In a nutshell, select your object(s) run the script. Boom, only those are visible.  Run it again, everything is back to normal. If you hold CTRL and run the script, it will include any children of whatever you have selected. The other nice thing is that it should preserve all of your existing layers(see, internally, it’s doing this magic through layers), so when you de-solo everything, your layers are back as they should be. No Muss, No Fuss.

Well, maybe a little fuss. I think if you solo something that is being animated via a deformer, if the deformer isn’t active, the animation wont be either. You don’t lose your animation, it’s just not capable of scrubbing your animation until you deSolo. I think that may be a limitation.

Anyway, do what I did. Map it to SHIFT+I, and CTRL+SHIFT+I(did you know you can do two shortcuts for one command? Awesomeness) and use it at your hearts desire. Feel free to donate via the pay pal on the right if you feel inclined. Otherwise, enjoy.

SoloSelected

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I’ve been selected to be part of the Walt Disney Animation Studios Talent Development program. I got a call on Friday, and could not believe it, and Monday afternoon, I found out I was offered a spot. The program is a 3-6 month paid mentorship/internship. It’s basically 3 months of mentoring, and if you do well, you get another 3 month period, and then if their is space at the end, potentially a job.

I’m surprised. I’ve wanted to be in Animated films for many years, and when I went to Disney’s Inspire Days back in 2010, that is where I wanted to go, so to be able to go there, is kind of mind blowing, even if it is just for 3-6 months. However, joining the program means I have to leave my current position at MAXON.

The whole thing is bittersweet. I want to work at Disney, but my whole professional, post-college career has been MAXON, so making that jump is weird, and sort of scary in a way.

I just wanted to say thank you to MAXON, namely Paul and Rick for giving me an internship back in 2005. Then for hiring me after the internship. Thanks to both of them and Kai for getting me a job in 2008 again. The shit hit the fan that year economically, and having a job out of college was pretty huge. Thanks for trusting me to handle some trade shows here and there, and for just trusting in me to get things done. I know a lot of my growth in rigging is due to Kai being there every day for me to pester with questions. Pretty much 100% of my python knowledge is because Rick let me pester him with questions. Without those two, I wouldn’t be where I am in this industry. I am who I am because of their mentoring. And Paul has been one of the most understanding, and helpful bosses ever. That is the Babb way, helping others when they can, and they’ve helped me out a lot, and taken me in as part of the family, and my fiance as well(although, she was more in the family first then I joined in).

The rest of the MAXON crew, thanks for the fun memories. I’ll always remember staying late after work for some sporting competitions. I can say that I’ve drawn blood and had blood drawn from playing air hockey. Never thought that happened, but I’ve seen it happen first hand. I was also a part of the destruction of that air hockey table. Then playing a REALLY stupid looking/sounding game, but all we had were balloons, and we made it work. Then the ping pong. A lot of that is due to mine and Andy’s competitive nature. So thanks for that Andy. It was a blast.

Thanks MAXON. You always  Thank you for everything. I wish you all the best. I’m sure I’ll see you guys around.

…Now onto the next chapter in life…

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In addition to that I’m not sure I ever made a noise about my new Demo Reels. The animation reel has a couple of new shots from 2011, and there’s also a rigging reel! oooooh. I never had one before, but now I do. Shows some cool shit from The Ottoman project. Hopefully I’ll have some more soon! This has been a hectic crazy ass week including getting my ass kicked by my allergies, but I managed to update these things just so we’re up to date.

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Libby and I work together, and we became really good friends for a year and a half before we decided to just give dating each other a shot. Our first date(I’m still not sure it was a clear date but she assures me we both knew it was) was to the movies to go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. We work at a 3D software company, and she knows I wanted to be an animator, so she didn’t mind going. Like a true jackass, I didn’t pay for the date(something that irked her badly at the time). So our first date, I just flat out blew it. However, she let me stick around, and now we’re getting married this year. Anyway, she bought it on DVD with a little note that said something like It’s a good thing I decided to keep you around.

Now about the movie, I think it’s a great movie. I never read the book, so I only know the movie. I remember when I saw a pic of the movie the style of the characters bugged me. However, I’ve seen the movie many times. I really love this movie, I think it was the best movie of that year(The year of Up), or at least the most enjoyable. It’s goofy, off the wall and great. If you haven’t seen it, get off your ass and go watch it. It’s got a beautiful rendering going on, funny gags, snappy timing, just very cartoony.

So let’s take a look at just 1 frame.

This is a great frame. It’s clear just by the poses, that Flint on the left is hiding something(poorly) and that Earl on the right knows something fishy is going on(if you know the movie, you know that that was just an excellent pun!). Let’s look at this frame in depth. This pose, is held for like 16 frames before he lowers his arms a little bit. So it’s quick(It’s from a sequence of jumpy poses). But let’s look at this a bit more.

This is the silhouette of each character. Oddly enough, when I look at them, I think Earl’s is clear, but I don’t think Flint’s is all that clear. We know he’s hiding something but this pose, at least in silhouette, seems not quite as clear. It seems like it could be pushed, maybe his spine is curled a bit and hes like really trying to hide it. Now, I don’t mean to sound like a prick, saying a silhouette isn’t very clear, but after looking at it, I realized why he’s posed in such a way. Let’s go back one shot in the film though…

Earl has just startled Flint and said “WHAT’RE YOU DOIN’ FLINT LOCKWOOD!?” He knows something is up, but is not sure what. If you look at this frame in silhouettes, it’s pretty clear. And sure enough, Flint is leaning back a bit more like I would expect.

So, why would they have him like that there but not on the other scene? Well, a few reasons. First, Earl is really all up in Flints grill. Earl is big and buff, so Flint’s a bit scared, so he doesn’t want to be very close. That’s why he’s leaning away. But the intent of this whole shot and the next one is that Earl is watching Flint.  Check out some of these flowlines(as I see it).

Everything about Earl, is focused on Flint. Everything about Flint is saying “Get Me Out of Here”. So this whole scene, is Earl saying I’m watching you(flint) so Flint is his focus, and he’s making him the audience’s focus. His mass, his size, the amount of space he occupies compared to Flint is making the viewer focus on what he is focused on. Everything is about Flint now. So let’s look at the flow of the first shot we looked at.

Everything is pointing at Flint. Again, he’s the focus of Earl. So He has this unassuming position  If he’s leaning more in the spine (for like more of a Reverse C Curve) he’d be directing your eye OUT of the shot(to the left). So he’s standing there just being the focus. and Earl is just directing the viewers eye to Flint still. The other cool thing is not only is Earl, but the perspective directs your eye towards where Flint is, both sides of the building converge to where Flint is.

The image above, shows a rough(because im still no good at drawing) drawing of how I naturally wanted his pose to look. A sexy curve and line of action, smooth and a curve are always better I think sometimes. But knowing what I think I know about this shot and it’s sort of intent, Seeing that pose is kind of…jarring.  It absolutely doesn’t fit and it breaks things up. I mean even his almost vertical pose, the straightness of it, coincides with the straight lines on the building the ground etc. Flint’s side of the screen is mostly straight lines. So him being curved would just kill that.

So what does this teach me? Well, it tells me that sometimes, you don’t need a pushed pose. Sometimes your line of action can be vertical or straight, and it’s ok, as long as it supports the story. This is the benefit to working in a studio(so I hear). You get a brief or a treatment, so you know where your shot is in the grand and smaller scheme of things. If I had no idea about the previous scene, I would have made a bad decision to that wouldn’t fit the story. The director, and sup would probably give me five across the eye! So, when they say story is king, they mean it. Make your animation, your poses, your animation follow the story, and you’ll be in good grace I imagine.

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I also hope to do more posts here more regularly. Happy New Year! May 2012 be prosperous and fruitful for us all.

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The perk of being an exhibitor is I just got to waltz right in mwahaha! So I walked in, and did a quick walkthrough. There’s just so many talented artists there, some people I’ve heard of ans some I haven’t. My regret is that I don’t have enough money to buy everyones book and enough time to talk with them about their progress. But alas, I did not.

So I got in on friday and I was starting off the show on the mainstage. Things were rocky. They didn’t have R13 on the bitchin Cintique, so I had to run it off of my laptop, which kind of sucked balls, because I was stuck working in 1024×768…I don’t know if you’ve tried to do that anytime recently, but it’s a real pain in the ass. But I made the best of it, just worked on an animation, and got some people to at least stare at the screen for a bit.

After that it was back to the booth. One of my favorite things about CTN, is you don’t get all the stupid “So what is 4D?” questions we often get at other shows. Though you still get the people who see stereo anaglyph glasses and assume what’s on the screen(the MAXON demo reel) is stereo as well. Well, surely everyone knows what an anaglyph preview looks like…but no they don’t. However, to combat some of that, I get props to the CTN folks for recognizing the fact that they are actually Steampunk. Two people said something and that’s more than any other time at a show for me.

The cool thing is that we were right next to Disney and Sony and just down from ReelFX. Three studios I would love to work at someday. I actually got to talk to some guys from Disney. Bobby Pontillas gave me some good feedback on my animation reel, and Chris Gallagher and I got to talk a fair bit and I got some feedback there about my rigging reel, which is cool. Turns out he actually was a C4D user way back in the day.

Last year at CTN I got a book by Tony White and Glenn Vilppu. Both were back again this year. But again, I’m poor, so I can’t buy everything I want. I’d buy more stuff from the both of them. All I ended up buying was The Art of Character Design by David Coleman. It was only 10 bucks and I have been eyeing that DVD for some time. I skimmed it that night and it was looking pretty good.

If you can afford it next year, you should go because the amount of creativity there is mindblowing. I saw so many talented artists, it just pushes you to try and grow as well to keep up.

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See, I’ve been doing a lot of freelance as of late, and unfortunately, in that line of work, I often never see the final product. The other issue, is that if you’re working a lot on say Commercials, your name NEVER gets shown on TV really, so I mean it’s cool to see it online, but you have no way to prove someone wrong if they call bullshit.

However, today I found out the game I did some animation on for React! Games has been released. Not only can my resume be updated from “For an upcoming RPG” to “For Helam: A Stripling Warrior Quest”.

If you go to www.helamonline.com you can see a trailer for the game which looks pretty sweet(reminds me of Crash Bandicoot from a look standpoint). Anyway, If you go about 40-45 seconds in, you’ll see a monkey do this jump attack. I did all the animations for the Monkey as well as a Bat character not seen in the trailer.

So I downloaded the demo to check it out and it looks pretty slick. I saw I could go to the credits from the Demo, so I checked it out, and there it was…my name…

I even got top billing!

Nothing is as satisfying as seeing something like that. I’ve never been more proud(career wise, but maybe all time) than I was when I saw that. Just made my day.

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EXTRUDE ‘EM ALL

Extrude ‘Em All is a script aimed at those of you who work with a lot of splines. You probably have done the process of creating an ExtrudeNURBS, adding them all as children and turning on Hierarchical. Or Maybe you hit ALT+G to Group them into a null, then ALT+Clicked to create an ExtrudeNURBS as the parent(since it doesn’t work with multiple objects afaik) and turned on Hierarchical. Well, This is a bit simpler. Select your splines, run the script. Boom, they’re all a child of an ExtrudeNURBS with hierarchical turned on. Lowering the amount of time/clicks.

GROUP EACH

Group Each is a helper script I made while I was rigging a car. ALT+G(or the Group Objects command) is incredibly helpful. If done on a single object you get a parent null at the same location as it’s child. With multiple objects selected, it does the Average. It’s essentially the same as ALT+Clicking on a Null, but again, it doesn’t work with multiple objects, and sometimes, I don’t need it to do the average, I want each thing selected to get it’s own parent null. Now it can. Select your objects, run the script, each will get a null parent with the same name with “_algn” which is sort of my rigging suffix for a null that just rests at the same place as it’s child.

So have fun with them, maybe they are of some use. If you find them incredibly useful, consider dropping a little donation found on the right, but otherwise just try to learn some python from them.

Cheers,
Bret

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To start, download the starting project file. Now, when you open it, it’s a very simple scene file, but this scene should hopefully help you understand this system. Now, in order for you to use this with the Character Object, you need to create a template. A template is simply a scene file stored in your preferences>library>characters folder. If you have a file in that folder, you will be able to see it in the Character Object, however, by default, that folder doesn’t exist. There’s a very easy way to create it, though. So with the file open, choose Character>Character Builder>Save Character Template As. Choose to save the file as “SimpleChar”.

If you were to go into a new scene file, and choose Character>Character to create a Character Object, if you looked in the template drop down list, you would see a template called “SimpleChar”, but it won’t do anything yet. In order for you to be able to do anything(ie build the rig) you need to do 2 things:

1. Define the Character
2. Create at least one Component.

Components are basically chunks, or pieces of a rig. Typically, you think of them as a Spine, or Limb, or whatever. In order to actually create these components, they need to be inside of a character hierarchy. Now, a character Hierarchy means that it needs to be a child of an object with a Component Tag set to be a Character. So let’s set that up.

In the template file, locate the “Simple_char” null object, right+click on it and choose “Character Tags>Character Component”.

So this is the heart and sole of this system. The Component tag is a complicated beast. It is what allows you to define all sorts of stuff in your template. You can specify the Character , Components, Controllers, and more. It’s also pretty damn daunting to look at because it has so many tabs. But back our template…

With the Component Tag selected, go into the Tag tab. This tab is where you specify what this object is. So since we are trying to specify our Character, we want to set the Type to be “Character”. Now, once you do that, a lot of the tabs actually will disappear making this much less complex. So let’s continue to define our Character.

You can set the Character type to whatever you want, these essentially just define what Icon the Character Object uses, and the internal size to use(for instance, if you have Auto Size turned on and you are building a Biped it tries to make it about 6 feet tall). We can leave it set to None in this case.

Now, there’s the ability to specify a name. Whatever you have set here is what will be listed in the Character Object’s template list. So we could actually override using the template’s file name here. Now, if the Name is left blank, it will use the name of the object with the Character Tag. In this case, if I left it blank, the template would be called “Simple_Char”. We are going to do that.  Just leave it blank. So that’s all we have to do for setting up our Character. Let’s save our progress by going and choosing “Character>Character Builder>Save Character Template”.

Now we still can’t build anything because we haven’t specified any components to create. So let’s do that now. The way this is going to work is we will create a Root Component which will be the overall container for all subsequent component(you see something like this in the Adv. Biped template). So locate the null called “Root”. Right click on this object and create another Component tag.

A quick look at the types…We have lots of types, but really the best way to look at them is in groups. You have the Anatomical Group(None, Pelvis, Limb, Spine, Hand, Foot, Digit, Head, Tail, Wing, and Custom), the Helper Group(Controller, Component, and Group), and then the Character group, which is just the Character type.

In order to actually build anything in the Character Object, you need to have Anatomical types. They are the ones that actually show up as buttons in the Character Object. So the anatomical types are the ones that can be built. The Helper types, help with the creation of anatomical types. They let you specify objects that maybe are in separate hierarchies but need to be placed in a specific way, or specify what is a controller.

So since we need to build our Root, so it needs to be an Anatomical type. In this case, we will set it to be a Custom type. Now like I said before, I don’t actually have to specify a name, unless you want to. So I will just leave it all blank. Now you may notice a Main Controller slot. This is a it misleading. Many components have many controllers. How do you decide which is “Main”? The fact is, you don’t need to worry about it. What this setting ACTUALLY does, is it tells the Character Object what to select when you switch into Animate mode, with this component selected. If it’s blank it will use the object with the tag.

So for our example, you should just put the Root_con+ in there. That’ all we need to worry about for the Tag tab. Save your work through the Character>Character Builder>Save Character Template, and go into a new scene. Create a Character Object, select the Simple_char template, and you should now see a button that says “Root”. When you click the Button it should bring in our Controller. Now let’s move on.

The next tab is the Insertion tab. This is a pretty powerful tab. Ignoring the Default Insert, and Bone Insert options, the major focus is the Parent Components group. This is where you specify both WHEN a component can be created, and WHERE a component gets placed. So click the Add Button to create a new Insertion rule. With it selected, you see a couple of options “Parent” and “Insert”.

The Parent parameter controls WHEN the component can be created. There’s options like Any, Only, Type, Character, and more. So if you have it set to Only, you’re saying “This component can ONLY be created if the selected component matches the Component field. This allows you to say that you can only add Arms and legs to the Spine Component and not any sooner. For this case though, Set the Parent type to be “Character” This way, this component can only be created if the Character Object itself is selected.

The Insert parameter controls WHERE the component gets inserted into the scene. This allows you to have the component be made a child of a particular object, or gives you control on making your component exist before or after something else in the Object Manager. Four example We are going to leave it to From Parent. It just means that in this case it will be inserted under the Character object.

The Mirroring tab lets you define what planes components should mirror across, and which components should mirror. Our template has no mirroring, so we will ignore it here.

The Include tab defines which objects should be brought in when our component is created. Naturally, it looks down the component hierarchy(that is the object with the Component tag applied) and tries to bring them all in. But when you have broken hierarchies you might need to specify things manually. For our component, Just drag the “Root” null into the Objects list, and click the little icon to include the hierarchy. This way it will include both the Root null and the Root_con+ controller.

The Next tab is the Selection tab. This is where you specify the Component Selection Objects that can be keyframed. The good rule of thumb is if you animate a particular object put it into the list here. For this particular component, place the Root_con+ object into the Objects list.

The Bind tab is next, and this is where you specify which joints should be bound to a mesh when you switch to the Bind Mode in the Character Object. For this particular component, there are no joints, so this can be skipped.

Then we hit the Adjustments tab. This is where you specify how to adjust your rig. You specify what objects become handles(the circles in adjust mode), and how objects should follow the handles so you can easily resize your rig. Due to the simplicity of this component, we just need to focus on the Handles group. Drag the Root_con+ into the handles list as this will allow you to adjust the psr of the Root_con+ controller, so you can adjust it to be placed anywhere else. We don’t need to set up any Adjustment rules because we dont need to do anything to the Root null.

Hotspots tab lets you specify hotspots(which are the buttons in the Character Object’s Hotspots tab). This also can be used for setting up a Visual Selector targets as well. For this component, just click Add once, and place the Root_con+ into the link field.

The rest of the tabs, we don’t need to mess with(though if you want your template to work with CMotion via the add walk button, you would specify that in the Walk Tab, but I’m not going to go into that now). If you save the template as you had before, and in a new scene build your root component you should notice a few things. First, if you’ve built a Root component, you cannot build another one unless you re-select the Character Object. Second, if you switch to Adjust mode you should see 1 handle. If you go to Animate Mode in the Character Object, then select the Hotspots tab, you should see that theres one button for Root_con+.

So that’s it for our Root component. We’re done with it and ready to move on to the next(and final) component.

Back in the template file, locate the null called “Spine”. Add a component tag to the Spine null, and set the type to be a Spine. As for the Main controller, choose Joint.1_con+.

If you go to the Insertion tab, add an adjustment rule. Set the Parent type to be Only, and then drop the Root null object into the Component slot. Then set the Insert parameter to be “Last child”. Then Drag the Root object into the Object field. This is basically saying that you can ONLY create the Spine component if the Root component is selected, and that when you build it, it will be inserted as the last child of the Root null.

Now, go to the Include tab, drop in the Spine null, and the Joint.1_con+ into the object list, and turn on the hierarchy icon for both. Save your template, and build the spine component in a new scene. Now, initially everything looks great. But if you switch to full hierarchy, you’ll see that the Joint.1_con+ and Joint.2_con+ are not placed anywhere specifically. And let’s say you want them to be a child of the Root_con+ object, so as you move that controller the other controllers follow along. But because they are in a separate hierarchy, how can we control where they go independently from where our joints get inserted?

The answer lies in some of the helper types. Now, because these are controllers, we should add component tag to all of them and set the type to be Controller. You’ll see the icon change, and the number of tabs changes, but the important thing is that we can sepcify new insertion rules for these. Now, because one controller is already a child of the other, we can just set up the insertion rules just on the parent and the child will follow. So for the Controller tag on the Joint.1_con+ object, create a new Insertion rule. Set the Parent to be Only and drag the Root null object into the Component slot just like we did on the component itself. For Insert, say First Child, and this time drag in the Root_con+.

Save and check this out, and you should see those controllers are now properly inserted under our Root_con+ controller which is what we wanted.

So continuing on, we can skip Mirroring. and move on to the Selection Tab. All we need to do is drag the Joint.1_con+ object in, and we can turn on the hierarchy icon. Then move to the Bind Tab. In the Bind tab, you simply need to drag Joint.1 in and turn on hierarchy and then you are set.

Now, I’ll make a note here…Typically, you never want/need to bind the end/tip joints. It’s not very good practice. So why wouldn’t you simply select Joint.1 and Joint.2 manually and not turn on the hierarchy icon? Well you can do that and that would be A-OK, however, this system has the ability to insert joints into a hierarchy, so doing it the manual way would not let the newly inserted joints get bound, which is not good! So I find it better to just properly name tip joints(with a _tip suffix) and include the hierarchy as a whole. Now if you won’t be inserting joints you can pick either method, but I just figured people should know to be aware of it.

Now, everything should be pretty well set except the ability to adjust this new component. So what we need to do is go into the Adjustments tab, and add the Joint.1 joint into the Handles group, and turn on the hierarchy. This will make it so all of our Joints are our handles. Now, save your template, and build your template in a new scene. Now jump into Adjust mode and you should see handles for each of the joints in the scene. However if you tried to adjust them, you would probably get a mess when you leave Adjust mode. THIS IS BAD. You want your adjustments to stay put when you leave adjustment mode. So let’s fix this.

The reason for this, is because our joints are constrained to the 2 controllers we have. When we adjust those handles, we are changing the joints position and rotation, but not the controllers themselves. So what happens is we’ve made these adjustments, and then when you exit adjust mode, all the expressions inside of the scene become active again. Since our controllers haven’t changed, what that means is our joints will actually snap to match the controller’s rotation. So to fix this, you need to create some adjustment rules so the controllers follow along during adjustment.

Back in the template, go into the Adjustments tab. And make sure the Objects group is unfolded. Click the Add button to Add a new Adjustment rule. Adjustment rules, are basically constraints. So there’s a Link slot and a To field. You basically are saying “Link this object To that object”. Typically you want to try to link to your handles. So Joint.1_con+ should follow Joint.1, and Joint.2_con+  should follow Joint.2.

So put the Joint.1_con+ object into the Link field, and Joint.1 joint into the To field. For this the default settings are fine. We want it to match the PSR of the handle. Once you’ve done that, add another rule, and linke Joint.2_con+ to Joint.2.

When you save the template, build it, and adjust the handles, you should find your adjustments stay put when you exit adjust mode. Thats good! That means we are all set on the Adjustments front.

That means we have just one more thing left to do and that is to set up the hotspots. So go into the Hotspots tab and add 2 targets. Then for each target, link to one of your two controllers. Save, and you’re done! Thats the gist of using this system to create your own templates. Have fun and I can’t wait to see what templates others can come up with.

The final file can be found here

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Check mine out:

http://vizualize.me/Xz1YQTnwIJ

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