roboter 1.1.0

http://www.mediafire.com/?znajunohjk2

Mr. SuRuj 0.0.1

 

 

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/mr-suruj/download_page

Optimy Classic 1.0.0

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/optimy-classic/download_page

BallKing_OttO 1.1.0

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/ballking_otto--2/download_page

Fuzzy cartoon rig 0.0.1

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/fuzzy-cartoon-rig/download_page

Ashrafi Rig 1.0.5

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/ashrafi-rig/download_page

Blue_Man 1.0.0

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/blue_man/download_page

Lowry rig V1 1.0.2

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/lowry-rig-v1/download_page

Koko 1.0.3

http://www.mediafire.com/?nzii34yjuzz

harryRig 1.0.0

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/harryrig--2/download_page

robotic 0.0.2

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/robotic/download_page

Generi Rig

Generi Rig
By Andrew Silke (email)

Now featuring Trigger UI selection by Hamish McKenzie (email)

Generi is a free model rigged and ready for character animation in Maya 5.x. The Generi rig includes full lip sync and facial controls and the brand new trigger UI selection method for selecting puppet controls. He's a simple model with a production quality rig perfect for learning character animation.

Right click download here (500k)

The 'Trigger UI' as seen here sits in the camera view. To select a control on the character simply click the icons. Each section of the UI can collapse/expand and scale/move to be placed as you wish. The UI will switch cameras with a shortcut key.

Some rigging tutorials with techniques that I used can be found at http://www.cane-toad.com/tutorials.htm

Text File as attached in the zip file is as follows:
General Info
Updates
Install Instructions
Usage Instructions
Known Bugs/Issues
Mel Scripts

--------- Generic Rig v1.1 ---------
Compatible: Maya 5 and higher
Author: Andrew Silke (Email)
Copyright: Andrew Silke 2003
Web: http://www.cane-toad.com
Web: http://www.andrewsilke.com (coming soon)

zoo .mel scripts by:
Author: Hamish McKenzie (Email)
Web: http://mel.macaronikazoo.com/

--------- General Info ---------
Generi is a very generic/basic model rigged for character animation - ready to animate! Full lip sync and facial controls including the brand new trigger UI by Hamish McKenzie is included. It's a simple model with a high quality rig.

The rig is set up with my personal preferences - the spine could do with a more complex setup, but otherwise this is what I like to use. Feel free to have a play and use for non commercial purposes.

Also included are a couple of useful scripts that make animating in Maya a lot easier. See the bottom of this text file for a brief description of the useful scripts. A big thanks to Hamish McKenzie for these fabulous scripts. Check out his website at http://mel.macaronikazoo.com/ for more great scripts.

A slightly earlier version of this rig was used in the winning entry of the 10 second club October 2003. A similar setup was used in the short film Cane-toad.

http://www.10secondclub.net/animview_main.php?id=833
http://www.cane-toad.com

--------- Updates ---------
- Generi now comes with a very cool 'trigger' user interface created by Hamish McKenzie a very talented dude! This is an alternative way of selecting puppet controls. Like the shelf icons but much better.

- Generi now comes with a low resolution model for faster playback. Toggle the layers to show the low res meshes.

- A bug has been fixed where the world coords (orient and pos) did not work properly on the arm controls.

--------- Install Instructions ---------
1. Unzip file (keep the directory structure when unziping)

2. Move both the .mb and .ma files to your project's scenes directory

3. Move the contents of the prefs\icons folder to your icons directory
eg. documents path ...\5.0\prefs\icons\
The path might be something like:
C:\Documents and Settings\user_name\My Documents\maya\5.0\

4. Move the contents of the prefs\shelves folder to your shelves folder
eg. documents path ...\5.0\prefs\shelves\

5. Move the contents of the scripts folder to your scripts folder
eg. documents path ...\5.0\scripts\
The rig will work without any scripts, however the trigger UI requires scripts to run. I've also included some other handy scripts. (See the bottom of this file for info).

6. Start maya and load both shelves...
To load the shelves go to the left side of the shelf and click on the black triangle>Load Shelf...
Then navigate to the shelves folder ie.
eg. ...\5.0\prefs\shelves\
click on the files you have just placed there
eg.
shelf_generiBody.mel
shelf_generiHead.mel

7. open generi_referenced.ma*
*Note: I use referenced files when I'm animating however if you do not like this ou can import objects from the reference after you've opened the file:

to do this go file>reference editor
open the drop down, click on the generi_rig then the in the reference editor window go
file>Import Objects From Reference

--------- Usage Instructions ---------
Once the file has loaded it's best to show only polygons, nurbs, handles and curves in your view. Note that the uiShowMMenu.mel included in this .zip simply turns the show menu into a nice marking menu.

I'd also recommend changing the select priority of nurbsCurves higher so that you don't accidentally click the mesh when you try to select a curve. To do this go to the Window>Settings/Preferences> Preferences window and click the 'Selection' category. Then go to the Priority Presets drop down and switch to 'Custom'. Scroll down to nurbsCurve and change it's priority value to 10. If you are using the trigger interface you might also set nurbs to 11 - so you don't select through the UI objects. Click Save

-- Selecting The Controls --
To select the puppet controls - select the curves/handles on the rig or the trigger interface objects or use the shelf icons. The shelf buttons are toggle select on/off so you can select more than one object at a time.

The animatable attributes for each control are in the channel box. It's important to use the middle click drag functionality of the channel box. ie. click on the attribute (word) you wish to change then hold middle click and drag left/right in the 3d viewport. This provides slider like interactivity. Important!

-- The Trigger UI --
The trigger UI is a bunch of nurbs surfaces parented to the camera - these surfaces are the triggers for selecting the character controls. When you select a trigger the corresponding puppet control is selected on the character. You can move and scale the trigger icons by clicking the x's. The transparency of the icons can be set on the centre of gravity control (cog_ctrl). If you don't like them you can switch them off completely in the layer bar.

To switch the UI to a different perspective camera create a shortcut with the following command:

asSwitchUICam;

Make sure the correct scripts are installed for the Trigger Interface to work.

If you would like to create your own triggers you can do so with the trigger script. Use the following command as a shelf button, hotkey or type the command in the command line:

zooTriggered;

-- Toggle hi resolution/ low resolution model --
A low resolution body and head are included to speed up animation playback. To switch between hi and lo res - toggle the visibility of the layers in the layer bar.

-- To smooth the hi res mesh --
Click on the cog_ctrl (red star) at the waist. Change the Smooth Head, Smooth Body and Smooth Lids attributes. You can also change the opacity of the Trigger UI here.

-- Fingers --
I prefer not to use sliders instead I like to rotate finger joints individually. You can use the selection sets in the outliner to select finger joints, but it is much easier to use the Trigger UI controls.

If you want to use selection sets they are found in the outliner just below the geo files. The sets are '__anim_fingers_L' and '__anim_fingers_R'. Make sure you have sets visible in the outliner. Open each set in the outliner for easy access. Rotate the finger bones accordingly.

-- Arms --
Arms are ik/fk switchable. The ik/fk switch is found on each hand rotation control.

Fk: is pretty obvious, the elbow bend is found on the shoulder control. (use the middle drag functionality of the channel box).

Ik: Use the boxes to move the arms. Use the triangular pole vectors to point the elbows.

Most of the arm controls have parent constraints so the hierarchy of animation can be altered. These attributes can be animated mid way through an animation. The attributes start with Pos_ or Orient_. Make sure the values of these attributes on each control add to a total of 10 to stop weirdness occuring.

-- Legs --
Pretty self explanatory, use the triangular shapes to point the knees.

-- Spine, Neck and Hips --
Simple fk rotation - rotate them!

-- Face --
Many of the face controls can be switched on/off inside the head control (head_ctrl), these will appear as handles in the head. You can also select face controls from the generiHead shelf or the trigger UI.

Eyes: can be rotated individually (eye_Rot_R/L) or with the aim control (the eye icon). The eye lids are found on the (eye_Rot_R/L) controls. 'Lid Follow' is a value that lets the eye lids automatically follow the eyes, I like a value of .4.

Brows: 5 bones in the face that can be rotated and moved, pretty simple.

Mouth: Mouth shapes are accessed by selecting the M on top of the head. Sliders are slow and take up too much screen space, instead I use the channel box middle click drag functionality to change shapes. Some mouth shapes should be combined with an open jaw.

The max value for each shape is 10 but I have allowed the values to go higher. Values higher than 10 will probably look odd. Some values also go into the negative. Highlight 2 values at once then middle click drag in the view port for changing multiple shapes at once.

Jaw: The jaw features a 3 bone setup. All the bones are controlled through the jaw control (jaw_ctrl). Use the 'Top Lip' and 'Chin' attributes to mix up the mouth positions.

Other: Controls include ears, eye sockets, nose, teeth, tongue.

--------- Known Bugs/issues ---------
This rig uses auto-driven bicep and forearm bones. Sometimes when the ik arm crosses in front of the shoulder the bicep bones will flip the wrong way and cause the shoulder to collapse. To fix the problem try fiddling with the arms pole vector control until it rights itself.

--------- Mel scripts ---------
Open any of the mel scripts in a text editor to see how to use/install.

uiShowMMenu.mel makes a marking menu out of the show menu, to easily toggle the visibility of polygons, nurbs, camera, lights, curves display etc.

zooTangentWks.mel is an absolute must have for any Maya animator. Changes to animation curve tangents can be made without even being in the graph editor or on a key! make sure you try out all the features of this baby, it's a keeper, you won't know what you ever did without it.

zooTriggered.mel is how the Trigger UI was created, it comes with a nice UI and instructions for ease of use.

Happy Animating! :o)

Beauty Retouching

Beauty Retouching

Beauty Retouching

Photoshop 911 calls are numerous wanting to know how to remove blemishes from photos, give skin the fashion magazine look, or just how to get that certain glamorous fashion look. Well, when so many people wanted the same advice we asked The Glitter Guru! to help us out. Of course she did. Last month we discovered Marija Matijasec, an incredibly talented photo retoucher from Vinica, Croatia. Her work blew us away, so we asked her for a few pointers as well...

Beauty Retouching

with Marija Matijasec

Beauty retouching is one of the most demanding parts of photo manipulation. There are a couple of different methods and only few tricks. The main trick for your results to be astonishing is patience. With time you'll get faster, but this is not five-minute job even for professionals.
 

Step 1:

Improve the colors on your image as much as you can. Even if your final mode is CMYK, do most of the editing in RGB -- it is much more flexible and editable than CMYK. And don't ever hesitate to use selections with various feathers while editing.
In this case I've started with curves and hue/saturation corrections -- image was too red. After that I've used variations to lighter image -- I lighter image in midtones and added red and yellow (see image 01). I find this method excellent whenever I have too dark image.
(Note: some of the enlargement images are quite large and may take a moment to open. Some will be set to 800 x 600 pixels, so some scrolling will be necessary.)

Step 2:

After you've finished with color editing, make a new layer -- that is how you can control your work and if you don't like what you've done, you can go from the start or return to an earlier part of the image. You also can use it only to impress your clients and friends.
Now is time to start retouching. I've used heeling brush and cloning stamp to remove all blemishes and bigger imperfections on face (see image 02). Heeling brush is also excellent for removing ugly lines under the eyes.

Step 3:

Too big nose or chin, too small lips and other similar problems can be easily solved with liquify filter (see image 03). This filter, under the "Filters" menu, allows you to move, smudge, squish, and otherwise distort your image. The default setting has the grid turned off, but you might want to try some work with the grid showing. This gives you some clear visual feedback on how the tool is reacting. The Warp will be the most useful, however "Pucker" and "Bloat" are best for shrinking or expanding the area. Be careful and experiment. The brush size has a lot to do with the results. Go slowly, moving a tiny bit at a time.
On this image I've use it for reducing the nose (with the "Pucker" tool) and chin (with the "Warp" tool,) and removing bumps on the neck.

Step 4:

Now is time for final skin smoothing. I've selected bigger cloning stamp with small hardness -- about 15%. It can be used hardness from 5 -- 30%.
With that brush I've careful smoothed the skin (see image 04).
Doing that I always use multiple clicks, not strokes. This is the part of work when you must be most patient while doing it -- be very careful not to repeat pattern. Every now and then take new snapshot in history palette (see image 5). This way, if you don't like your final product, you can easily return to exact step in history.

Step 5:

If I go too far with smoothing on some parts, I use history brush with hardness about 15% and select snapshot I like the most, then partially restore specific area. If this is not possible on some areas that came out too smooth, I use selection and add noise filter to simulate skin texture (see image 06).
Do some final color adjustments if necessary and you are finished.
Finished: Open this final image with the Before and After (It's a "rollover" so move the cursor over the image to see the changes, then out again to toggle the before and after.) Notice the results of the Liquify Filter in the nose and chin. Also notice that areas of the shot didn't need modification, such as the areas around the hair.

Dramatic Changes

Other dramatic changes can be seen in these Before & After samples of Marija's work. (May take a moment to load on slower connections.)
Girl gets Hair and Eyes fixed - watch this one as you rollover to reveal the finished piece -- note the eyes and much of the hair had to be rebuilt
Normal Girl goes Gold... Here's a magazine shot where Marija had to literally turn the model into gold!
Model loses ten years... Trim, Soften, Fix Hair, was the story on this shot that started out pretty hard, but ended pretty soft!
Chiselled features in this facial - note here that the face behind the net is virtually unchanged! But the lower face and neck had to practically be rebuilt -- including a blemish on the leather glove. (Don't forget to scroll around!)
Replace the head... Everything in this shot was perfect... except the head. So a second shot was combined for a perfect solution.
Two plus Two equals Three... where several shots had the right components, but they had to be reassembled for the final results. (May need side-scrolling)

 

Making Skin Beautiful

Let me start this tutorial by stating the obvious, not everyone has beautiful skin. To compound this problem we have skin eruptions, uneven tan, freckles, unwanted highlights, large pores, etc. In addition, today’s cameras and lenses magnify every imperfection and freeze it for all to see. This tutorial will help the photographer put their models in the best light so to speak. I will start at the point where you have completed your basic processing and have an image with the correct exposure value and white balance.

Contents [hide] 1 Overview 2 Removing or softening flaws 3 Touching up undesirable highlights and reflections 4 Apply a Gaussian blur to the skin to soften and blend it 5 Spot Sharpening

Overview

This subject will be covered in steps as follows:

1. Removing or softening major flaws in the skin
2. Touching up undesired reflections and highlights
3. Apply a Gaussian blur to the skin to soften and blend it.
4. Spot sharpening

Note for MAC users: Substitute the Option key for the Alt key when specified in the tutorial.

Removing or softening flaws

There are many ways to remove flaws from the skin; however, I like to use the clone tool. I do not use the clone tool to remove and replace the skin but rather in a special way that will allow me to work slowly to hide the flaw or blemish on the skin. The beautiful young lady pictured here is typical of teenagers in that hormones may cause zits or other eruptions on their skin that are unsightly. As a photographer it is our job to lessen that and make the model look their best. You will note on the neck of this young lady a rather large skin eruption. This is not a normal mark and one that I am sure she wishes were not there.

On the tool bar on the left hand side of the workspace is the clone tool. Click on this tool. Now go to the mode setting at the top and select a soft brush that is near to or smaller than the blemish. Move to the right and click on mode, setting it to lighten. Move to the right and set the opacity to around 12% and the flow rate to 100% or less. You are now ready to begin hiding the blemish. Find a good patch of skin near the blemish, position your brush on it, hold down the ALT key and click your mouse once. Now begin to soften the blemish by doing a click and hold while going over and over the blemish. You will note that it begins to lighten. Continue until the blemish is gone. In the center of the blemish it is lighter than the surrounding skin. Set mode to darken, ALT click on the good skin and repeat the process above to darken this lighter area. The blemish is now gone as shown in the image. You might also note that I have lightened some of her permanent moles and fixed other light or dark areas using the same technique described above. I generally do not totally remove permanent moles on a models face.

Touching up undesirable highlights and reflections

The end of nose is a particularly onerous place for reflections and burned out highlights as you will note on the model above. Removing them is just as simple as removing a blemish. The difference is that you set the clone tool mode to darken. Select a patch of skin with the appropriate color and do an ALT click. Now go over the highlight until it looks good to you. Be careful not to go too far a field from the highlight itself as you can make the nose look flat in that area instead of rounded as it normally is. If you make a mistake, it is simple to go back a step in the history palette and redo that step. Don’t hesitate to switch between darken and lighten if need be. At this stage do not worry if everything is not perfect as the Gaussian blur will take care of minor imperfections in your work.

Apply a Gaussian blur to the skin to soften and blend it

Much of the information in this part of the tutorial was gleaned from Scott Kelby’s great book entitled The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers, which I recommend highly to everyone new to Photoshop.
I will attempt to keep the "how to" part of this tutorial as detailed as possible so that those new to Photoshop will be able to follow along. This is an advanced technique so stay with me. First thing to do is to open the picture that you want to apply the Gaussian blur to. Create 2 additional layers of this image in the Layer’s pallet. An easy way to do this is to hold down the Ctrl key and click on the J key twice. You should now see three layers of the image. Hide layer 1 copy by clicking on the Eye icon next to it in the layers pallet. Highlight the middle layer by clicking on it and your layers pallet should now look like this:

In the drop down box on the Layer’s pallet change the blend mode from Normal to Darken. Next go to the menu at the top of the screen and click filter/blur/Gaussian blur and then apply a 35 pixel blur to the image. Don’t worry that your image looks bad at this stage.

On the Layers pallet, click on the little Eye icon beside the middle layer to hide this layer and then click on the top layer to make it active. Now change the blend mode from Darken to Lighten by clicking on Lighten in the drop down box. Next run a 50 pixel blur on this top layer (Filter/blur/Gaussian Blur).

After you have applied the blur, click on the middle layer to make it the active layer and then lower the opacity to 30%. Hide the background layer from view by clicking on the Eye icon beside it and then create a new layer by clicking on the New Layer Icon at the bottom of the Layers pallet. This icon is on the bottom right just next to the little garbage can. When the new layer is created click and drag this layer to the top of the stack as shown.

Next, hold down the Alt Key and with your mouse go to the top and click (hold) on Layers and while holding the mouse button down go to the bottom and release the mouse button over Merge Visible as shown here.

This creates a flattened version of your document in the new layer. In the layers pallet, make the background layer visible with the Eye icon and hide the two middle layers by removing the Eye icon from them. Make sure the top layer is the active layer and then lower the opacity to 37%. This is a subjective adjustment and you should set it at the point that your image has the right amount of blur to suit your taste. All that is left now is the removal of the Gaussian blur from the hair, eyes, eyebrows, lips, jewelry, clothing and anything else that you don’t want blurred.
Click on the layer mask icon at the bottom of the layer pallet (third from the left). Insure that your foreground color is set to black. You can change the background/foreground easily by clicking on the small x while watching it change on the leftmost tool pallet. Select a soft edged brush from the tool pallet and paint over everything that you do not want blur on (eyes, mouth, hair, etc.). Generally this is everything except the skin. Change the size of the brush so that it is easy for you to do that without getting over into the skin. Your layers pallet will now look like this.

At this point you may flatten the layers and discard the unused layers (Layers/Flatten Image). If you feel a little touch up for the brightness of the image is needed, do that with levels or Brightness/Contrast.

Spot Sharpening

Select the spot sharpener from the tool pallet on the left hand side of your screen and quickly go over the eyes, mouth, and anything else that you want sharpened.
Applying a final sharpening is up to you but in any event do not over sharpen. Watch the eyelashes and hair especially so as not to create artifacts or halo's. Here is the final product:

Don't be intimidated by this tutorial, once you run through it a few times it is quite easy. One last caution, it is better to error on the side of too little blur than too much. It is easy to make the skin look plastic and unnatural. The goal is to accomplish the softening but yet not have it noticed. If you remove all traces of texture to the skin you will have failed for most types of portraits.

 

Design a Grungy Floating Island

Final Image

This is the final image that we’ll be creating:

Step 1

Open up a new document (600X600px) and create a rectangular selection in the center of your document. Fill it with black.

Step 2

Now paste in a photo of a tree. Cut it out from it’s background using the lasso tool, and then apply a black color overlay. Then resize the tree to fit nicely in the top right of your black square.

Step 3

Paste in a photo of some fir trees and mountains. Go to select>color range then select shadows, and use the settings shown below. This will create a selection around the fir trees, which won’t be perfect, but can be used for this kind of grungy, rough design. With the area around the trees selected hit delete, and then resize your image and give the layer a black color overlay effect.

Step 4

The images below show this technique of color range > shadows > delete > color overlay repeated, and me building up the edge of my black rectangle using various photos of greenery.

Step 5

This grungy outline is looking pretty cool, but it’s a little too square and boxy right now. To fix this I grab my eraser brush set on a grunge brush and erase away parts of the corners of my ‘black rectangle’ layer. I also add a few more parts to the edge to round off the corners and erase these too.

Step 6

Now I paste in a wood texture underneath of my current layers to provide a cool background.

Step 7

To achieve a more neutral background color I add a color overlay to my wood texture layer. I set an overlay of EFDBAA and 86%.

Step 8

I paste a photo of some symmetrical clouds over my background texture layer. I want the clouds to be at the top and bottom of my image however, so I simply select the relevant parts of my image and move them to the top/bottom of my document. Then to fill the gap between I select a thin strip of the blue sky that divides the clouds and stretch it so that it joins them. Finally I set my layer’s blend mode to overlay and reduce it’s opacity to 60%.

Step 9

We’ll get back to the background shortly, but for now I want to add some text to my cool black grungy area. A really nice tip for achieving a grungy artistic effect is to type out your text, and then select each individual layer and choose the font below the last one you used for the previous layer. The variety of fonts and white on black contrast is a very simple way to achieve great results.

Step 10

To add to the grungy theme I add in some Photoshop custom shapes and erase parts of them using a grunge brush set at a low opacity. I reduce these shape layer’s opacities to between 20-40%.

Step 11

Now a select a large grunge brush and set it’s hardness to 0. Then I apply 4 brightly colored marks roughly at each quarter of my canvas. I set my layer’s blend mode to ‘vivid light’ and then go to filter>blur>radial blur and apply a radial blur of 74 strength, blur method: spin, quality: good. The images below show the effect with our floating island hidden and then made visible.

Step 12

Now I paste in an image of some mountains above my radial blur layer. Then I set my layer blend mode to ‘overlay’. This creates a really nice effect not only giving the mountains some bright colors, but making it appear as if they are coming out of the clouds at the base of our image.

Step 13

Now paste in some more mountains into the top of your image. Remember to set the blend mode to overlay and then use a large, soft eraser brush to blend them in properly and get rid of any harsh edges.

Step 14

Paste in a paper texture on a new layer below your floating island and above your background layers. Position it so that it takes up all of your image apart from the bottom where your main mountain image is, but be careful to have it overlap the tops of the mountains. Then set your layer’s blending mode to multiply, and with the mountain layer showing through, use the lasso tool to cut away the bottom of your paper texture where it overlaps the mountain tops. Then reduce your paper texture layer’s opacity to 50%.

Step 15

Now paste in an image of a sunburst shape (see our latest PSDFAN freebie for the image download). Again, cut away the part of the image that overlaps the mountains. This time rather than bother with the lasso tool simply selection your paper texture layer and click where the mountains are positioned using the magic wand tool. Then revert back to your new sunburst layer and hit delete. Then go to the layer’s blending mode and change it to ‘color burn’. Reduce the layer’s opacity to 16%.

Step 16

Now select the ‘grungy’ text from ‘man this is grungy’ and copy it. Create a new text layer above your mountain layer and paste in the copied text, changing it’s color to 0A375A. Then increase it’s size to 155pt – this should take up most of the width of your image. Rasterize the layer and position it so that the tops of some of the letters are above the top edge of the mountain.

And we’re done!

To finish select the mountain using the magic wand technique shown previously, invert your selection and hit delete to cut off the tops of the letters. Reduce the text layer’s opacity to 10% and set it’s blending mode to ‘color burn’.