Kelsey Hall Art Blog
Sunday, July 10, 2022
Kiss and Make Up Dance Pass 5
Saturday, March 12, 2022
Pixar's Renderman: Analytic Lights and PxrMeshLight
When I was learning Pixar's Renderman for my student film Delivery, during my research I learned about analytic lights and how they effect render times. I am not a lighting artist but its still very good to know how Renderman calculates lights especially if you have a special case that is uses lighting differently.
The primary mode of lights in renderman are called analytic lights because they are economical to render time. They are highly mathematical modeled lights, highly efficient, and they use aerial lights. Thus they are calculated cleaner and give us a faster result.
Analytic lights include:
- PxrRectLight
- PxrDiskLight
- PxrDistentLight
- PxrSphereLight
- PxrDomeLight
- PxrPortalLight
- PxrEnvDayLight
Sunday, February 27, 2022
The Difference Between FK and IK Controllers
If you are an animator or someone who is very into rigging, then you have probably heard about FK and IK controllers. This is just a short write up about the differences between FK and IK controllers with Lucy from the Delivery project as an example.
Forward Kinematics or FK controllers are often times used when creating expressive animation. These controllers are very good at capturing realistic movement. The logic behind these controllers is that the top controllers holds all the controllers underneath it. It's a parent-child relationship! Because of the nature of the parent-child relationship they are animated through rotation. While these are all of the positives about this controller set up, FK is not very good when you need a character or object to rest their weight on something. You will need to counter animate.
Inverse Kinematics or IK controllers are used when you need something to independently "stick". These controllers are interesting because the top controller is independent of the bottom controller. When you move a controller anything between the two controllers is being solved by the computer. It is sticky so for example if you put a hand on a table and you try to move the table the hand will go with it if parented. Because of the nature of how it works, you are animating through translations. This type of controller does require a more complicated set up and it is more difficult to get realistic animation when you aren't resting weight.
Rigs can be built with both FK and IK controllers. Somtimes they may be built with only FK or only IK. In some cases if you character or object has a specific movement you may even have other set ups such as FK space.
Thursday, February 17, 2022
Idle to Walk Mocap Animation Part 2: Adding the Character
For this week I chose to work on adding the mocap data to a character. For this animation, I worked with a character named Azura who you may recognize from the Fire Emblem series. This rig is of her special costume and I got her rig from my grad school mocap rig library. I though she had a very cool design and she also had some very interesting hair and clothing. I find hair and clothing very interesting and something I want to learn more about so working with her would give me some more insight on how hair and clothing work when it's time to work with both of those areas.
To start off I open Azura in motion builder. I then also add my folder path to my cleaned and characterized mocap data in the asset browser so that it is easier to work with. After adding my folder path, I drag one of the mocap animations onto the scene and FBX merge.
Sunday, February 6, 2022
Idle to Walk Mocap Animation Part 1: Cleaning and Characterizing.
I decided that I wanted to gain some more knowledge about mocap animation and learn about the animation process in motion builder. To start my journey on learning more about this area, I started simple with just a basic walk and idle animation. I'm starting these animation off separately before I combine them into one. While I was in grad school, I went to some of the lectures about mocap animation. I never got to finish any of the animations but I did learn a lot from my professor.
To start off, I found my mocap data from the animation I started in grad school. I'm starting from the very beginning where I have to clean and characterize the data. I see many red dots in the scene which is data I need to clean.
To begin cleaning the scene, I first start with opening the schematic. I deleted the system, unlabeled markers, markers for props that were not used, and the markers that were on the actor.
Monday, January 31, 2022
Jaw Pivot - Good Way To Figure Out Where This Joint Should Be and The Effects You Get
It's been a while since I have worked on this project. Sometimes life gets a bit crazy and this is a project I am picking back up. When I was creating my joints for my jaw pivot, I learned something I didn't really think about too much. I think about anatomy a lot when I work on a character by looking at several real life skeletons and looking at animation. With the jaw pivot, the whole idea of where it can be placed to get different effects really got me thinking.
When I placed my joints, I placed it based on realism. I placed my jaw hinge joint close to the ear and close to where the neck would be connecting to the skull. It's very similar to a drawing my instructor did in class.
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Resetting Transformations, Freezing Transformations, and Matching Transformations in Autodesk Maya
When working in maya you may use several transformation tools to help with your workflow. The three translation tools I want to talk about are the resetting transformations, freezing transformations and matching transformations. These three tools are very powerful and help you work in maya in many different ways. I used these tools in my school days a lot and still do on the daily.
Resetting Transformations is a tool that put your manipulator tool back at the origin in maya. So back on the center of the grid.
How to reset transformations:
- Select an object you want to reset the transformations on
- Go up to Modify
- Select Reset Transformations
How to freeze transformations:
- Select an object you want to freeze transformations on
- Go up to Modify
- Select Freeze Transforms.
- Select the object you want to transform and then the target you want your object to match.
- Go up to Modify and scroll down to Match Transforms.
- On the side pop-up you can select a variety of ways you can have your object copy the transforms
- Match all Transforms
- Match Translations
- Match Rotation
- Match Scale
- Match Pivot
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If you are someone who has used maya for a few years you may have noticed some changes to maya 2022 and maya 2020. One of the changes I hav...
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It's been a while since I have worked on this project. Sometimes life gets a bit crazy and this is a project I am picking back up. Whe...
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If you are an animator or someone who is very into rigging, then you have probably heard about FK and IK controllers. This is just a short...