Our asset team at Riff have done an amazing job on this!

 I took no part in atually creating this artistic piece, but I did all the technical/pipeline support part. We managed to pull off about a hundred of assets within a short amont of time, with blood, sweat and tears. Scripts were wrote to automate things and decisions were made to make sure we took the shortest route!

New 2.5D Feature Film is on the way!

Moved to Riff Studio for a couple years, been working on this original feature film since...can't wait for it to finish!

My responsibility:

 - Technical direction, writing scripts to automate stuff, maintaining & developing pipeline tools

 - Troubleshoot asset and shot production

The new LEGO Friends 2018!

The project I worked on last year just came out! This is a bit too girly for my taste but it turned out pretty nice (thanks to our great team at Picture This), and surprisingly, I'm so proud!

As a Rigging TD / kinda general TD
I was responsible for:
- Facial model development
   - modifying existing model making sure the girls are as pretty as possible
     (all the main girls and half a dozen of others)
- Facial rigging/blendshape/workflow devlopment
    - for all the main girls and half a dozen of others
- Rigging tools development
   - setup rigging workflow
   - blendshape tool and many others...
- Animation tools development
   - Anim picker, Dynamic chain tool, etc...
- Pipeline
   - a couple of asset pipeline tools I helped with
   - fixing, fixing, fixing, trouble shooting and...back to FIXING

ENJOY!

We've Got Heart - Music Video

Girls on a Mission in Heartlake City - Mini Movie

Meet Olivia! Character Spot

Meet Stephanie! Character Spot

Meet Mia! Character Spot

Meet Andrea! Character Spot

Meet Emma! Character Spot

Long time no see! Lego City is done and gone

Hi all,
I have been so caught up with work so bad that this blog has been left abandoned for a year (or 2).
I just want to update with the work I've done for Lego, the Lego City series.

I did R&D on the 2D facial rig system(from Flash created images to the 3D asset). Each part of the face (eyebrows, eyes, mouth etc.) are fully translatable, rotatable, and scalable.

Also there's a big improvement in SLR and FX. This is a big step for all of us as at Picture This Studio and it did require a huge collaboration between many people.

Here you go!

2015 Freelance work

Long time no post!

I was so lucky to be a part of these cool projects for the past year.

ENJOY.

Phyto SC Plus Commercial(2015) - freelance

Responsibility: Rigging(Angel wings)

Smooth-E Commercial(2015) - freelance

Responsibility: Facial Rigging(Acne face)

PTT Commercial(2015) - freelance

Time: 0:05 - 0:07 (CGI bird)

Responsibility: Rigging, Technical direction

https://vimeo.com/155095931

Roojai Insurance Commercial(2015) - freelance

Responsibility: Rigging(Kangkaroo)

Average Vertex Skin Weight 2.0 beta (Python only)

Have had some time lately to to what I wanted to do for quite some time.
While using the brush it usually screw up vertices that are modeled to be close to each other, i.e. for stylize character with hard edges or hard surface stuff.

This is an attempt to fix the problem by adding "distance between surrounding vertices" into the calculation.

UPDATE:
 - Supports undo/redo.
 - Supports maintain max influence set on the skinCluster node.
 - Optimized (I did try, really.)
 - Big changes in calculation.
   Averaging weights will take distance between its
   surroundings into account.

DOWNLOAD

Average Skin Weight Brush plugin for Maya2014 x64

Finally made time to compile for Maya2014 x64 during Songkran long holiday here in Thailand.
Cheers, guys! :)
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/plugin/average-vertex-skin-weight-brush

Rearrange your geometry group for tidiness!

Haven't got much time to update lately. Been busy with work.
Still, I managed to wrote a little script when my patience was out looking at a messy geo_grp from the model department.

Just select the root geo_grp, the script will reorder all the children under it alphabetically (groups will be ordered last).

import pymel.core as pm
import maya.OpenMaya as om


def rearrangeGeoGrp(geoGrp=None):
    if not geoGrp:
        try:
            geoGrp = pm.selected(type='transform')[0]
        except:
            pass
        if not geoGrp:
            om.MGlobal.displayError('Select a geo group.')
            return

    exit = False
    grps = [geoGrp]
    while not exit:
        nextGrps = []
        for grp in grps:
            children = grp.getChildren(type='transform')

            if not children:
                om.MGlobal.displayWarning('%s : is an empty group.' %grp.longName())

            # seperate grps and plys
            cgrps, plys = [], []
            for c in children:
                checkIfPly = False
                try:
                    shp = c.getShape(ni=True)
                    if isinstance(shp, pm.nt.Mesh):
                        checkIfPly = True
                except:
                    pass

                if checkIfPly == True:
                    plys.append(c)
                else:
                    cgrps.append(c)
                    nextGrps.append(c)

            plys = sorted(plys)
            cgrps = sorted(cgrps)
            plys.extend(cgrps)

            for i, item in enumerate(plys):
                currentIndx = grp.getChildren(type='transform').index(item)
                pm.reorder(item, r=((currentIndx * -1) + i))

        if nextGrps:
            grps = nextGrps
        else:
            exit = True

Resetting controller's transform with pymel

A tricky way to reset ctrl transform is to multiply the ctrl and the parent group matrices together and put the result to the parent then zero out ctrl transform. Whola! You got zeroed out ctrl where you put it.

#############################################
import pymel.core as pm
import maya.OpenMaya as om

def resetChannelBox(obj):
cbAttr = ['tx', 'ty', 'tz', 'rx', 'ry', 'rz', 'sx', 'sy', 'sz']
for a in cbAttr:
attr = obj.attr(a)
locked = False

if attr.isLocked() == True and obj.isReferenced() == False:
attr.unlock()
locked = True
try:
if 's' in a:
attr.set(1.00)
else:
attr.set(0.00)
except:
return False

if locked == True:
attr.lock()

return True


def resetCtrlTransform(objs=[]) :
if not objs:
objs = pm.selected(type='transform')
if not objs:
return

for obj in objs:
offsetGrp = obj.getParent()
if not offsetGrp:
om.MGlobal.displayWarning('%s  has no parent. Continue.' %obj.nodeName())
continue

srcMtx = obj.getMatrix()
grpMtx = offsetGrp.getMatrix()
resultMtx = srcMtx * grpMtx

offsetGrp.setMatrix(resultMtx)
resetChannelBox(obj)

if isinstance(obj, pm.nt.Joint) == True:
obj.jointOrient.set([0.0, 0.0, 0.0])


resetCtrlTransform()

Average Vertex Skin Weight Brush!

    A custom brush for smoothing skin weight. It takes its surrounding vertices weights and blend it to the original weights. The result is kinda like hammer weight tool, but with brush you can paint on.

    Base on the original 'tf_smoothSkinWeight.py' by Tom Ferstl posted on createivecrash.com
I did a little modification. The brush now performs a little faster and supports undo/redo.
Please see: creative crash link


How to use  : 1.Put averageVertexSkinWeightCmd.py to your plugin path.
                         (ie. C:\Program Files\Autodesk\maya<Version>\bin\plug-ins)
                      2.Put averageVertexSkinWeightBrush.py to your python path.
                         (ie. C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\My Documents\maya\<Version>\scripts)
                      3.Execute the following python command.

import averageVertexSkinWeightBrush
averageVertexSkinWeightBrush.paint()

Enjoy!
DOWNLOAD

Mirror Mesh Deformer Plugin

This is my personal test project. The aim is to create a node that can mirror mesh deformation from left to right (for blendShape, maybe?). Yes, we have a bunch of scripts out there that does the job fine, but this is my personal challange to be able to have them deform together in real-time. And, yes, I just wanna practice.

I wrote this plugin in Python first because that's the only language I know (except MEL which I don't really consider a programming language). And when it comes to a LOT of vertices python kinda sucks. It lag so hard. So I spent a few weeks studying basic C++ just enough to get the plugin to be translate to C++. I found translating pretty easy since I already got all the algorithm working fine just a bit off this and that that C++ needs.

AND YES...IT RUNS DAMN FAST!

Fluid deformation on 100k+ vertices!
You can try it out for free. I just did this for fun so there'll be errors and cause unpredicted behaviour to Maya, of course. (Maya2012 64 bit only)

DOWNLOAD: mirrorMesh.mll

HOW TO USE:
    -  Put mirrorMesh.mll in the Maya's plugin directory(wherever it is). Load the plugin.
    -  Select a polygon, Create the deformer. (cmds.deformer(type='mirrorMesh')
    -  Connect "outMesh" of the mesh you'd consider it the "base" to the "baseMesh" attribute on the node.
    -  Connect "outMesh" of the mesh you'd consider it the "Original" to the "origMesh" attribute on the node.
    -  Tweak(lower) the tolerance value on the node if you have a very dense mesh so the node can match vertices on each side

Have fun.