Congrats to the E.C.M.W.P. Grads

Today marked the last day of class for my group project gang - congratulations all!

Now that you may have a bit of time available - it's never too late to finish those ECMWP costumes that are still incomplete. Ryan is counting on you!

The Project Continues

Things continue on with ECMWP. Matt Mann at the college had been setting up a website for distribution of the assets. All he needs is for us to finish any last minute fixes. We're getting the clothing bundled up and ready for distribution.

I've learned that some of the issues getting the clothes to map to Morpheus has to do with changes to skinning between 2010 and 2011. So for those of you having the "exploding leg" issue or the "un-openable scene" give Morphy a try in 2010 and you'll likely have better luck.

My students from the project are currently finishing up any tasks that have been left unfinished in exchange for awesome project t-shirts. Thanks to Natalia and Catie for already earning theirs. The rest of the gang...(cue expectant look)

Les Roy - Final Summary

Over the course of the term, I was given the following tasks:

- Distinguish what was what on the stock UV layout for the body mesh
- Texture the Speed Suit
- Texture the Cowboy
- Texture the all 3 Khaki iterations

I UV'ed/RE-UV'ed (and packed) the following assets:

- Speed Suit
- All assets in Khaki (3) costumes
- All assets in Cowboy costume

Everything I've done over the term is in the album (i.e. UVs/Textures):

http://s1180.photobucket.com/albums/x408/enjoiles/ECMWP/

** Sorry I wasn't able to put up the pictures through Blogger, I was running into a couple problems with the uploader.

Also, the UV pack for the Khaki costumes is NOT the actual pack, it's just for display purposes.

Some People to Thank and a Hint of What's Next.

What an incredible five weeks it’s been. We started ECMWP as a group project in February, and April 1st marked the last day of class. This group project was an incredible success, owed entirely to the hard work and dedication of the talented students involved:

Ruby Bhattacharya, Natalia Falciglia, Josue Mora, Joe Oliveira, Les Roy, Logan Penciu, Tony Sumimoto-Ercanbrack, Jacob Van Leeuwn, Catie Vercammen-Grandjean

Thank you all so much. I am thrilled and fortunate that I had such a great group with the perfect diversity of skills. Cookie points for you all.

Special thanks to Andrew Schlussel, Rodney Brett, Miwa Kozuki, Matt Mann, Marcus Day, Corey Jones, and Davy Weinman

Finally, a huge heartfelt thank you to Josh Burton for making the Morpheus rig in the first place. It was Josh’s generous spirit, giving “Morphy” away for free, that inspired me to start this project.

As you can see by the blog postings, the students covered a lot of ground: They established the artistic style of the project. They set the standards of quality for any work to be included in the archive. The students determined best working practices and technical parameters. They built our first set of assets to completion. The students were able to generate all of our initial animation and marketing material. On top of all that, they made a really cool t-shirt to commemorate the entire project. If you check out the “Project Guide” tab you’ll see a summary of everything we accomplished together.

So what is next? ECMWP is moving into a slower, volunteer phase. While I’d love to run it as a group project again, it’s hard to know when the stars will align again. Until then, my plan is to continue recruiting students to expand the wardrobe in their free time. I’m pleased that a few of my group project gang have already expressed an interest in doing so. Have I mentioned how much they rock?

I’ll have to volunteer in my free time to organize the assets and get them ready for distribution. Matt Mann is setting up the website side of the project. Official release date is planned for the San Diego Comic-Con in July 21. I hope to send finished assets out on a “use at own risk” basis to get some beta testing. I’m thinking, I’ll post the finished asset list soon and have folks request them on the blog. Watch here for the beta pre-release.

Keep following the blog and tell your friends in the animation community to do the same.

- Dave Latour

Catie Vercammen-Grandjean Final Summary

Final Tasks: Texture a costume and several props, i.e. Soldier Morphy and Cutlass/Katana/Raygun.
Progress: Partial texturing of Soldier Morphy but incomplete.
Questions/Roadblocks: Became heavily bogged down with problems involving original geometry and several mistranslations from concept to model. There were additional issues involving UVs and exporting from Zbrush. Trying to concept texture design while facing these roadblocks made it a slow process.
Workload: A little on the heavy side, unexpectedly, but that was partially due to the previously stated issues.

Completed This Term:

~On T-shirt image, I concepted the back design which is on the RIGHT. Natalia's original amazing design is on the LEFT which is for the front of the shirt. I turned both front and back designs into Vectors for the printers.
~Cleaned up Morphy template
~Created Female Morphia template
~Casual Female Costume Concept
~Formal Male Costume Concept
~Formal Female Costume Concept
~Template One-piece Suit Concept
~WW2 Costume Concept
~Policeman Costume Concept
~Skater Kid Costume Concept
~Werewolf Costume Concept
~Witch Costume Concept
~Wizard Costume Concept
~Top Hat Concept
~Bowler Hat Concept
~Hard Hat Concept
~Four Formal Female Hat Concepts
~Winchester Exaggeration Concepts
~Exaggerated Peacemaker Concept
~Textured WW2 Shirt
~Textured WW2 Shoes
~Textured WW2 Spats
~Created a Tutorial for importing the Chalk tool in Photoshop (Which was the only brush I used for conceptualizing).

I will not post images of all the concepts, they are on the blog already.

Natalia Falciglia Final Summary

- Organized prop list

- 3 Lighting styles (3-point, Sunlight, Moonlight)

- Costume Test Lighting setup

- Winchester, Cutlass, Ray Gun, Flintlock, Katana: Modeled

- Soldier Costume: Modeled and UV'd

- 3 Female Hairstyles: Modeled and UV'd

- Renaming/Re-organizing Meyer Hall assets

- Lighting Meyer Hall for walk cycle & creating light-linking "readme"

Lighting Setups

Costume Test Lighting

Props

WWII Soldier a.k.a "Ryan"

Female Hairstyles

Meyer Hall Lighting

Tony Sumimoto End of Term Progress

Winchester
Ray Gun
Peace Maker
Cutlass
Props above have been UV'd and Rigged

Katana
Katana has been UV'd

Color map for Peace Maker

Besides what is shown above I have invested a lot of my time in a mel script to help with the parent constraints of E.C.M.W.P. props to Morpheus. I have also been working on the Morpheus T-Pose animation. Unfortunately I am unable to post my final playblast. Due to the fact I am in Hawaii and my latest files are still on my external hard drive in California.

Big thank you to David Latour, hope E.C.M.W.P. continues!

Aloha.

Joe Oliveira End of Term Progress

Marilyn

Peo

Colt

Reginold

Garand

Cutlass

Two basic textures for the cutlass

Skater Costume Modeled

Finished Skater Costume, over the weekend I'm gonna UV and texture it.

Painting Textures: Guideline Sample

Here are samples of the spats and boots for WW2 Morphy. The way I imagine the textures being painted out (in the most simple and painterly way appropriate for Morphy) involves highlighting raised surfaces and painting darker colors where wrinkles and grooves appear. Places where materials are worn usually have small highlighted scuffs, depending on the kind of material involved. Holes, like for laces, are initially painted dark brown circles with "u" shaped highlights at the bottom of the circle to give depth to the grommets. The universal lighting is from directly above. All edges, mostly overlapping ones, will have a lighter color to signify its raised surface.

Problems to address:
*Laces and buckles are on wrong side of spats
*UVs are temporarily fixed
*N-gons on shirt?

The Wonderful, Wonderful Morphy

Finally salvaged this file from my dying computer. Reuse the robe from witch and the shoes are basically the same except that Mr. Wizard won't have heels on his (unless you think he's more wonderful and groovy that way). Think slippers with curls at the end. Don't forget the beard and mustache when modeling.
Bibbidy, Bobbidy Boo!

3 Morphy Hairstyles

I finished UV'ing these three new female Morphy hairstyles, and experimented with putting some kind of hair-like texture to see if it worked with the style we are going for. In my opinion, the solid hair coloring works for Morphy much more than adding textures to it. The only style here that might require texturing is the cornrows, on the "cap" for her head (to simulate hair being pulled into the braids).

Hats For All!

"A hat is a flag, a shield, a bit of armor, and the badge of femininity. A hat is the difference between wearing clothes and wearing a costume; it's the difference between being dressed and being dressed up; it's the difference between looking adequate and looking your best. A hat is to be stylish in, to glow under, to flirt beneath, to make all others seem jealous over, and to make all men feel masculine about. A piece of magic is a hat."
-Martha Sliter

Morphia's Witching Hour

It's the witching hour for Morphia! Cast your favorite spells with this costume and fly to the moon. Or not. Witches need days off too.

Were-Woof

Awwoooo! Morphy of London!
Here's our favorite rabid friend, Were-Wolf Morphy!

Were-Wolf Hands and feet should be treated as gloves and shoes. Nose, ears and sideburns for the head as well as some fur poking through the shirt. An optional tail will be available too. Animators can be advised to have some foot roll, like for high heels, to strike that feral pose!