Shark Swim Cycle

Tried to get layered animation working in blender but the NLA didn't seem to work the way I wanted it to (like animation layers in maya) so I gave up for the morning and tried to animate a swim cycle.  That didn't go too well either - I'd build the flippers on the model far too low down and they looked unnatural in what should have been their rest pose by their side.  My spline IK rig which was meant to make animating the sine wave easier ended up making it harder as I had far too few bones controlling the spline to get a smooth enough wave.  Added to that the tail could have done with a few more bones to smooth out the motion.  The looping destroys the effect of the fake caustics and volumetrics somewhat, but never mind, I hate default grey (or 'Material.001' as its otherwise known).

Fear and Loathing Fish Animation

The brief was to animate a fish as if it had the character of a celebrity/famous person etc.  I picked Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  I'm not sure if the neuroses just comes across as bad animation?  Took from 10am yesterday to 6pm to animate this short clip.  Still not 100% happy with the rig.  Lets hope the shark goes better!

Painting the Fear and Loathing Fish

slowly going insane...

Spent the last 3 hours painting seamsless textures and bone weights (this ones an FK only rig... I'm running out of time).  At least the fish can now deform into shapes like this, and blow bubbles thanks to instanced metaballs on a particle system emitting from his cigarette!  He has a nice irradescent glow which changes colour as he turns round courtesy of blender's underused 'magic' texture mapped to the reflection channel.  Animation starts tomorrow!

Fish Modelling

Hunter S Thompson Herring

4 hours modelling

Great White Shark

3 hours modelling

(incl 1 hour of teeth vertex pushing!)

2 hours texture painting

(incl 1 hour of messing around with Photoshop 3D)

2 hours rigging and weighting

Some half cooked models I built in a rush for this weeks anim exercise (fishes with character).  The shark's got a nice spline IK rig (a spline for the back and for each of the big flippers), but thanks to blender's outgrown deps graph, it has more than twice the number of bones it would need in maya.  At least the modelling and texture painting in blender kicks the socks off maya.