A high resolution version of this video can be viewed at Vimeo. Just click the word “vimeo” or the video title in the video window above to view it.

My next step is texturing this model. He will recieve the familiar red and blue color scheme and I will create a version of the “S” for his chest in Adobe Illustrator. Any comments and critiques of the model as it is would be greatly appreciated.

The other posts in this series are:

• the Big Blue Boy Scout
• the Big Blue Boy Scout part 2

The Vail Film Festival took place from March 29th to April 1st. The pre-roll ran ahead of the all the films in each of the four screening locations. The Sebastian Vail, Cinébistro, Four Seasons Resort Vail, and Vail Mountain School.

Marc Griffin of Archaea Mass art directed the pre-roll and created the assets I used to create the 3d elements. It was a wonderful weekend and my first visit to Vail. Marc and I got to explore Vail village and surrounding towns. We also went up on the mountain on two occassions. The first was just to take in the beauty of the mountain and surrounding area. The second was to experience my first bit of snowboarding! I had a blast falling down the mountain all afternoon long. I progressed relatively quickly from falling on nearly no slope, to falling on the bunny slope, to falling down the “easy” runs of the mountain.

I was greeted at the bottom by a bunch of thugs who celebrated my accomplishments by pummeling me with frozen balls of love!

Just a few shots from the trip:

There is still a lot of work left for the look. The trademark “curl of the hair” comes to mind immediately. Any comments or critiques you may have on the current state of the model would be greatly appreciated. This is based on some concept art, similar in style to Bruce Timm’s drawing style. Is it working? Take some time and talk about it in the comments below.

I started out just modeling the basic body form.

Next I started building the forms of his head and hands.

Then I started to refine his hand shape and head form according to the art director’s requests.

Then of course I had to add the cape! This cape is an experiment currently. I’m not sure that we have decided how to handle animating it(his cape) yet.

Downloads:
http://www.jsulli.com/videoFiles/supesRoughCape2.mp4
http://www.jsulli.com/videoFiles/supesRoughCape2.ogv

I claim no ownership of the character Superman, whatsoever.

The other posts in this series are:

• the Big Blue Boy Scout
• the Big Blue Boy Scout part 2

Downloads:
http://www.jsulli.com/videoFiles/demo2012.mp4
http://www.jsulli.com/videoFiles/demo2012.ogv

This demo reel showcases some of the work I have been involved in. Unless otherwise indicated, I did all of the work presented. I work in 3D animation, primarily using Maya currently. I also am quite familiar with 3D Studio and to a lesser extent SoftImage XSI. I am extremely proficient in many of the Adobe Creative Suite applications.

#1 self portrait model – Using photographic reference, sketches, and a mirror, I created this likeness in Maya.

#2 punk duck model – This character design was created as an example for a 3D studio Max course I was teaching. I created the character design on the whiteboard, transferred the initial design to Photoshop, and modeled the character in 3D Studio Max. Later the model was transferred via OBJ file to Maya for editing.

#3 Joker model – The likeness is inspired by the Joker character design from the Warner Brothers film, “Under the Red Hood”. I redrew the character from different angles in Photoshop and modeled the character in Maya.

#4 young girl model – I created the character design design by hand, and colored it in Photoshop. The model was created in Maya.

#5 Squoosh lip sync – Animated, lit and rendered a short passage of Rumi from the Coleman Barks translation titled “Feeling the Shoulder of the Lion”. The passage can be found on Page 27 and states, “The Speaker speaks. I am only an echo.” The model was created, modeled and rigged by Jason Osipa.

#6 Cerevast Sonolysis- A three minute short I created from concept to finish for Cerevast, the makers of a tool that helps disintergrate blood clots. Art direction by Marc Griffin. All work done by Jamal Sullivan. This clip is animation of blood flow in the Circle of Willis with a blood clot still obstructing the flow. Some secondary animation was done in After Effects to add the small white bits of medicine as 2d sprites.

#7 Lego Racers 4D – I did shot setup and rendering on this show.

#8 Lego Racers 4D – I did shot setup and rendering on this show.

Music by J*DaVeY “Quicksand”

self portrait turntable from Jamal Sullivan on Vimeo.
Zareen full model from Jamal Sullivan on Vimeo.
version of the joker from Jamal Sullivan on Vimeo.
punk duck full model from Jamal Sullivan on Vimeo.

A direct link to all my vimeo videos is here.

From the whiteboard sketches of the day, I came up with a character which I later modeled and provided for the class to learn basic rigging techniques.

I have since converted the model to Maya and am currently editing for rigging, animation and texturing.

The conversion and editing of edge loops has so far taken about four hours.

I based my version of the Joker character off of the character design from Under the Red Hood, a wonderful direct to video animated film. Using reference frames from the film, I created a front view image plane (modeling aid). I also created a profile drawing to use as an image plane for the side view.

And below are some other views of the model. I modeling polygonal hair with an expectation of modeling that into a more representative polygonal hairdo in zbrush, but I also will have a version of the model that I can style with hair using different rendering methods.

A turntable of the finished model to come soon, as well as a process post outlining some of the modeling techniques used. Next up is a facial animation rig! Any comments? Critiques? Please, speak up!

the added controls are as follows:

1. L/RfingersCTRL – controls the bending of the base finger joints on the Z axis as well as the spread of the fingers on the Y axis.
2. thumbCTRL – controls the bending of the thumb using all three axises
3. indexCTRL to pinkyCTRL – controls the bending of the fingers separately.Can be used in conjunction with the LfingersCTRL

For the interested, watch this space for descriptions of how I used expressions to handle the FK animation via control curves. You can download the model for educational and testing purposes only. Let me know what is broken and I will fix it! Let me know what is great and I will incorporate it into my future rigs. Discuss!

baserigHandsv03.ma by Jamal Obi Sullivan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

This post is part of a series:

• Base Rig
• animation mel script for baserig
• Base Rig now with more hands!

//storing current selection in variable
string $currentSelect[] = `ls -sl`;

The “//” line contains comments I used to guide myself through the steps I wanted the script to take. the “string” line creates an array that remembers what you(the user) currently have selected and stores it so that it can be recovered later.

//grabbing all the control objects
select -cl ;
select fullBodyCTRL ;
select -add LfootCTRL ;
select -add LheelGrp ;
select -add LheelGrp ;
select -add LfootROT ;
select -add LfootPIVOT ;
select -add LtoeROT ;
select -add RfootCTRL ;
select -add RfootROT ;
select -add RfootPIVOT ;
select -add RtoeROT ;
select -add LhandCTRL ;
select -add RhandCTRL ;
select -add hipCTRL ;
select -add hipAngle ;
select -add backCTRL ;
select -add LshoulderCTRL ;
select -add LarmFKCTRL ;
select -add LforearmFKCTRL ;
select -add LhandFKCTRL ;
select -add RshoulderCTRL ;
select -add LelbowCTRL ;
select -add RarmFKCTRL ;
select -add RforearmFKCTRL ;
select -add RhandFKCTRL ;
select -add RelbowCTRL ;
select -add neckCTRL ;
select -add headCTRL ;
string $ctrlObj[] = `ls -sl`;

These lines of code create an array,”$ctrlObj[]” , that will be used later to set keyframes on the keyable atrributes of the items in the array. The first line, “select -cl;” clears maya of any selection at all. The next line, “select fullBodyCTRL ;”, starts a new selection. Each subsequent line begin with “select -add” which allows you to add to your current selection without dropping what is already selected. The last line, “string $ctrlObj[] = `ls -sl`;”, makes an array that contains the names of all the currently selected items.

//creating array of all keyable attributes of the main list
string $animAllObj[] = `listAnimatable $ctrlObj`;

this next line of code will take that list of objects saved in the “ctrlObj”array earlier, and creates another array,”animAllObj” that contains the names of each keyable attribute of the objects in the list. For example, some of the controls should only have their rotation keyed. Others have some custom attribute that would not get keyed if you told Maya to key only the traslation or rotation. Since each object has been set up so that only what needs to be keyed is keyable, no unnecessary keyframe information will be created.

//set keyframe for all keyable attributes for all control objects
setKeyframe $animAllObj;

This line of code will set a keyframe on the current frame for each of the keyable attributes in the array “animAllObj”.

//retore to original selected object and clear array
select -r $currentSelect;
clear($currentSelect);
clear($animAllObj);
clear($ctrlObj);

These last lines restore the visible selection to what it was before the mel script selected all of the control objects and set the requested keyframes. Also, the arrays that were created were cleared to make that memory available for something else.

To assign this mel script to a hotkey in your Hotkey Editor

1. go to Window->Settings/Preferences->Hotkey Editor in Maya.
2. under “Categories” scroll to and click on “User”
3. click the “New” button on the lower right hand side of the window.
4. copy and paste the mel script lines from above into the “Command:” area
5. name the script.
6. click “Accept”.
7. the name you have chosen will show up in the “Commands” window above
8. click the name and assign it a new hotkey(make sure the hot key you want is not in use)

*note* this version of the script should be assigned to a free hot key in your hot key editor or added as a button to your shelf in Maya so that it is invoked whenever you press that hot key or button. I plan on creating a separate GUI that will allow you to set keys, and separately change the list of objects keyed on the fly.

There are a number of controls available on this rig. I will go through the usage of each one.

Main body controls

fullBodyCTRL – overall top control node. trans and rot available for this node
hipCTRL- used to control the movement of the character from the hips. Also used to bend the character at the hips.
hipAngle- used to rotate the hips only
backCTRL- used to bend and twist the back
neckCTRL- used to rotate the neck
headCTRL- ummm.. this is starting to get redundant

In the interest of brevity I will only describe the controls for the left arm and leg.

The arm controls

LshoulderCTRL- used to shrug and rotate the shoulders
LarmFKCTRL- FK(forward kinematics) control for rotating the upper part of the arm
LforearmFKCTRL- FK(forward kinematics) control for rotating the forearm
LhandFKCTRL- FK(forward kinematics) control for rotating the hand
LhandCTRL- IK(inverse kinematics) control for controlling the arm. Move the control and the arm will follow. Changing the IKtoFK attribute from “0″ to “1″ will switch to forward kinematics control. Any value in between (.5, for example) will split the arm’s position between the placement of the LhandCTRL and the locations of the FK controls.
LelbowCTRL- used in conjunction with the LhandCTRL the control the plane upon which the arm rotates. Translating this locator changes the plane used to rotate the arm. *Note* Make certain the locator stays behind the imaginary line from the shoulder to the hand as the arm will flip otherwise.

The leg controls

LfootCTRL- Used to place the foot. Also has a “Knee” attribute to change the plane the leg rotates on.
LfootROT- used to rotate the foot from the heel to the ball of the foot, pivot the foot from the inner ball of the foot(like stomping out a lit cigarette), and roll the foot from side to side. The rotation is limited so that you cannot rotate below the LfootCTRL, leaving the foot flat upon the ground plane.
LfootPIVOT- used to pivot the foot from the outer ball of the foot
LtoeROT- used to stand the foot up on the point of the toe

There are three layers in this Maya scene. “animGeo” contains the low-poly geometry used to represent the character for animation. “controllers” contains the animation control objects. “bones” contains the joints of the skeleton, currently hidden to make for a cleaner work file for the animator.

So for those of you that have read all of this, if you are interested I will reward(maybe?) you by providing the scene file(baserig.ma) for your inspection. Please check it out and let me know is this rig is useful, if it’s wack, if it worked well, whatever. Please only use this for your (and my) education. If you use the rig for anything other than playing around on your home system, please credit me. Do not use this for commercial work without my written permission. If you want to use this as a basis for your own rig, let me know @ jamal@jsulli.com

baserig.ma, baserigv02.ma and baserigv03.ma by Jamal Obi Sullivan are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

In later posts I can discuss the expressions and constraints used to make the controls work to move the underlying skeleton. There are also some custom attributes that allow switching from FK to IK and back for animation, providing more control for the animator. Let me know in the comments if explanation of that kind is of interest. Stretchy limbs will be the next edit for this rig. As well as a separate animation skeleton to which the animation can be baked.

Cheers!

Changelog

baserigv02.ma now available for download!

1. separated the left right and main body controllers into three separate layers
2. color coded the left(blue) and right(red) controllers for easier selection in the orthographic views
3. added some dimension to the foot controllers to make them easier to see and select from the orthographic views
4. the selection mask to “Select surface objects” is turned OFF by default making it easier to select only the controls and not the representative geometry

baserigv03.ma now available for download!

1. got rid of extra layers
2. set up limbs so mirrored animation using control objects was possible
3. removed extra geometry from scene