Hello guys, how are you! I would like to share with you the steps of this project that I developed from Chimp.
I created the whole structure of muscle modeling, rigging, animation and simulations with ziva dynamics of fascia, fat and Skin. I created the hair with VRay Fur and post-production with After Effects.
The objective is to show the workflow I followed and try to help those who are taking the first steps in the area of ​​cfx muscle with ziva dynamics and, if possible, collect feedbacks to help me improve. Hope you like it.
1 First create the joints structure based on the mesh:
I created this structure of joints on the face combined later with BlendShapes to be able to generate more detailed facial expressions.
2 Right after, I created the structure of controls with shapes:
In the case of the face I created more controls like ribbon to generate the facial expressions:
3 Before animating, I created a Lowpoly geometry based on Highpoly and made the relative with the joints corresponding to each part:
4 Having all the parts lowpoly connected to the joints, I created the animation.
5 After the animation was done, I connected the bone meshes to the joints:
6 Right after that comes the step of simulating the muscles with Ziva Dynamics. In this case I converted all the objects in the skeleton to bones and all the muscles:
7 After a few hours of studies to calculate the simulations, I managed to arrive at the result that I believe to be acceptable 😊
8 After completing the muscle simulation calculations, I exported as Alembic.
9 The next step was to create the Fascia. For the creation of the fascia I used the same lowpoly mesh as the Chimp and made the fixation and deformation calculations based on the muscles:
10 After having managed to generate the fascia, I exported the simulation in Alembic.
11 Now it's the fat's turn. With the fascia calculated in Alembic, I imported the fat mesh and made the settings until reaching a satisfactory result.
12 After having managed to generate the fat, I exported the simulation to Alembic.
13 Now it's the skin's turn. With the fat calculated in Alembic, I imported the skin mesh and made the settings until reaching a satisfactory result.
14 After having managed to generate the skin, I exported the simulation in Alembic.
Now it's time to unite the skin of the body with the facial animation of the Chimp's head.
15 In a new scene with the skin calculated in Alembic, I imported the mesh of the head already with the animation. In this step I found a challenge to join the two meshes without leaving residues of their separation, so I created a technique that at first worked well.
16 With the two meshes selected, I applied the Mesh / Combine command.
17 In the process, I realized that this command kept the meshes separate, so I created a copy of the model. The problem is that the copy does not take the animation. But why then did I create the copy? Look...
18 With the copy selected, I made the selection of vertices in the open region of the mesh.
19 Right after, I applied the Edit Mesh / Merge command with the value defined below:
20 After this step I delete the command history applied to the copy.
Transferring the base animation to the copy.
21 I select the copy and then the animated mesh. Then I applied the Deform / Wrap command.
22 I hid the original mesh and when I ran the animation the result was this:
The solution I found for this problem.
23 I selected all the vertices of that region.
24 I applied Delta Mush through the Deform / Delta Mush menu.
25 In the channel box, I configured the Delta Mush until reaching a satisfactory result.
26 For the creation of hair I used VRay Fur. I confess that I learned in 40 minutes and so far I have no great experience with him 😊
27 I applied VRay Fur to Chim.
27 In the Attribute Editor I configured Basic Parameters like this:
28 The big draw was in using the map to define the hair length. I exported the UV from the Chimp to paint its areas.
29 The result was this:
30 Create the lighting on VRay using 3 direct lights and 1 skydome:
31 I performed the first renderings.
Post-production in After Effects
32 I rendered the animation in sequence of images and imported it into AE.
33 I applied a command sequence for light, shadow and colors:
Before
After
34 Well folks, that's basically it. Hope this helps. Below I leave some images of the renders of this project. Thanks.