New Blender Leg Rigging Tutorials

Blender Leg Rigging Tutorials

Hey everyone. Man, it's been too long. Life just seems to get too busy. Anyways, my good friend Tony Jones from Avalanche Software has been making additions to Blender's rigging tools, and so I decided to show off some of them by doing a set of tutorials. The tutorials cover the following:

1. Adding the Rig Bones and the Control Armature
2. Adding the Constraints
3. Adding the Drivers and Custom Properties for the control object

Tony's done a great job with it and you can check out his site here where you can get all the information on his new build and you can even download it to play with it.

I'd love to hear what you guys think about the tutorials!

Be back soon!

I've now got them all up on Vimeo too:

barryzundel.com goes live!

Yes, I finally came into the digital age by having my own website. It's a work in progress until I can actually get the time to make the site I REALLY want to make, but it'll work for now. So hopefully everyone can go check it out. Most of the content is what is on my blog, but in a much more organized manner.

Like I said before, I have been taking pictures for a long time, much to the chagrin of my wife and to the detriment of the multiple hard drives that I have used up. But I decided to do it a little more seriously, investing in new equipment and starting to do individual and family photography. All the information is available at my site.

I would definitely welcome any suggestions, since it's still a work in progress. Thanks!

Blender Foot Rigging Test

So, one of my good friends, Tony Jones (a programmer/artist at Disney Interactive) started getting into Blender, adding some features to the rigging tools that help a lot with creating much less complex rigs. Here's what he has been up to. So I'm testing his new tools and learning to rig in Blender at the same time. It's a rough road, but Tony is making it a lot easier with these tools.

I rigged this leg up in about a 30-40 min period, learning included:

Blender 2.5 Beta - What a difference...

I've known about Blender and "tried" to use Blender for years. I have always been impressed at it's amazing capabilities given the free nature of the software. There's just something about people writing software because they truly love it vs. wanting to make a huge profit that intrigues me. In those years of attempting to use Blender, I have never been able to really grasp it. But with 2.5, and the Maya hotkey presets, it just opened up a whole new world that I think I just might want to try out again. Not because it's "Maya", but because there's one less program that I have to learn with different key combos. I was able to jump into Blender 2.5 Beta and start playing around immediately. That being said, modeling something from scratch (a face, body, etc.) is still proving to be a challenge, but it's one that I just might consider now that I don't have to fight the urge to use the Alt-LMB combo to tumble. I would suggest everyone give it a shot if you are into 3D. It's looking like a really cool tool that is finally coming of age.

Something a little different...

As my wife can tell you, when we go on vacation, I develop a growth on my right hand that she likes to call a "ca-me-ra"". It seems to appear out of nowhere and it takes over my brain at times. I've really gotten into photography lately more for the artistry of it. I've invested in a few new lenses, and woah, do they make a difference. I'm still a total novice at this, but I love it. Here are a few pictures of my latest trip up Highway 101 through California and Oregon. There are many, many more to come....

Meeting Sketches

It's been waaaaay too long since I posted something. So here are some meeting sketches:

Sometimes I Hate Technology...and typing.

So as I was typing the title for this post, I think I hit the backspace button about 20 times. Not a good day for typing.

Anyhoo, I found out the hard way that backing up 9 years of work is a good thing to do in more than one place. Two days ago, I was working on my laptop at work, and had my backup drive attached to it. All my music, pictures, previous work materials, downloaded training materials, etc, were on it. The dumb thing had a 1.5 foot USB cord, and as I turned in my chair with my laptop on my lap, the drive careened off the desk and hit the floor. Then it started what sounded like beeping at me. I soon found out that the "beeping" was more of a mechanical problem where the disc would spin up, but couldn't be read. So I did some calling to find out how much data recover costs...you don't even want to know. For a 200 GB drive (yeah, it's been my backup for a LONG time, I know), it was going to cost me between $800 and $2700 for the data retrieval. Why don't I just give them my newborn child and call it even? So now the drive is sitting on my desk, a cold, black, dead reminder to BACKUP YOUR FLIPPIN' WORK!!

We'll see how long I can go without accessing anything on it.

Animation:Master Tutorials Price Reduction!! - up to 75% off!

All my tutorials for Hash's Animation:Master have been reduced to $5 or less! You can go download them here:

Barry's Lulu Storefront

Happy downloading!

Things they are a-changin’…

After 9 great years at Avalanche Software in Salt Lake City, I took the plunge, and made the jump to movies – something I have always wanted to do.  In those 9 years I have worked with some of the most amazing artists and people around and have learned an immense amount from them.  Like Adam Ford said, they are some of the greatest people I know and will continue to be great friends.  I am thankful for the amazing knowledge that I gleaned from so many of them, and hopefully, I can do it justice.    

But on to a new chapter of life.

Today, the dream became the reality.  I was lucky enough to be considered and then hired by Pixar as a Technical Director.  It’s quite frightening after working in the games industry for 9 years to walk into a place where you are now the rookie and you don’t know a thing about what you are about to do.  But I feel like a huge sponge that is bone dry, and I can’t wait to be thrown into the pool.  It’s going to be difficult, but I am so ready for this.

Softimage Softbody Tutorial

Well, I figured that since I couldn't find a tutorial on this, even though it's pretty simple, I would put one up, mainly for myself so that I can remember in 2 months when I try to do this again, but also so that if someone else is looking for a tutorial, they could find one. So here it is...



If I'm doing something wrong in this tutorial, or if there is a better way to do it, by all means, please let me know!

More Figure Drawings…This time in ANALOG!!

I haven’t had a lot of time for CG stuff lately, so here are some drawings that I recently got around to imaging:

 

 

Figure Drawing Friday

So for about a month now, I have been out of drawing supplies, and just too lazy to go get any…which is the reason for all of the digital drawings.  Here’s another drawing that I could have used 2 more hours on.  I think it turned out pretty good, but I’m feeling like if I go back to paper now, it’s going to be a whole new experience all over again…

Once again, I just can’t seem to get a likeness.  I need to do a lot more portraiture and study measurements.  I guess that’s my next task.

Here are the steps: