Open Sourcing

he Bone character rig is coming along nicely. I have added a bone that drives two shape keys for the eyes to blink.


Blender Blink Bone from Tim Brown on Vimeo.

I used Video Sequence Editor (VSE) in Blender to add the captions to the video. This is not as easy as adding them in CamStudio while making the screen capture, however it allows much more flexibility. For instance, notice how they fade in and out? Notice also how they have transparent backgrounds? I thought you would. The captions are .png images, made in Gimp, of the text with a transparent background. All that was needed to add them to the video was to add both the video (1) and the image (2) to the VSE and create an "Alpha Over" effect in the correct order (2->1). I also wanted them to fade in and out rather than having them instantly pop onto the video. To do this I added a curved IPO curve to the Alpha Over effect.

This was more a learning exercise than anything else, so it's not perfect. I had some trouble matching the frame rates also, so it's a bit jerky, but it does show to blink bone!

The next "step" (pun intended) is to create a walk cycle for this little guy.

y Bone character is coming along nicely. I have been working over the past week on building up an armature for him. This is the first character that I have modeled and rigged from scratch, so I'm quite happy with it.

The rig is based on a few different rigs that I have studied including ManCandy, Captain Blender, and the BSoD Character Animation tutorial rig. The body controls are very basic right now, but as I learn more about building an armature I am adding more functionality.

The hand/finger rig is based on ManCandy's hands. This was quite tricky to get right as Bone has very short, fat fingers. They tend to deform badly when curled in a fist, which is one of the things that I have to work on. Each finger as two bones (one knuckle) that control the deformation of the mesh. Each of them has a small IK target at the tip of the finger which controls the bending of the finger. This small bone is parented to a large bone that does all the controlling. Scaling this large bone will bend the finger and rotating it will control the position of the finger. This allows me to control each finger with just one bone and un-clutters the workspace (I can hide all the rest of the finger bones).

Bone's eyebrows are controlled with two shape keys, one for each side. With the shape key fully on his eyebrows are down, as if thinking or mad. I used a combination of Captain Blender and ManCandy resources to create these keys. It was sort of a pain to move a slider around to control the eyebrows, so I decide to drive the shape keys with a single bone.

I think that it came out really nice. The one bone (with a custom shape, which is a first for me!) in the center drives both eyebrows based on its local X and Y locations. It is really easy to pose! BTW, the demo video above was made in CamStudio. The captions were added with CamStudio in real time. They aren't the prettiest looking boxes out there, but very simple to use.

There you have it, Bone is coming along! I still need to complete the hand rigs as only his left hand is done right now. I'd like to also add the ability to make his body/head stretchable, along with some more custom bone shapes to clean up the posing environment.

he ability to seemingly finish a large project seems to be out of reach for me! I tend to always go on to other things and bounce around a lot. For example, the rose on the right was the result of a quick tutorial and some playing around. Eventually, one of these days, I'm going to have a completed large scale project, but until then, I'm have fun skipping around and just learning everything there is to know about Blender and Gimp!

Speaking of Gimp, I have downloaded the new version, version 2.6. It adds some additional functionality to the text tool and free select tool. There are also some new GUI tweaks, which work very well in Linux, but not so much in windows. This is most notably the ability to keep the toolbox and layers window on top of the main image window. There should be a work around for this, but I haven't found one yet! One somewhat annoying thing is that my watermark script doesn't seem to work in 2.6 as of yet. I'm going to have to look into that.

The next bit of randomness is a new logo for the new layout. The sphere was created in Blender and the wire frame around it was done in Gimp.

Next, I've started modeling a little character with the intention on building up a full rig for him. I decided to embark on this project after downloading the ManCandy FAQ DVD, which documents the build up a very complex rig for a basic character. The rig is very complex and I'm puzzling through it the best that I can, but it is still fun to pose him. The character that I am working on now (left) is based on the comic "Bone" by Jeff Smith. Which is extremely funny and I highly recommend.

Finally, I'll leave you with a desktop that was made for my girlfriends computer. Enjoy!

long with working on computer projects such as Blender and Gimp, I also enjoy sketching. Although, again, I do not consider myself an artist by any means, I do enjoy it.  The image at left started out as a quick sketch of a pose I saw in a picture a number of months ago.  It has turned into a bit of a project now, mushing two of my favorite activities together, drawing and biking.  I'm still debating about what sort of head to add to him and I obviously have to work on the shading among other things.  It's a nice little side project.