AlphaBlocks

  Alphablocks is a children's educational television program that attempts to teach children how to spell with the use of animated blocks representing each letter.
I played a role for rigging characters and props for this program . My main technical challenge for rigging was,that the characters and the props were modeled on a polygonal plane. I handled this by locking the attributes of props which could give them wrong bend and adding the controls in right position to give it correct bend. Many of the positions were also handled by switching the body part's positions.








http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/alphablocks/watch/alphablocks-clips/

MuscleSystem_DiptiXSI

For my masters project in Bournemouth University(2010- 2011) I wrote a plugin for XSI which creates muscle on joints.This plugin was written in python.
This tool creates first property page which asks the user to give joints name and amount of controls neededfor creating one muscle with user specified name. On creation of the muscle it creates second property page which has the editable properties of the muscle created.The muscle's start and end point can be shifted and volume can be controlled and linked with joint specified with given axis. Separate volume control is added which enable the user to animate the muscle's volume with key frames.

                                      Tool with muscle presentation when it reacts with the skin.

Skin sliding over muscles

The above video shows that the vertex stays in the same position while muscle moves under the skin. It can be seen from front view that vertex stays in same position and in other three views vertex deform on movement of muscles.
A detailed study was done for my personal study project to see the behaviour of skin when the muscles move under the skin. It was observed that when the muscles move under the skin, it does not sticks to the muscles. It stays on the same position and just slides over the muscle. A small test was done to see the behaviour of skin when the muscle moves under it.

The Host

This was a project from Bournemouth University(2010-2011) and was done by four students.The main aim of this project was to match the 3d world with live world. My role in this project was to rig the main alien character and to model,texture and rig the environmental(set) inside the human head.  The pipeline of this project was followed in Maya, XSI and Houdini.

Rig presentation of alien

Set Textured and Modelled 

Detailing of the set

Set Rigger

Head modelled to match the shadows and outer structure of the set.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night (2010)

In this project, my task was to rig the monster and help in the process of human deforming to a monster.
For human deforming to a monster, the first step needed was its veins growing all over the hand and the face. To achieve this, I wrote a script which extruded the mesh over the trees of veins created from curves. The script created separate attributes for the excursion and maintaining the radius of veins, which made it easier for the animators to animate the flow of  veins forming on hands and the face.
I also rigged the monster with its huge wings and tail . Many secondary controls were added to the wings  to show its secondary motions of wings flapping in pain. Its shoulders were given special attention in rigging. Many secondary joints were added as scapula,chest and deltoid to get deformation near to realistic movements.

Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back Poster MOVIEmeter SEE RANK Down 809 this week View rank on IMDbPro » Space Chimps 2: Zartog Strikes Back (2010)

In this movie I was handling the flow of rigged characters in the pipline for animators ,Lighting artists and effects department. I was handling rigging of some environments and editting the rigged characters to fill in the requirements of Animators.
For the lighting artist I wrote a script in which they could adjust the specular higlights in the eye with timeline. In the script they specified the character's name and the control was made which was connected to the texture map of Eye_Specular. So with the movement of the Control they handled the eye specular.
In this project I had a greate experience in which I learned how the characters were handled and given a good deformation without using any BlendShapes with help of joints. This project took me forward to explore Mel(Scripting Language) and Explore the world of LINUX.

Zokkomon (2011)

In this project(Feature Film) I handled the rig of Zokkomon's model which was used in some shots which were not safe for the child(actor) to do. This model was digitally scanned and was heavy model to rig. A low poly model was made from the digitally scanned character so that it could be easier for me to handle its Rigging.
After the rig was done it was transfered to the high poly model.
In this model the most time consuming and valuable experiance for me was to maintain its Deformations of cloth near the shoulders and other parts. These deformations were handled with help of Blend Shapes and extra added joints. Many of such deformations were handled in ZBrush which helped me to bring its movements near to realistic world.

Koochi Koochi Hota hai

This is an animation film (Koochi Koochi Hota Hai). In this movie, I shouldered the responsibility of giving all - Hairs, Ears, Tail and other important body organs secondary motions with the help of Dynamic Hairs. I made a script which shortens the lengthy procedure of creating the dynamic chain with FK on it and the attributes to control the values of Dynamics at different animation scenes and also handled rigging of some characters with all toony Features.

videocon adds

There were Five Adds done to show the new Logo of Videocon and to give a new message to the users. This fat character was rigged with toony spine, methods of Reverse spine was used in the lower part of the body. This character was handled with all toony features accompanied by Blend Shapes.

The Girl on the Bridge and the other Props were also Rigged as required by the scene.

Chubbs Chubbs

This Character(Santa) involves all toony features which were specially made for maintaining the volume of face and spine during streach and squash (involved the attribute to specify the area of Squash).

Special attention was paid towards its Beard, to make it more spongy (This was done with the help of Deformers.)

Unstable Fables Goldilocks And The 3 Bears

Rigged Characters with toony features (stretch and Squash) of Head, Spine, Arms, Legs and face.Worked on Dynamic movement of hairs, tail and ears and handled trouble shooting of this Project.

Lava Mobiles

Body

· This Character was created by me for my personal updations. This character has stretchy IK/FK of Arms and Legs and also maintains volume of the Spine through its stretch and squash.

· The rig was also updated with ability of its hand sticking to its Head , Hips ,Torso and Locking with itself.

· Automation of arm with script :- His arm was completed with script which
involves building of IK/FK with full stretch and squash with controllable limitations and forearm twist. This Rig was preceded with IK/FK switch to make this Character more Flexible.

Facial Setup

This facial setup was made will all Toony Features

Jaw setup was done with toony features which can control all the stretch and squash with area specified, where we need the Squash and the amount of Squash was controlled by the attribute which helped in maintaining the volume and shape of jaw.

Head Toony :- Head was created with the concept of gamma factor which helps in controlling volume of stretch and squash of Head.

Lip setup - Floating Controls over the lips were provided to give secondary motions of the lips accompanied with the Blend Shapes.

Fleshy Eye -Attribute was provided which can control the amount of fleshiness needed near the eyes.

Brow setup - Attributes with front, back and side motions were provided for more Flexibility to animators.

4 Legged Character

This character has stretchable spine, controlled in a way to form a "S" shape spine.
The Front and back Leg has Stretchy Features of FK and IK and Neck was also made with stretchy spine IK.

3.Rage

qq  ACHIEVEMENTS

      Winner of  24FPS Animation Awards 2005

Short Film  - “Takes You Higher?”

            Topic -Anti-Smoking

            Our Team involved 5 members

            

            My Responsibility – Modeling of Characters and Sets, Texturing and Rigging

            Our Film won the following Awards:

·           “Best Story & Concept”

·           “Best Modeling & Texturing” and  

·           “Best Animated film” awards in 24FPS Animation Awards 2005.

·          “Special Juror’s Award” in ASIFA INDIA 2005.

·          Winner in the category “Social Welfare- Students” at FICCI-BAF Awards 2006.

·          Finalist in the category “Best TVC Animation under $14,000” in the ASIA IMAGE APOLLO Awards 2005, Singapore.

·          Was telecasted on NDTV India for 2 months as a social message.

·          Has been chosen among a group of films by NFDC for showcasing in India and Abroad in 2006.

Logo Presentation

Modeling and texturing of the first Tunnel and the end Space was done by me. This was done to represent my team 3.Rage which was made to compete in 24fps awards.