iAnimate Facial Acting Workshop progress reel

iAnimate WS4 Progress Reel from Christakis Dimitrios on Vimeo

Long time no see but here is my latest work from iAnimate character animation workshops! I had great fun working on these shots and I hope you'll enjoy them! 

iAnimate Progress Reel!

iAnimate WS3 Progress Reel from Christakis Dimitrios on Vimeo

Finally, here is my iAnimate workshop progress reel after 3 and a half months of gore and blood intense animation! :) I hope you enjoy it as I did creating it!

Sneakie Peekie No.7 Final body Rig

     I finally finished the body rig. I'm pretty excited with how cool it ended up with all the functionality and the abilities it has. I'm not sure when exactly I'll start rigging the head but I hope I'll have the time to finish this.

     As I already said in a previews post, I'm starting iAnimate on Monday and I'm planning to take some sleep and regenerate my batteries during this weekend.

I can't wait for tomorrows 6am (!) welcome meeting with Jason Ryan!

Sneakie Peekie No.6 Rigging

Ok people... 2 days/ 5 hours of sleep and a ton of joints!
The rig is based on several techniques from tutors, Supinfocom courses and personal experimentation trying to achieve the best and most appropriate result for every part of the character.

Ribbon rig on spine and head,
classic IK/FK with stretch capabilities on arms and legs (since the body is more like a human, I tried not to add extra cartoony controls on these),
Extra controls on hands and feet for faster animation.
Spline IK with FK controls on tail for extra control (to be attached)
Ribbon rig with 3 main curve controls and 6 extra on bones fot tongue (ready and waiting to get attached too)
I'll leave the head last because of a totally different philosophy rig based on joint+blendshape correctives for expression.

Also on Monday I start iAnimate. I'll try to work and add things little by little in parallel with the animation courses.

Thank you for following!

Sneakie Peekie No.5, Textures

Probably the final textures. Ready to dive into rigging. It needs to apply some break of symmetry here and there but I'll do this with fresh eyes, after the rig has been done.

Here is a fast and simple vocabulary for people outside the industry

mesh = the 3d model made by polygons 

3d modeling = the process of creation  of a 3d object/mesh with careful placement of polygons in order to have a precise topology flow for further treatment.

3d sculpting = actual sculpting in a 3d environment on the base 3d mesh which is subdivided into millions of polygons (like cells)

texturing = the process where the textures on the mesh is applied through 3d/2d painting techniques

UV layout = the "map" of the mesh unfolded on a 2d space (U/V= X/Y) so the textures can be applied.

Rigging = the process where a rig (skeleton) is constructed in order to have an animation possible mesh.

Rendering = the phase where the shaders (materials of the meshes of a scene) were applied and the "rendering engine" is computing the lights of the scene delivering an almost final image/video.

Compositing = a post process where different rendering passes (like color pass, shadow pass, reflection pass, pass for depth, fur etc) are composed into one final image/frames and other image correction layers are applied for the final polished result.

Chameleon Sneakie Peekie No.4

Going deeper and deeper. There is nothing particular in my mind. I'm trying to combine the colors in harmony and in a natural way and make individual parts of the character clearer to the eye of viewer (eyes, arms, chest, edges around basic parts e.t.c.).

Chameleon Sneakie Peekie No.3

Paint, Paint, Paint...

I'm trying to keep the texture realistic enough to make an interesting impact with the more colorful environment but not that much in order to avoid falling into the trap of having a cold, computer generated like mesh with no personality.

True Story

Passing last night at hospital!

I'm also working on my chameleon after a short kind of pause. You'll have a wip post soon!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAArrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

sneakie peekie No.2

Sculpt sculpt sculpt! I finished the basic form and I unwrapped the UVs (in Maya). This is the phase where Zbrush has the upper hand. I estimate to work 2 days on sculpting and 1 on painting. After, 1 week full of rigging! Still a lot of work to be done and I already start missing animation :(

Sorry for not daily posting... I'm just working on some long projects. 

Although I'm getting excited with the results, I'll try to break the workaholic habit and update with some dailies

Sneakie Peekie

Just a sneak peek of what I'm working on right now.  A personal project in order to practice and remember all the 3d stuff and finally feel the jump from 3ds max to Maya.

The goal is to have a full 3d illustration based on an illustration I did earlier this summer
(can be seen here http://dimitrishrist.blogspot.gr/2014/07/fly.html )
and a fully rigged chameleon, ready for animation.
I'm working my model in Maya and Zbrush, texturing in Zbrush (maybe Mudbox too) and rigging it in Maya.
I'm gonna composite in After Effects in order to have a final scene where I can easily create a video from it.

Let's cross fingers that I'll have finished this before the commence of my iAnimate ( http://ianimate.net/ ) class on September!

Feeling Blue

Feels like I wanna ride a bike today and take the long road of thoughts

Doodling

Selfie Lime

A lonely, sad, super... something ?

Warm Fat

FLY!

Birds... Just birds

TouRou TouRou... Baaaatmaaaaan