What a day

Rainy walk over to the lab only to rediscover that there's an all-student meeting this afternoon about planning our graduate degree show and it's over in one of the other buildings. Ugh. Not much time to work over here today so I'm going to block out some of the backgrounds and environmental stuff. Here are some shots from yesterday. I was trying out a pose that the rabbit will end up in pretty often to make sure I had the skin weights alright, especially that his underside didn't fold into itself.

Day off & UVs

I took a little break yesterday and didn't come in to the lab. My eyes and brain were fried from solving Monday's problems and I just couldn't bring myself to sit down and deal with unwrapping UVs. Instead, I stayed at home, read some of the research materials for the written component of this project, and saw a movie. Let's call it researching camera moves and angles...

Anyway, this morning I unwrapped and messed around with the rabbit UVs. Think they're all right, I'll throw some color on it this weekend. The checkerboard doesn't seem too stretched out. We'll see.

Did some fine-tuning with the skin weights. Getting there...

Painting weights:

Testing some checkerboard:

UVs:

spline conundrum -> binding skin

We had some technical difficulties this morning with the spline spine that started a little domino-effect down the hierarchy of controllers and manipulators. I didn't get around to actually binding the skin and starting to paint weights until this afternoon. Here are a few fun poses. Shaping up well!

Bunched up:


Stretched out:


Run away!

rig-a-rig-a-rabbit

To the tune of Ring Around the Rosie:

Rig a random rabbit;
make naming joints a habit;
if you didn't orient,
they all fall down!


(alternate ending: if you didn't orient... well, you're f*#%d!)




Legs are fine. Arms are fine (fingers to be dealt with later, need be). Tail is fine. Neck is... hopefully fine. Spine is ANNOYING. He's too bendy for his own good. I'm just not super comfortable with spline IK, but it should be alright as long as I deal with the clusters correctly...

I think I'm just going to give the ears a few controllers. Don't want to mess with more splines and clusters, so it'll just be rotating the joints. Eh, should be fine. I wasn't totally sure what to do with the neck, since it's nearly as flexible as the back and needs to be able to puff out when crouched down/bunched up, but also stretch forward and out when running quickly. I added an RPsolver IK as you would ordinarily use in any old character from the neck to the head joint, but I left one more joint between those two so it's more flexible and has a little reactive bend in it. It's all under the head controller circle. Seems OK so far. We'll see...

lagomorphic cleft palate surgery x 3

This morning was rough. I modelled the mouth and ears and tweaked the head a little bit overall. It's a little narrower. Domestic rabbits have wider heads, but desert cottontails are a bit "sportier", though not nearly as lanky as hares. When it came to the mouth I kept adding detail to one side with the knowledge that I would mirror the geometry as a final step. This went fantastically, until I realized that the points on the inside and underside of the lip were so close together that they puckered into one star vertex with a million edges. I ended up doing rabbit "cleft palate surgery" around three times. Finally, I just decided to forget about it, continue modelling, and move on to the ears. Ears then finished, I came back at the end to mirror it all one last time. In the interim I kind of forgot what the inner lip/mouth/nose geometry had originally looked like, so he looks a little now different than intended. It's like rhinoplasty that came out a little too subtle. Something has changed, I just don't know what. Oh well. Here's blockhead:


Here's a smoother version from the front:


And the whole blocky body. Still need to attach the neck. Ho-hum.

EDIT: Connected head to body. There's a seam just at the base of the skull that REALLY bugs me but once I texture him it probably won't show up. I think I've just stared at it for too long. I thought the wireframe from the side looked pretty:

Mouth Update

I'm trying to work out the mechanics of rabbits' lips when they open and close their mouths. After looking up pictures, I can assuredly say that rabbit mouths are TERRIFYING! They seem very cute and cuddly when closed, but when opened wide the lips SPLIT right up to the nose! It looks like an unmasked Predator! Let's compare:

Cute, unassuming desert cottontail:


Then suddenly.... ROAR!

Predator for comparison:

The lip split under the nose:


"Oh my...."

We Are Already Cyborgs -Jason Silva

We Are Already Cyborgs -Jason Silva

CLICK THAT LINK!! This is exactly my cup of tea. Jason Silva strikes again! Follow him on Twitter. Your brain will be very happy.

I have a bunch to say on this topic since it is close to the core of my written piece. I'll let this simmer in my head on the long walk home.

The mental image when one hears "cyborg" or "augmented reality" is one of robots and high science fiction. Silva does a great job of quickly and simply explaining that technology is an extension of ourselves and technology can be as basic as tool use. Anything we use to supplement the function of our own body is a technological advantage, be it a paintbrush or a haptic glove. The reality is that we are already cyborgs in a sense, just not the ones you might think.

Note to self: look up tools for conviviality. Simplest tools to enhance abilities -> tools for futuring.