Moving! - New Link for C4D Files and Tutorials

Hi Folks,
Due to limited time available to update this blog I have decided to move all the files to my website instead. If you are a user of Maxons' Cinema 4D you'll find some handy scripts, scene files and character rigging tutorials . You can find them here - http://www.graphite9.com/CinemaDownloads.html
There's not a whole lot of stuff there yet but I'm adding more to it as I get time so watch this space!

Brian

Sneak Update

A little more work on the 2D Sneak..
Still not satisfied with the arc on the head during the 2nd step but I think the leg poses are improving.



Comments and criticism welcome.

Cheers,
Brian

Walkcycle Buddy - Animation Workflow Script

Here's a little script that swaps the positions of two controllers to make setting up walkcycles quicker. Thanks to Per Anders over on CGTalk for helping me with the nuts'n'bolts of this code.

Of course you could just do this by manually copying and pasting the values but where's the fun in that?!

You can see a short demo of the script in use here.
Download the script here.

Hope you find it useful,
Cheers,
Brian

Gramps - Free Cinema 4D Rig

Here's a Cinema 4D rig I built a while back. This is rigged using Cactus Dans' character plugins.
The model was created by C4DCafe member Randy Webb and after I rigged it we made it available for download on Randy's website. This site seems to be offline at the moment so I thought I'd make the rig available here if anyone wants to use it.
It's got a couple of nice features (if I say so myself!) like an 'auto step' attribute for the feet and full IK/FK blending on the arms with slider controls to give predictable FK rotations. I made a short video demonstrating some of these features that you can download here.

You can download the rig itself here.

You can also see Gramps getting his groove on in a short animation I made here.

I hope you have fun with Gramps, if you make any animations with him be sure to post a link here as I'd love to see them.

Cheers,
Brian


Update Dec 09 - Due to limited time available to update this blog I have decided to move all the files to my website instead. If you are a user of Maxons' Cinema 4D you'll find some handy scripts, scene files and character rigging tutorials . You can find them here - http://www.graphite9.com/CinemaDownloads.html
There's not a whole lot of stuff there yet but I'm adding more to it as I get time so watch this space!

Cinema 4D Script - Rewind and Play

I've been working on some animations recently in Cinema and have found a lot of the time I'm working with the timeline in 'simple' mode, ie I set a play range using the powerslider and then rewind and play a particular sequence to see the transitions in the poses. I have cycle switched off as I want to see the last frame held.

While doing this it occurred to me that it would be useful to have a 'rewind and play' button instead of hitting both buttons each time. So to make things handier I made a very simple script that calls both commands and made an icon for it and added it to my layout. I thought I'd make it available for download from here in case someone else finds it useful.

To Install -
Just put the script in the Library>Scripts folder and then on restarting Cinema you can drag it from the script manager or command manager (search for 'rewind and play') into a layout to have it as a button, save the new layout and done..

If you push the button while the timeline is playing it will just rewind and stop as the play command toggles, but of course you can double click to jump back to the start and play which is still quicker than clicking on two different icons.

You can download the script here.

Hope you find this useful.

Cheers,
Brian

Back to Basics..

Recently I've started following Jason Ryans' excellent 'Rampup' series of animation tutorials'.
Essentially the workflow Jason describes involves making rough 'pencil tests' using simple stick figures to work out timing and posing (along with all the other important animation fundamentals!) in 2D and then using this a guide for the final animation in 3D.
Well, I'll be the first to admit that my drawing skills need a bit of polishing, especially when using a graphics tablet rather that paper, but I'm having a lot of fun working on this. I bought a copy of Flipbook, a great program for making these tests using a virtual lightbox and animation table.

Here's the current state of one of these, I'm still changing poses as I go along so this is still very rough, but once I have this looking a bit better I'm going to try and reproduce it in 3D.




Any criticism and/or advice very welcome!
My next test will have frame numbers..

Cheers,
Brian

Some of my recent animation work.

Well, where to start?

I have a lot of different tests and experiments over on my website Graphite9.com These were all created in Cinema 4D.
If, like me, you've ever wondered what Darth Vaders' cat might look like, make sure to check out the short clip in with my most recent work here. You can also see a Cinema 4D rattlesnake rig I built for the History Channels' Modern Marvels series on the same page.

Other noteworthy clips on my website include the most ambitious animation I've made in 3D yet, featuring a cartoon crow called Fred and his misadventures in trying to master the delicate art of soccer and an animation that I made for a C4DCafe competition a while back (It won!) called 'The Mousetrap'.

Hope you enjoy them,
Cheers,
Brian