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Welcome to the Archive section of the blog!

Rotations order at Dreamworks

Posted on November 24, 2020 
Filed Under Animation, Education | Leave a Comment

I had never seen that video before. Some interesting informations here that weren’t publicly available before.

I like how they split head rotations in orbit/side/nod and twist instead of xyz. This makes communication easier.

I was already using the bend/side/twist terminology myself as xyz might not always be relevant: in some rigs xyz might represent xzy on others, so discussing rotation order with junior staff usually comes as a challenge and the information doesn’t come across clearly if you don’t use a more abstract or vernacular terminology.

My guess would be that the order in Premo and Apollo, is the rotations order like in Maya, with twist as the main driver, and orbit as an additional global rotation to feather in some additional layered rotation maybe?

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Lighting in animation

Posted on November 19, 2020 
Filed Under Animation, Education | Leave a Comment

I will make the most of the fresh Movies Insider video article to finally plug Chris Brejon’s almost biblical lighting article which I started reading this summer while I was rendering some shots. The 10 chapter series is so in-depth that I never found the time to finish it. One day!

https://chrisbrejon.com/cg-cinematography/

Now if you just want an introduction to lighting, here is good appetizer for lighting from Insider again, with some little behind the scenes from Netflix’s “Over the moon” and other studio’s movies. Like other commentators I will mention that Lighters do the lighting work, not the Animators though, it would takes decades for a movie to come out otherwise ;-)

Insider has some really talented journalists I must say. I should repost their cinematography documentaries one day.

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Blue Sky wireframes and topology

Posted on November 2, 2020 
Filed Under Education | Leave a Comment

Even if Epic came out in 2013 and most of those screenshots might be outdated, I still feel they would be of interest for people interested in facial topology and a good resource for a future overall facial topology article and facial rig calisthenics.

Blue Sky topologies are very rare online so I used ChopRig system lead developer Daniel Lima’s showreel for reference. You will see meshes and wireframes from 2019 “Spies in Disguise” and 2013 “Epic”.

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