Tuesday, April 13, 2010

"Boss Frog" scene WIP / Breakdown

Lately, we've been working on a shot for an upcoming agency presentation. We developed this Toad character (Jacob calls him "Boss Frog") as a concept. Joseph, Dan, Amy and I did a quick brainstorming session to get the general direction.



Once we agreed on a general direction, Joseph developed the pose drawings and began the modeling process. We are in the process of integrating 3ds max 2010 into our pipeline and wanted to tryout the new Graphite Tools. We're very pleased with the the improved edge loop tools, especially the Flow Connect. Although I've found 2009 to be a more stable release. Once we had the base model, Joseph used Mudbox to sculpt details and paint the texture which he then refined in PhotoShop.





The biggest challenge was the rigging and skinning process since the character doesn't have any define features such as a neck. So getting a balanced weight blend on his envelopes was a great exercise. I used a rigging technique that starts with a character studio biped, snapshots it to a mesh and refines the rest of the rig using standard IK solvers and constraints. Here is the first walk cycle:



In addition, we're working MatchMoving into this concept. Here's the raw plate we are using.



I'll post the final shot once it's complete.