In the past couple of days I've been on the Spline Doctors Blog where I've seen a bunch of uses of Norman remodeled to make various characters. Students at the Academy of Art in SF taking the Pixar classes have taken Norman and remodeled him a dozen times, as witnessed by all the characters below:
For one of their classes they have taken Norman and turned him into a space captain (below, top) for a short film the entire class is creating together, a clip of which is below.
and turned him into a space astronaut for the video below:
Rigging Dilemmas
Most of the characters use Norman's geometry and minimal remodeling, mostly of the face. However, a few of the characters are smoothly bound with single mesh geometry for the upper body. It seems that all of them have kept the legs as is, with a few creative flairs to hide the knees and make the lower leg into a boot. The one model that is completely smooth bound is the kid (shown with both blond and brown hair) and, as is obvious from the animator's website, Aaron Koressel built this character (Hordy) himself, whereas all the other characters are Norman.
To some degree I would love my character to have a uniform mesh as an upper body, however, it seems I would have to sacrifice some capabilities of the rig to make this happen. Here are my options:
1. Wrap Deformer
I could use a wrap deformer and wrap a single mesh to geo that is already skinned...however, this takes forever to render and wrap deformers are quite quirky...so moving on...
2. Rebuild/Reskin Geo
I could delete the upper body geo and build my own and reskin...however, the current geo is skinned to the bend bones which are the lowest level of skeleton and therefore respond to all the other parent skeleton systems. To get a smooth bind, I would have to skin the single mesh to a higher level of skeleton, causing me to lose bend bone and stretchy functionality. Plus forearm collapse and shoulder collapse is a worry, especially since the rig doesn't have extra joints built in to counter arm collapse
3. Blend shape
I've been using blend shapes fairly effectively, but the geo remains separate pieces...looking at the space captain above, it is possible to keep the geo as separate pieces and still have it look damn good--so perhaps I should continue along this path.
3a. Substitute Geo
I've discovered a skinning tool that allows you to swap geo that has exactly the same parameters as the one already skinned. Limitations are that it can't have blend shapes on it (so this can't be used with the face), and of course, that, as with blend shapes, there is no appending to the geo. However, because it is possible to smooth skinned geo and delete the non-deformer history, more detail is possible....
This option can be used in conjunction with the blend shapes, start with blend shapes and then delete them and just swap geo, this will minimize history.
After a lot of thought on the subject, I've decided to go with the third option. Since modeling and rigging are not my focus, I would rather minimize the time spent on them. As well, being that my piece is whimsical--the less realistic my character is, the better he will match his environment. So, instead of seeing the Norman rig's "rigid" bind as a stumbling block, I aim to play up and incorporate these elements into my remodeling. First off, I am a big fan of the patchwork look.. a la Sally the rag doll in Tim Burtons Nightmare Before Christmas. (below)
Unfortunately, patchwork generally has stitching across seams, not along them, so the idea of drawing stitching along the edges of geometry (especially since it separates) is not really a solution to my problem. I could play up the edges by using toon shader edges, something I'd been wanting to incorporate through previs. By drawing the textures in colored pencil and creating black outlines of all the geometry, perhaps I'll get a new twist on subtlety in the form of the hand drawn colored pencils, with in your face graphic art in harsh black outlined edges. I'll have to see how this looks with the Nose, Ears and Hair. Adding edges might have to be a selective thing so it doesn't overwhelm the character..
To be continued...
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