Term Recap

The term has come to a close and Im really proud of the final projects I put together. You can find out more details about them at the following addresses:

Motion Capture: http://glennwinters.com/motioncapture/

Museum Game Experience: http://glennwinters.com/operationdino/

I'm looking forward to sharing a few more things over break. Im going to be working with a fellow student doing a facial mocap study and I'm also attending a Houdini work session in NYC. Feel free to leave comments about the two projects. I would love to hear some feedback. Happy spring.

Fall Term

As always, it has been a busy few months for me here at Drexel and a lot has been going on. To start things off I have been teaching two animation classes and I can tell you that I have enjoyed every minute of it. I really like going back to the principles of animation and teaching to a new generation of artists. The best part is, I'm also reaffirming those principles in my daily thought process when approaching my projects. I feel that we can get lost sometimes in the crazy technical world we live in but we all need to remember to go back to the principles that make stories believable. It has been great to find weekly clips that relate to those principles and point them out to the students. Its best for the students to see these principles being practiced in the real world. There are many times that we hear "Sure, when will I ever use that?" There are reasons that these principles exist. They do work, they help create believable characters and stories we can relate with.

On top of that, I have been doing a lot of my own research and taking my scheduled graduate courses. I have been spending a great deal of time focusing on my research with motion capture and how it's pipeline works. For starters we were able to get a hand motion capture system working. That can be seen here:

This system is much different than the Vicon optical system I have been mainly working with. This is more of a mechanical based system since you need to wear this crazy glove system in order for it to track the motions. It was really accurate to our surprise. For now we just tested the equipment but I look forward to looking to setting it up along with the optical system. Also I was able to work with the virtual camera rig we have at Drexel. You can see the camera in the image below:



This was another great experience. Basically, the "camera" that you see in this picture is the camera in your virtual space. After calibrating the camera you are able to enter the virtual world you created and film it! We were able to walk around the Coliseum we built last term. It was pretty unreal! Along with that I have continued researching the post production timeline by getting my hands dirty with Motion Builder. The software is actually a pretty powerful piece for animators. I was able to learn the best approach to altering data and creating seamless cycles. I'm currently researching how to work with props and also the best way to combine motion. During the gladiator development I was able to come up with a solution but I feel there is a more efficient way to approach this process. I'm hoping that once I get a good feel of this process, I can create a piece for my reel. Should be fun!

On top of that I have been helping a lot with troubleshooting some computer issues, jumping into the basics of the VFX software package Houdini, and reading a lot for my classes. Needless to say it has been busy and things in the next few weeks are going to be quite crazy. I believe our gaming group has come up with a project that can turn into something exciting. I hope to share more details about that soon. On that note, I need to get some grading done! Look forward to sharing more info soon and Happy Fall! Go enjoy some honey crisp apples.

The Summer Continues!

It is hard to believe that the summer term is slowly coming to an end but we are in the final weeks of development. Over the past few months I have been challenged in many different ways between the two classes I am taking. My organic modeling class has challenged me to think about poly flow and edge flow in a whole new way. Its amazing to see what type of detail you can achieve with just spinning a few edges and making sure that all models avoid a dense mesh. I'm currently in production on my final creature project. This character is going to be mainly humanoid but it will be a mixture of a bull, snake, and human. I'm really looking forward to setting the mesh up in maya and then bringing it into ZBrush. I have always wanted to explore the possibilities of that software and this seems like the perfect project to start with.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I am currently working on a gladiator fighting game with some fellow students and it has been a great experience thus far. The biggest "hump" I am trying to overcome is motion capture data. I have been put in charge of the development process for this pipeline and it's quite a learning curve. A lot of people may think it's a simple process but it is far from that. There are a lot of different variables that need to be considered when setting up your models in Maya and also pulling the data in from Vicon Blade. I hope to do a video tutorial once I get a good workflow down.

Thats a small update for now! I hope to get some photo's of the project soon but until then, enjoy the rest of your summer!

Meet Benjamin!

I apologize for not being around as much this term. Im actually not getting to spend as much time on the compositing work as I hoped and I have been pretty much doing a ton of presentations thus far this term. Also, in the depths of C++. Overall, Im enjoy the C++ class but I think it is something I would like to just learn at my own pace after this term. It actually worked out that way! Tomorrow I register for my last term in my pre - grad sequence. This summer I will be taking organic modeling and a game scripting course. Im really excited for the summer term since things seem to be a bit all over the place right now. For now, here is a sketch from a super talent group member, Yujie Zhu. His name is Benjamin Noc and he is our main character for our game we are developing. Really looking forward to diving in! Ill have some news about another gaming group that is going to be in a competition this weekend. Keep an eye on the blog and my twitter feed about that. Until next time!