Three classes are currently being offered: Max/Mudbox Workflow, Intro to Character Rigging, and Max Script for Character Rigging. This is a great opportunity if any of these topics appeal to you, as you are being taught directly by one of the best in the business and unlike DVDs and video tutorials you get the chance to ask questions.

Head over to the PEN Productions website to check out details!

The Concise Book Of Muscles is another recent purchase I made. This is a reference book rather than a good read. There is a small section at the front of the book covering some basic anatomy stuff, but nothing that you won’t find anywhere else.

The real value of this book is the great attention given to each muscle. The book covers muscles over the entire body, breaking them down by major sections: muscles of the face, head, and neck; muscles of the shoulder and upper arm; etc. It dedicates an entire page to each muscle, showing a diagram of the individual muscle and how it attaches to the skeleton. It also has a brief write up telling you the muscle’s origin and insertion points (including another small diagram outlining the exact locations of where the muscle attaches), the specific action the muscle performs, and what basic body movements the muscle is involved in. This is fantastic information to have when setting up muscle systems in your rigs.

The book is $22 at Chapters’ online store, which is a steal for reference material such as this.

The Concise Book Of Muscles on chapters.ca

Here is a brief preview on Google Books. It goes into even more detail after the face muscles.

The Concise Book Of Muscles on Google Books

I just recently purchased and finished reading The Body In Motion, by Theodore Dimon. I thought it would be a good read when it comes to additional learning about anatomy, and it definitely is. I thought the book was great. I highly recommend it for any aspiring riggers out there. It discusses the evolution of the human body, as well as why and how our bodies move the way they do. The author does a great job of explaining things without getting overly complicated; he is very easy to understand. Note that this is a book you actually read rather than just hold onto for reference purposes. You will have a much better understanding of how the body works after finishing this book.

Go out and buy it! It is a very inexpensive book, so its not going to make your pocket hurt.

The Body In Motion on chapters.ca

Here it is on Google Books if you want a preview of it.

The Body In Motion on Google Books

]]> http://www.mathiesonfacer.com/featured/the-body-in-motion/feed/ 0 http://www.mathiesonfacer.com/featured/dinosaurs/ http://www.mathiesonfacer.com/featured/dinosaurs/#comments Thu, 31 Mar 2011 05:40:13 +0000 Mat http://www.mathiesonfacer.com/?p=1045 It has been quite some time since I finished up work on Tree Of Life. I have heard rumors of the dinosaurs I worked on may end up not being in the movie. I am still very excited to see the finished film regardless. Whether or not they are in the movie, I honestly have no idea. All I know is what has been getting said around the internet.

Anyways, I emailed my dad yesterday to let him know that a new poster had been released for the movie. I heard back from him pretty quickly, saying he saw dinosaurs in the poster! I hadn’t examined the poster closely enough (there are 70 images shown from the movie), and so I was pretty shocked and excited to read this. He told me to look images under the word LIFE, and low and behold: a frame from one of our shots is on the poster!

This was super exciting to see, as it gives a bit of hope that our work still remains in the movie. It definitely is no guarantee they’re in, but at least there is a possibility still.

I recognize one other frame (possibly two) on the poster as being from our shots, but I am not going to say which :).

Here is the poster. The frame is super small, but you can definitely see it. Enjoy!

Returning to 3ds Max has been nice. It took a bit of getting used to after working in Maya for the past 6 months. Although it has been nice, I am looking forward to switching back to Maya again in the future. I was only using Maya 8.5 in production, but even then it had some important tools I am constantly missing (skin weight holding!!!).

It is very impressive to see how far along the pipeline has come since I was last here. The guys have done a fantastic job, and it is exciting to be getting plugged into the core of such a highly capable technical team. I look forward to helping with further development of the pipeline and what future projects might be in store for us.

One last note on this post. Best of luck to my friend Jason Labbe, whom I am taking over for here. He has moved on to the next challenge of his career in the form of Rigging Technical Director at Lucasfilm Singapore. Congrats Jason!

It has been a long wait to see anything at all from the movie, but the trailer looks great. Very proud to have worked on this, and can’t wait to see the final movie. It is currently scheduled to hit the theatres on May 27, 2011.

The movie was directed by Terrance Malick, and stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. It sounds like there is quite a bit of buzz surrounding the movie, so I hope it lives up to its expectations.

(Spoiler alert?)

I worked on the dinosaur sequences in the movie. There have been articles the internet, from even before I started working on the movie, stating there were dinosaurs, so this should not be breaking news or anything. I won’t be going into any more detail than this, since I am under NDA for the movie and do not know just how much more than that has been mentioned publicly. So, if you catch the movie when it comes out, remember me when you see dinosaurs! :)

This is my first Maya production. I’ve really taken to Maya and am enjoying the rigging workflow very much. Scripting in MEL has also been going well. I’ve found it very easy to pick up and create tools, but I really don’t like the language. I feel limited using it, and also feel it is kind of awkward in how it works. I am already starting to learn Python so I can start writing more generalized functions, using nested arrays again, all that good stuff.

Anyways, things have been going great and just thought I’d give a quick update since I haven’t posted anything in a while. Perhaps soon there will be some MEL scripts showing up on the site!

As mentioned above, I used to own old-school Graphire tablets. They were only the smalls sizes, and I only ever used them for creating texture maps. I never thought of using them in Max because I just couldn’t see how navigating 3d space could comfortably work. I’ve had my Graphire4 sitting around since college, collecting dust, and had never even considered trying it for skinning.

After mapping my main pen button to middle-click and secondary button to right-click navigating 3d is a breeze. I’m still not totally comfortable with it yet, but am quickly adapting. I’ve started building more small macros for skinning so I can quickly access tools through quads with my pen rather than having to visit the modify panel for things that I often would with my mouse.

The pen is a completely different workflow from the mouse. Its a lot more free-flowing and really speeds things up. I’m finding lots of slow spots with my workflow that I never noticed before when using a mouse.

Anyways, happy with my purchase and would recommend others to try out their tablets too. It will feel weird at first, but give it a day or two before giving up on it. Make sure you install your latest tablet drivers, enable pressure sensitivity, and set it to affect strength when skinning. The pressure sensitivity settings can be found in your painter options in Max.

On a related note: the multi-touch input is a cool gimmick, but sucks terribly with Max. Don’t expect much from it.

The macroscript categories for my tools, if you are looking to add them to a quad menu or toolbar, will always start with facerFX.

You’ll notice in my website’s navigation bar that when you go to Portfolio/Tools, there is a “Bug Report” page. I test my scripts best I can before releasing them for public use, but of course there is still possibility for errors. If you run into any bugs with any of my scripts, please use the bug-report page to let me know of the error you are receiving. Try to be as descriptive as you can be when explaining the error and how to re-create it. If I can’t re-create it, I can’t fix it.

Please note: Most of the scripts I release have been used in production situations, but these tools are use at your own risk. I cannot be held responsible for any undesired results.

About 2 weeks after returning to Ontario, I resumed work with PEN Productions as Senior Technical Director and Production Supervisor. It has been great working with Paul Neale again. We have been very busy since getting back, working with familiar clients as well as a few new ones.

For anybody out there reading this who may be interested, PEN Productions specializes in offering technical direction to studios across the globe, remotely. We have worked with clients from all over on animated series, commercials, AAA game titles, feature films, even engineering related projects. We offer fast turn around times as well as competitive rates. The quality of work we provide is highly respected throughout the industry and we are intent on building continuing working relationships with studios, so long-term support for projects is expected and delivered.

Although we specialize in technical direction, we offer a wide range of services in many different areas of production including, but not limited to:

• rigging
• modelling
• texturing
• pipeline development
• custom tool development
• training
• animation and motion capture
• effects

If you have a project you feel PEN may be able to help you with, please feel free to contact us about receiving a quote.

Visit PENProductions.ca to find out more.