Lachlan Best - Rigger and Modeller - The Blog

Moved to Sydney, Got a Job

31/7/2016

Well, it's been 10 months, I guess it's time for another blog post update! A lot has happened since September last year. After narrowly missing out a job at Animal Logic studios in October 2015 (damn you Paul!), I was lucky enough to be followed up and offered a position as a Junior Rigger in January of 2016. So, I packed up my bags and moved 1000km down south from our suburban family home in Brisbane, to an inner city flatshare in Sydney.

Animal Logic is truly an amazing place to work. Relaxed atmosphere, worthwhile and challenging projects, and best of all everyone - especially the crew on the rigging team - are an absolute pleasure to work alongside. Each day is just as fantastic as the last. The only real shock thus far has been the steep learning curve, which is definitely isn't a bad thing. Coming from an amateur background, where I'd mostly hand built rigging components in Maya and done nearly everything manually, I was unprepared for just how code based and automated the rigging pipeline is at Animal Logic. Creating something by hand is nearly unheard of unless for prototyping purposes. Anything that needs to be built should be written in python using the custom built API so that it can easily be reused or extended upon in future. Iteration is key - the API is designed so that the workflow becomes much more flexible, and isn't just a linear process from joint placement through to skinning that can lead to catastrophe during production if complicated rig changes are requested or the existing geometry is updated.

Needless to say my fledgling python scripting abilities have had ample opportunity to grow, and my eyes have been opened to how a real world rigging pipeline should operate. As week pass I feel myself falling deeper into the world of python programming and automation, which is simultaneously both mind boggling and mind numbingly exciting.

Update Time...

11/10/2015

Been far too long between rounds on this blog... past five months have kept me busy, especially with work developing "StoneRage," a PC game that we hope to bring out from under the covers sometime Q1 2016. My most recent rigging reel features some of the models I've worked on, like the Megalodon and Kelenken which have been really fun to work out. More information on StoneRage can be found on our website, at: www.stoneragegame.com

To be frank, another reason for the lack of updates has to be put down to a recent slump I'd fallen into. After completing my honours degree, I came out bubbly and excited to finally be free to pursue exactly the projects I wanted to do without needing to worry about writing theory or following marking guidelines. Needless to say, this excitement waned as I met several creative roadblocks - and found it progressively harder to push on through to the other side. Thankfully I'm gradually emerging from this - partly thanks to getting out of the house to tutor at the Queensland University of Technology, and partly due to re-invigorating my routine. Formulating a new daily, hour-by-hour breakdown of when and what I'll be doing has done absolute wonders for improving my work ethic and morale. Knowing that if I stay focused for just another hour I'll be free to take a break and grab a snack keeps me from wasting time trying to mash work and leisure together into a mess of a day that feels completely unproductive.

Below are the timelines I set up to keep myself in order. Typically I try to get out of the house to exercise, and also need to pick my brother up from school. These tasks formed two immutable blocks that sleep, work, and leisure had to squeeze between.

Fingers crossed the next update isn't 5 months away!

Handpainted Chest

21/5/2015

Had a go at doing some more handpainted stuff to keep me on my toes. Was good fun, but took way too long to create. Started with a high poly mesh in maya which had all the big important shapes, then moved into ZBrush and added a few minor details (cracks in wood and metal), then polypainted the chest, then created the low poly and unwrapped it, then baked all the normals and vertex colour data... very involved workflow for a little chest. I'm not a big fan of painting maps directly inside Photoshop (which is why I did nearly all the legwork in ZBrush) so I'm thinking next time I'll invest in something like 3D Coat or Substance Painter and just paint directly onto the low poly mesh and bypass the low poly > high poly workflow for such a small prop. The original concept below was created by Christopher Hayes.

Anatomy Stuff

4/5/2015

Been chugging away at some more anatomy stuff in between projects. Working on my understanding of the torso mostly, drawing inspiration from some of Scott Eaton's exercises. Good fun!

Unreal 4 Basement Environment

20/4/2015

After many months of working on and off on this environment, I'm finally ready to call it done. I drew inspiration from the old Polycount environment challenge 3 (http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113765), with the goal of learning the basics of UE4 and to try out Quixel's DDO. Was a fun project, but I'm excited to get back to some more character modelling and rigging now!

BMX Mini Project

9/4/2015

Decided to take a prop for an interior scene I've been developing (updates on that soon) a bit further and do up some snazzy presentation sheets. Was a fun exercise, I'll probably take it another step further and rig it up too after I get some other stuff out of the way first. The BMX was modelled in Maya with some minor detailing in ZBrush, baked in xNormal, had its base textures created in dDo2 then refined manually in photoshop, and finally was rendered in Marmoset.

The "Ella" Rig

26/3/2015

Been some time between updates, but I've finally (well, just about, these things are never really "finished" right?) wrapped up my latest project - The "Ella" rig! I modelled and textured Ella late last year, in anticipation of using her to practice some wild cartoony deformation. It was a fantastic exercise, where I learnt a lot on my own about layered rigging, bendy deformation, and extreme squash and stretch. My confidence in facial rigging especially has improved dramatically, and I'm keen to apply this knowledge moving forward - I think it's time to create another character to practice on!

I'll be releasing this rig as a free download because I can't think of a good reason not too. I'll update this post with the link when she's ready!

More Busts

4/2/2015

Rounded out January with a handful of new busts. While practicing my expression modelling, I also had another crack at hardsurface work in ZBrush, this time following a slightly different method to the one I experimented with last time. Instead of doing a basic sketch using mainly clay and hPolish, I relied heavily on slice curve and panel looping to get rough shapes in place. Was a good workflow - when I get around to creating a hardsurface character, I'll definitely be using it to help me out before moving into Maya to get clean surfaces.

Facial Expressions

25/1/2015

This week I've been getting more into creating expressions as I build on my FACS knowledge. Just been sculpting a head as per usual, then simply setting a morph target inside ZBrush and pushing and pulling until I get a suitable look to the face. I'm thinking for the remaining five weekdays of January, I'll continue to do a sculpt with expressions each day, but drop these over February to focus more on my rigging abilities. Originally, I set a time limit of two hours to sculpt these heads, but gradually these have started to take three to four hours as I try and squeeze polypainting, rendering, and compositing into the mix - eating into time I need to be spending elsewhere.

New Year Sculpts

17/1/2015

Slow start to the new year after being sick and taking a couple of weeks off to rest, but back into it now. I'm doing the usual five head sculpts a week while working between a few other projects - including learning the Facial Action Coding System, a collection of rigs for a games project in the Unreal Engine, and a rig for a character I recently made. More updates on those soon... for now, here's some more busts...