Comments on: ADAPT 2006

By: Serguei K.

Serguei K. — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 12:17:33 +0000

Thanks for the tip, I can see how this can come in handy at some point. As to Aarons setup, I got the setup working fine but at the end of the day you still have 2 values that you use for your blend shapes. And you still run into the problem of blending those shapes from those 2 values in a situation like a shoulder, so basicaly it doesn”t offer much help for a realistic shoulder.

By: Bradley Gabe

Bradley Gabe — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:21:15 +0000

I don”t know the exact setup you need to emulate the shoulder setup you are describing, but in XSI it is possible to create a surface/position style constraint. So if the following setup doesn”t do exactly what you want, some aspects of the thinking may provide a pathway to get there:

1) Get a Null to be your controller
2) Create a NURBS or poly surface to be your bounding surface
3) Create a very small linear curve where the center is at one of the vertex points and pose constrain it to your controller
4) Use a shrinkwrap operation to shrink the curve onto your surface
5) Get a second null to be your animation node, and constrain it to your curve.

With a setup like this, you basically get a null that bounds itself to a surface, but you can control its position with XYZ space.

By: Serguei Kalentchouk

Serguei Kalentchouk — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 22:05:32 +0000

I sent you an email describing a possible solution to the rig, let me know what you think.

By: Serguei Kalentchouk

Serguei Kalentchouk — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 21:07:25 +0000

Sorry for spamming but now that I think of it withing XSI You can”t have 2 constrains acting on same property like he did with sufrace and positional constraint, so one would haveto figure out how to get the same effect with other tools.

By: Serguei Kalentchouk

Serguei Kalentchouk — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 20:38:55 +0000

The part of his shoulder rig that presents the problem to me seems to be extracting the U and V cooridinates of the null which is constrained to the nurbs surface. I can”t recall any native XSI tool to do so off the top of my head.

By: Patrick Boucher

Patrick Boucher — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 19:45:17 +0000

I was talking with Philippe Sylvain, an animator here a buzz that was at the conferences as well, and two nulls and a pose constraint should have the shoulder thing licked. I”ll be posting soon.

By: Serguei Kalentchouk

Serguei Kalentchouk — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 19:36:18 +0000

Indeed the conference was a blast.
Aaron’’s presentation had a lot of insight and as soon as I can I will try to bring his ribbon spine and sholder solutions into XSI.

By: Marc Bourbonnais

Marc Bourbonnais — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 18:48:19 +0000

Back to ADAPT, I agree the conference as a whole was amazing, for a first-time event it can”t get any better. That being said, I was slightly disapointed with the hands-on portions of the 3D track; fairly basic demonstrations of rigging, tracking, comping and layering. I did enjoy the introduction and bios” of the presenters, they all had great peronal stuff to show & tell. The more corporate talks from ILM, LucasArts and Dreamworks were recaps of past SIGGRAPHs, but that’’s fine, it gives Montreal a chance to see them.

The 2D Track talks were excellent, much better suited for this kind of artist-driven conference. Iain McCaig’’s presentation was perticularly impressive, the best presentation I have seen in 10 years.

I had a great weekend, and hats off to the ADAPT team. I have high hopes for the 2007 edition, this thing is on a roll!

By: Patrick Boucher

Patrick Boucher — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 16:46:24 +0000

A solution to a problem that raises more questions than it answers is, dare I say, not really a solution. Those that would use Occam’’s razor to back a solution totally based out of speculation aren”t thinking straight… But I understand your point.

By: Luc-Eric

Luc-Eric — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 16:32:11 +0000

That was a total perversion of Occam�s razor, though… People have used Occam�s razor to mean, the “simplest solution to a problem is usually the right one”. It’’s not. Some problems have very complicated explainations and solutions. Occam�s razor is about eliminating explaination of a phenomenon that include elements that have no effect on the result. People have used Occam�s razor to say, the aliens built the pyramids, because to them it’’s seems to be the simplest explaination to how they got built. However that explaination introduces a lot of pseudo-science that isn”t necessary to explain that, so it doesn”t pass Occam�s razor. Lots of people pushing big stones doesn”t require introducing any extratenous elements not related to the problem, so it’’s more valid.