Meet ZEPAM...(Male BlenRig)

jpbouza

Sunday 3rd of August------------- Male BlenRig 1.1 is available!!!----------

Hi all!! BlenRig 2.0 is out!

Well, after several months of work, I have finished Male BlenRig, featuring Zepam.

This is a test render of him.

Here´s a link to the 5000x3500 render

For those of you who don´t know what BlenRig is, BlenRig 2.0 is a new rigging system for Blender 2.46. You can Check out the all the info at my site.

www.jpbouza.com.ar

You can Download Male BlenRig Here

BlenRig is released under a Creative Commons License.

The File Includes:

Male BlenRig rig
_Zepam Multi resolution Model
_Zepam´s clothes
_4k (and higher) textures for Bumps, Color and Displacement.
_All procedural Materials used for creating the textures.

BlenRig 2.0 Main Features:

FK/IK Switches
_Harmonic Coordinates Deformation for Body and Face.
_Lattice Based Muscle Bulging
_Bone Stretching Switches
_Limbs Independence from Body Movement Switches.
_BlenRig´s Exclusive Double IK Spine
_Armature Baker Script (By Bart Crouch)

Check for the Video Tutorials in the RESOURCES section!!

I Hope you like it!!

Cheers!!

Blade_Rain

HOLY CRAP!!

:O

That is SWEET. Very, very nice work!

(@_@)

omega2240

not holy crap! its holy @#$#$ awesome!!!

Smelz

Wow thanks!!! this looks amazing, I'm downloading the torrent now

watchthis

from the rendering of the image, most of the anatomy looks good, but the feet look weird and alien-like. you may want to fatten them up.

freen

...at first I was nervous to view this thread at work...
...since you've called it a "male" rig, I was guessing that you've rigged the part that women don't have.
Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised.
Excellent work!

omega2240

for some reason it wont load on my blender!! i think it has to many poly's

jpbouza

Download the lighter version. In the Download page there is a 300MB version with 4K textures and multires, and 100MB version with 1k textures and no multires. I was able to open that version in a P4 with 512 of RAM.

jaja, Freen, the fact that you don't see it doesn't mean that it is not there, hehe, hide his pants and you'll find it.

Thanks for the critics WatchThis, I agree, unfortunately my feet look like that, hehe. But seriously, Zepam is a base for further improvement by the user. Actually I don't think I'll use Zepam for any serious work, but I'll take him as a base for more detailed characters.

Watch the video tutorials, and you'll understand that Male BlenRig is not just a rigged character, it is a rigging system in itself.

Sammaron

hey, that looks neat. skin may be to bumpy, but still, good work

omega2240

thanks!!

(\_/)
(^ ^)
(><)

scrag_10

I watched the (a) video, and it is quite impressive, definitively a rival for man candy.

Cessen

So I watched the tutorial video, and I've been playing around with the rig for about half an hour or so... and I have some feedback.

First of all, I'm really impressed with most of the deformations in the rig. You achieved good deformations in some very difficult areas.

However, I'm substantially less impressed with the rig's usability. I think there is a lot of room for improvement.
Here are a few critiques:

There are a lot of controls all tossed onto the same layers. This is visually overwhelming, and can make it difficult to select the control(s) you want.
The IK spine idea, while interesting, isn't really that useful in practice. I speak from experience, as I have tried similar setups in my rigs. I've found that IK spines are too delicate to animate with in the vast majority of cases. For example, animating a character moving from a bent-forward position to a bent-backward position requires many more keys with an IK spine than with an FK spine (which makes it a lot more difficult to tweak later), and even then the interpolation is often a bit weird.
The arms and legs respond to the pole targets even when they are in FK mode. They shouldn't.
The foot control doesn't strictly and predictably control the rotation of the foot (i.e. the foot rotation sometimes "drifts" from the rotation of the control).
The sliders are not part of the same armature as the main rig. This means that you can't manage all of the rig's keys (controls & sliders) in the same action, which is very problematic, especially if you want to switch between FK and IK in mid animation.

Again, I'm impressed with the deformations. I just think the user-friendliness of the rig needs a lot of work. Being user-friendly is really what makes a rig useful to animators.

watchthis

lol, I guess I just have wide feet

jpbouza

Thanks for the Comments!!

Thanks for the critiques Nathan. The only thing I have to say is that issue with the pole targets is not my fault. Today someone post a similar bug in the bug tracker. It is like some random Blender bug with IPO drivers, cause, for example, under my Linux the problem isn't there, and when I open the file in a Windows machine the problem appears.

You may be right about the delicateness of IK Spines. I may try to Implement an IK/FK switch in the next release. Nevertheless, there's nothing like natural feel that the double IK spine gives to the character. I animated the Dance of the Bashful Dwarf with BlenRig 1.0, which had a FK spine, and it was a really hard work to make the movements feel natural, that's why I implemented the double IK spine, and I have to say that I feel comfortable with it in the short film I'm doing, though, as I said, I have to agree about the delicateness of IK chains.

Thanks man, I'll keep these topics in mind for a later release!!

jpbouza

Hey Nathan, can you be more specific about the controls and the layers and those interface issues? Can you make any suggestion? Cause, you know, some times when you work on your own there may be things that are practical for you, but may not be for others. I read that you had that problem in BBB, so if you can give me any tip on that it would be great!

jpbouza

My feet may be too thin too Watchthis...

This is funny, cause nobody in my family likes his feet...and yesterday my wife told me that his feet really looked like mine, but that for some reason, his are uglier...heheh.

jpbouza

Guys!! If you download Male BlenRig with the Direct Download link, please download also the torrent and help me seed!!

Thanks a lot!!

FreakyDude

Okay, sorry, I don't really know to much about seeding so I just downloaded. I suppose to seed one should host the torrent somewhere or something. If so, I'll see about getting it on the googlepages or something.

Anyway, I've looked a little more, found no flaws in deformation so far, not unless I pose him in some really really weird imposible poses anyhow. Quite impressive so far.

I have to agree about some of the controls could do with a little more organisation. When moving the arm IK switches, the arm dependance switches also move along, out of the frame.
Maybe I'm using the wrong controls, but IK only seems to work if I have arms independance and IK switch set to "On" (EDIT before posting, nope, just had the wrong "IK handle")
The IK spine is a little sensitive in behaviour too, but nothing mayor.

You make heavy use of the bone layers, but maybe you could space the basic controls over the first two layers for clarity? IK on one, and FK on the second, shared controls on both, and some additional controls on the third.
You could also use bone groups to color them accordingly, or color left and right bones.
Or combine both left/right and FK/IK colors.
The double IK spine's base (lowest bone) acts like a pelvis correct? maybe you could give it a control that clears some confusion there, like a wire shaped pelvis.
It's a complex rig with loads of functionality, I should examine it first to see how every little gizmo works. But these are the things I noticed you might be able to improve someday.

Extrudeface

Quote:

I suppose to seed one should host the torrent somewhere or something

am no expert either, but i guess is like leaving the file there, I think most clients start seeding since you start the file. Probably means you download and don't remove from list...

jbouza, does this put in an easier route for blender devs, to add those features ? ie, fk/ik switching, muscle deformations, etc ? I mean for Blender, for any rig... Even if just a bit, am always eager for any rig/animation system improve...

is he a capoeira fighter ?

Extrudeface

btw, a tiny contradiction in the license, perhaps...

"Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 2.5 "
"_You may use Male BlenRig or any of its parts for your own commercial or non commercial use."

I guess you care for what we all care, nobody getting rich selling the model rigged in any inet depot or something... Just that i think that license kind means other thing, but i may be wrong...