here's another exert. Simple import overview. https://youtu.be/biMdmmxTEMc Here's a sample facial animation I did with dynamics in EIAS for David Wu's rendering of the kitchen and girl. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMK7OWYg9Ck

Here's a sample of an animation I did in Maya and imported it into EIAS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBwdA7eag9A Here's the original I did in Maya. Just thought I would see how EI like it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S-HL1u1TSw

This is a facial animation test that evolved into a full render with the help of David Wu. We do all kind of stuff, crowds and dynamics. If you would like our assists with your projects feel free to contact us. avtpro5@mac.com. Also, the Facial Rig DVD is still in production. $75. (athreet@adelphia.net) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVcSA3u0sZc

I had a bit of a delay. I was working on a bid for a project with Tomas and David Wu. Thanks for your patience. The first half of the DVD is done. So far, It's mainly discussions and working overviews of the process. The second half of the DVD will be a step by step of creating a character faces, morph and rig for animation. I also have a ZBrush tutorial of face modeling (https://gumroad.com/l/bEfBl). There will be a second half of that tutorial which will be in the second part of the DVD. It's long and drawn out again just like my other DVDs. So I guess that just the way I communicate all the info that I feel is necessary to know. At least, you will fully understand the main principle to successfully execute or correct the procedures. I may edit them down. Right now they are still drafts. However the second part of the DVD will be more formalize. Lastly, none of this is concrete. I may edit the drafts or cancel them out. These draft are videos that are acceptable. There's more but it's yet to be decided if I will show them or not. I'll give everything another QA look once I'm done. All the videos are not compressed so I have to do that as well before the final release. Again, I will send the modeling part shortly, it was done a couple month ago. The hardest part of this DVD is figuring out what face to do. ;-) I hope all this is useful and let me know what you think. If you have any question please feel free to ask. You get an hour or so of tech support if need be. I'm using EIAS 9.1 because it's great. For modeling, I use Maya and Zbrush. You can use whatever you like. Face Rig DVD: INTRO Link: https://youtu.be/GZ4yhhwtaMY Pre-Order for $75 via PayPal: athreet@adelphia.net Thanks Alonzo

I have been doing crowd simulations for over a year or so. I started with Golaem and Robot races but recently I have been using Miarmy. I have several samples that I imported into EIAS via FBX as well as Maya preview renders. I am a freelancer so feel free to contact me for architecture projects. I do stairs as well. It's all very flexible and affordable. https://youtu.be/brOTUHBbCO0 Sound so watch your speaker volume https://youtu.be/mGmJotMRbf8 Diverse Troops https://youtu.be/CUsfOzGTZOw Fired up 2 sound https://youtu.be/c4zg3jkhSbc Terrains https://youtu.be/W6DCbjjTENI Mutant Multitude https://youtu.be/-f0iX_NdMGM Mutant Multitude Colors https://youtu.be/jW45sMtxzRI

AVTPro's ReadyRigs Facial Rig DVD Update: I am charting out the DVD with a clear outline and will start recording shortly. There's so many options for facial animation these days that I'm focusing on sticking to the script and EIAS features. However, I will be discussing lots of facial rig/animation options in a concise informative overviews. pre-sale PayPal $75 to athreet@adelphia.net. Thanks.

I'm still working toward this. Currently I'm doing research and development. I had some recent successes in the software and technique that will make the process much more automated. i'm still accepting pre orders as well.

Yes, what's funny, I didn't write that list. It was requested but I was thinking yes. Perfect timing. Why didn't I think to do it sooner. ahah. It will be perfect for all the new feature coming in the upcoming upgrade. Don't forget, send $75 PayPal because it will change soon..

Good News. I had a very pleasant surprise on my birthday June 15th. An EIAS3D user that purchased my ReadyRigs DVD a year or so ago sent $75 to my paypal (athreet@adelphia.net) for an early bird pre-order purchase! So it's a GO! I will be accepting more pre-orders at the same price for $75 for the new ReadyRigs Facial Animation. As a bonus I will "release" sections during production and final pricing. ($85 to 125). So if you want to get it early again my Paypal is athreet@adelphia.net. Also, I plan to do at least two more DVD's. At least on MotionBuilder DVD and one special interest DVD on Natural Motion Endorphin. Here's a compilation of some of my lastest Works and Wips. AVT Dynamic Character Animation Show Reel Here's what I have been requested but I can still add other elements with pre-orders. I will be talking about hair and things I have in my other animations. ____________________________________________________________________________ Modeling: • How to make correct facial topology and edge loops on the face. Without good edge loops the face won't deform well. • How to set up morphs for only the head on a single mesh character. Makes it easier not to do each facial morphs on the whole body. Rigging: *Morphs for eyebrows and eyelashes. • How to model expression. Happy, Sad etc. * How to model phenomes so the character can speak. • Discusion on automatic facial rigs. Mocap, Tracking, GUI. Live Audio. Animation •Setting the EIAS •MorphsWindow and F-Curve. •Keyframing Morphs Would you have the time to look into making a DVD for this? If you do have time, can you please give me a price and I could pay you up front for the tutorials. Hope to hear from you soon

I use an older discontinued program called Endorphin by Natural Motion to animate my dynamic ragdoll characters. Lately I have been simply retargeting scene as if they were only MoCap FBX animation. I use MotionBuilder to edit mocap and I use Maya for some secondary dynamics. All three of these programs use FBX which I export to EIAS. If I still need to tweak any animation I do it EIAS. This is my freelance pipeline for years. So usually I have a bunch on non rendered animation but when I do render it's usually EIAS. I'm starting to render more in Maya but nothing beats EIAS for speed and ease of use. IMHO. My character animation process is what is now called "Hybrid Animation". It's not keyframe, it's not just Mocap, and some of it simulations using Artificial Intelligence and Controlled Ragdolled Physic Simulation or Dynamic Motion Synthesis. Here's a sample: New AVT Dynamic Character Motion Show Reel (In the first sample with the girl talking, I use MoCap from Mixamo for the body in which I tweaked her left hand in Mobu. I did her facial animation in Mobu with their Voice Device for the lipsync. I did the hair and cloth dynamic in Maya. It's not a render just a preview but it could have easily been done in EIAS as well from scratch. There's a few EIAS render in the film.) Endorphin I bought Endorphin 2.7.1 just before the company sold but use the older version more to learn. Endorphin 2.5.2 or MotionBuilder 7.5 OSX aren't really for final renders though i use it as such. It's front-end character animation technology. Even the older discontinued versions are great.

Updating a couple new animation I did in EIAS the other day Pumpkin Hulk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-wvrMGgbVQ&feature=youtu.be