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“I've watched Alex Alvarez's
training DVDs on Dynamics... and they are
amazing! I've learned so much from the lectures, they have
helped make me a better visual effects artist. I started
using Maya for effects animation when I joined Square USA
for the film "Final
Fantasy" about
4 years ago. I wish I had these DVDs then. Well, better
late than never.”
- Andy Chen
Effects Animator
Dreamworks Feature Animation
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Maya offers many choices when
it comes to how a character's geometry will be influenced by
a skeleton. Smooth Bind allows for overlapping membership where
any vertex can be influenced by the rotation of multiple joints
- a conceptually naturalistic approach. Yet if the character's
geometry is heavy, be it NURBS, Polygons or Sub-D, the weighting
process can become cumbersome, and performance can suffer.
In this video we look at an indirect skinning approach which
works for any geometry type, where we add wrap deformers to
our high-res geometry which then get Smooth Bound. The workflow
of creating the wrap deformer geometry, assigning the wraps,
placing joints and skinning are all thoroughly addressed.
Product Code: SKI01
Convert SubD to Poly
Convert NURBS to Poly
Extract Faces
Wrap Deformers
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Joint Tool
Script Editor
SmoothBind |
 01:
Introduction
02: Overview
03: Sub-D Surfaces
04: NURBS
05: Applying Wraps
06: Skeleton
07: Skinning
08: Credits
Click here to
view a sample clip from this DVD. Note that while this
clip is 640x480 the actual movie size is 720x480 with
higher quality compression. View the stills to the right
to see the actual resolution.
Alex is founder and director of The Gnomon Workshop
and of Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood. Alex has been published
in industry magazines, websites, and books - plus he has taught courses
at several major trade conferences. His character animation projects
have appeared on many computer graphics websites, on the cover of the ‘Maya
Character Animation’ book published by New Riders, and his 'Zufuhr'
project was commissioned by Alias for their Siggraph stage presentations.
Alex is president of the Los Angeles Alias Users Group and sits on the
Advisory Board for Highend3D.com. Prior to Gnomon, Alex worked for Alias,
as a consultant and trainer for studios in the Los Angeles area. Alex
is an alumni of the Art Center College of Design and the University
of Pennsylvania.
For more of Alex's work, visit:
www.alexalvarez.com.
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