AGI Studio 2 - Week 2 - Statement of Intention

Statement of Intention

Context:

The theme for my minor project falls under the modeling, rigging, and animation pipeline. My main focus here is going to be the morphable rig, which is going to be using an advanced body and facial rigging setup. Here are a few examples from other artists of what I am planning to come up with this semester.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWWKdxclAkE&feature=emb_logo – Puppeteer Lounge
2. https://vimeo.com/296268624 - Fred Qiao

Rationale:

The main question that I will be exploring for my minor project is: “Can making a ‘Morphing Rig’ make a game character rig better and can it make an animator job easier?”. The main motivations for me to do this project are basically to get familiar with and learn the whole character creation pipeline. As a rigger, I want to be able to model the characters that I rig and test it out through animations on my own, without having to always rely on modelers and animators. I also want to learn how to set up a rig that is morphable and can use the same animations on all the morph targets.

The main inspiration for my project is the game The Sims, where the user can modify the characters any way they want, ranging from changing face shapes to body shapes. Even though the characters that every user creates looks different, all the animations they use are the same. I want my rig to be able to do that to some extent. And this is what I plan to accomplish with my minor project this semester.

Methods:

• Using a concept from the internet to create a base 3D model of a character in Maya
• Creating UVs and Textures for the character using Substance Painter, Substance Designer, and Maya
• Creating models that the rig can morph into from the base model using Maya and Mudbox (for example a model for a female morph or a child morph)
• Creating a rig setup that can enable morphing between the characters and the body parts
• Creating basic and action animations for the rig to test out the deformations
• Making the rig and animations ready for export, so that they can be imported into the game engines
• Testing out the animation, rigs and the morphing in the game engine to check if everything works properly
• Comparing the morphing rig to a normal rig, to get the advantages and disadvantages of both setups.

Semester Plan:

Week 1-5:

• Work on the character model and their blendshapes
• Fix the topology for the models and get it ready to be rigged
• UV and texture the models

Week 5 Submission: 

Final Character Model (Ready to be rigged) with correct Topology and Textures (will also include the blendshapes for the morphs)

Week 6-12:

• Work on creating the morphing rigs for the character models
• Work on the animations to check the rigs and deformations
• Exporting it to a game engine, Unity preferably, to check if the deformations work there properly

Week 12 Submission:

• Final Character Model
• Morphable Rig for Face and Body (that can morph any part of the body)
• Animations showing how the rig and the morphing works, and
• Unity Setup showing how everything works in-engine

Outcomes:

By the end of the semester, I plan to have a working morphable rig with finished character models and animations, that are ready to be imported into a game engine. I am planning to have a finished product that I can share with animators and other artists, which they will be able to use on their projects.

But the main things that I am looking forward to learning from this project is how to model a character that is ready to be rigged, how to animate basic and action animations to test out the rigs and how to set up a morph rig.