Carlos Ramiro. Technical Animator. Reel 2024

Far Cry 6 Trailer

Facial pipeline for "Raiders of the broken planet". 100% joints based.

Riders of the Broken Planet

Check out the new teaser of the game i am working on at Mercury Steam

Back in bussines

More than 3 years since last post. Three years quite busy. I left Mercury Steam Entertainment to join Avalanche Studios as Technical Animator, so moved from Madrid to Stockholm. Also started to work with Maya and MotionBuilder and changed Maxscript for Python and MEL.

Here is a gameplay trailer of Mad Max, the project i have been involved for the last 3 years that will be released next September .

Castlevania Lords of Shadow

Stapler

Working with a model created from separated pieces (mostly recycled from other models) speeds up the process but can be hard to skin in order to join all the pieces together. The vertexs on the seams must have exactly the same skin weight on every different piece so that parts are not separated when moving the bones.

If pieces don't have skin modifier, skin wrap modifier can do the job, but with skin modifier already applied to the pieces, skin wrap would destroy it.

This tool does the work on the seams while keeping the skin modifier on each of the parts.

Zoom Camera

Another easy but useful script. Just a few lines of maxscript to create a new camera from an existing camera on scene. The new ZoomCamera has the same animation and properties than the original so the animator can zoom or move it for facial animation or fine tunning.

Animatic Layout

I created this tool to speed up the process of creating animatics. You can create cameras with predefined shots for the different characters on stage. Also change the type of plane for an existing camera, and switch between cameras.

Character Manager

Working with more than one character on scene could be a little messy. The layer manager becomes huge and it's complicated to find what you're looking for.
This tool gives quick and easy access to different parts of the character, allowing you to select, hide or freeze. You can work on a character or several at a time, eliminating the need to use the layer manager.

It also includes a flash UI for the biped, and the ability to copy and paste character's poses within or between the different characters of the scene.

Weights exchange into skin modifier

This little tool becomes very useful during skining process. Allows fast weights exchange between two bones into skin modifier, with just three mouse's clicks. When i was developing this tool, could never imagine that just a few lines of code would become so helpful.



So, there is an old bone, the one that is going to be replaced, and a new bone. Since every vertex is affected by more than one bone (usually 3 or 4 bones per vertex in videogames), this tool replaces the old bone for a new one with exactly the same weight on every vertex affected that the former bone had into skin modifier. This way, there is no need for retouching the skining process, skin's weights remain the same with the new bone.

File Manager

Throughout one day, i need to switch between different project files too many times. This becomes a boring  process of switching  between windows' folders. Inspired by Jeremy Ernst's work, i have created my own version for a file manager, working in 3D Studio Max and connected to Alienbrain for file version control.




I have three different categories, Main Characters (Personajes), Enemies (Enemigos) and Extras (Extras), and into them a dropdownlist shows all characters included in this categories. Everytime i choose a file to be opened, i have the possibility to get latest version from Alienbrain or checkout the file, everything with just a few clicks without surfing between folders nor leaving 3D Studio Max. 

Flash UI

Flash UI for 3d Studio Max. Maxscript and Actionscript are connected through FSCommand event argument value. UI includes scene object's selector, pose library, and mirror tool for limbs and whole body.

Model from http://www.creativecrash.com/ by Javier Solsona. Initially the model was created for Maya. I did my own setup for 3D Studio Max, including facial rigging.

FFD Deformations

FFD deformers + skin = easy cartoon rigging. Instead of the character's mesh, skin modifier is applied to the ffd deformer to achieve different control zones and soft deformations.

Procedural animation test

This is an old test with procedural animation. The whole movement is generated by float_expression, using (sin(F*speed)*amplitude)

It is possible to modify the speed and amplitude for the wings, and the amplitude of movement of the character, as well as switch between different predefined paths