Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/589428
30 cgw s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 5 production for the project. Artists Katie Fortune and Michael Sardi worked closely with Bhattacharyya, who served as project lead, to come up with designs that suited in-class assignments and a level of complexity in terms of performance. A final design was chosen based on the structure, flow, appeal, and functionality of the character. Aerward, the modeling team of Robert Garcia and Steven Mortensen brought the characters to life through 3D sculpts in Pixologic's ZBrush; later, they retopol- ogized the high-res sculpts for use in Autodesk's Maya. Textures were generated using a combination of The Foundry's Mari, Knald Technologies' Knald for bake-quality textures, and Adobe's Photoshop. The rigs themselves were developed by Sykes, who served as rigging lead, along with Wambugu Kaigwa, who Sykes calls "one of my standout students." Using Maya, they cre- ated the rigs with conventional features: IK/FK switching for limbs and the spine, the ability to change the parent of the controls mid-animation using space-switching, and rotation orders set up in such a way to reduce gimbal locking as much as possible. "The rigs were built with the clever use of spline IKs, Bezier curves, joint layering, and various implementations of blendshapes," Sykes says. "As development evolved, we authored a library of auto-rig scripts in PyMEL in order to maintain consistency between the rigs, regardless of which TD was assigned to the task." During development, the modelers collaborated with the riggers to ensure that the mesh topology was on track. Then the animators tested the completed rigs, offered input, and ensured there were no major issues. Additional soware and plug-ins were incorporated into parts of the pipeline leading up to the completed rig. To help expedite skinning, the team used the ngSkinTools plug-in, which enables users to mirror weights across a large number of overlapping joints, as well as iterate on skinning deformation in a non-destructive fashion via its built-in skin layering system. Blendshapes for the characters were mostly done in Autodesk's Mudbox, whose layering system behaves similar to the corrective blendshapes in Maya and whose sculpting controls are fast. Each rig has its own devel- opment and testing cycle and undergoes an extensive amount of animation within Cogswell's curriculum in various student projects to ensure it is stable. "Dynamic simplicity was a theme throughout the project. It was important for the rigs to have a simple control scheme to make the characters accessi- ble to different skill levels, while also offering just enough detail and subtle motion so students can really nail down all the ani- mation principles," says Sykes. Which rig was the most complex? In Sykes' opinion, it was the Henry and Caroline human bipeds. Because they will be used the most within the college's curriculum, they encompass everything needed by multiple animation instruc- tors, ranging from simple and subtle animations and extreme actions to locomotive cycles. "With full facial rigs and detailed control for clothing and secondary motion, Henry and Caroline contain the greatest amount of controls," Sykes says. Emily Wiebe, Matt Peponis, and Marne Pool made up the testing team, providing the feedback needed to make the controls as animator-friendly as possible. As for the additional charac- ters, the group will continue to develop the rigs internally and will release them when they are ready. In the meantime, Sykes and Bhattacharyya are monitor- ing how the first character is being received and are gather- ing feedback about the models. The advantages of such a project are obvious to the stu - dents and instructors who will be using the rigs. "This is a huge platform by which our students can really start to get their names out there," Bhattacha- ryya adds. "We hope Project Avatarah will enable Cogswell students to create an identity of their own within the rapidly ex- ploding world of animation." ■ Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of Computer Graphics World. COGSWELL THE DRAGON (TOP, MIDDLE) WAS THE FIRST PROJECT AVATARAH MODEL RELEASED TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. BIPEDS HENRY AND CAROLINE (BOTTOM) ARE HEAVILY USED.