Georgeous animated short - Fox and the Whale
Posts
Hairless cats and their funny old wrinkles.
Ah fascinating critter, I'll be honest, not my favourite cat, but quite sweet all the same. One thing I did notice however is that big bag of wrinkly skin is actually quite revealing about their anatomy. As a character rigger, things like wrinkles are often an after thought, something you add on as a nice extra, but when you see images like the ones below, it does illustrate how significant they are in defining a creatures shape. What we can learn from the Sphynx cat, is that all that loose excess skin is actually a necessity to allow it's wide range of movement. The blue lines represent the compression and tension of the skin in the two poses, note how much the skin gathers up around the wrists when the limbs are tucked in, and how stretched out that skin is when upright. Think of it like doing yoga wearing a loose pair of trousers compared to wearing tight fitting jeans :P
Weta horse FEM simulation
Really nice, detailed look at the Weta horse bone/muscle/fascia/fat/skin simulation. Something I'm only just noticing now is how detailed the bone movement is, right down to the tiny carpal bones, and the tendons sliding perfectly over them! Fantastic work, and fantastic reference for the rest of us!
Apes 3 FACS and Tissue
Some pretty interesting screengrabs from the Apes 3 VFX breakdown. Note the clean separation between muscles, and the colour grouping of the fur sim. WETA FACS rig in action, interesting pose library tool on the left. Oh hello there. Weta Featurette "Making History" for WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES from The HMC Network on Vimeo . Nice article on Bad Ape and Alita face rigs: https://beforesandafters.com/2019/03/20/she-eats-a-lot-during-this-film-you-know-giving-cg-characters-some-bite/
