Bob Piscopo

Responsible for All Elements. Thesis based on Inattentional Blindness and Change Blindness, and how the two visual perception phenomena can be used in storytelling. A series of animated file textures were used to create footprints in the sand. The procedural sand shader was created in the hypershade. Animation was rendered out in passes and composited in Nuke.

Software: Maya, UV Layout, Mental Ray, Photoshop, Nuke

Character rig features animatable irises created by instancing one piece of the iris geometry. The deformation on the character’s springs was setup using a wire deformer. Character also features an FK/IK blend for his arm controls, an advanced foot rig, and gears with expression driven rotation. The deformation on the character’s ribbed sections was set up with a series of influence joints.

Animated short about an elderly lady and her pet guinea pig. Responsibilities included character modeling, rigging, and keyframe animation. 20 week group project with four other members. Animated key poses and cleaned animation as needed. Assisted with compositing.

Software: Maya, UV Layout, Photoshop, Nuke

Quadruped rig features standard FK and IK based controls. A stretchy spine was created using an IK spline. This allowed for more exaggerated poses. Rig also included blendshape based deformations for some effects shots. Facial rig combined blendshapes and a joint-based tweak rig. The animatable GUI allowed for easy access by animators. Muscle systems were explored in early development with Maya Muscle, but were ultimately cut from the final production.

Two week project during Fall 2012. Goal was to gain more experience with Massive. Responsible for all aspects. All scene elements created in Maya and rendered with Mental Ray. Volume rays created in Nuke from basic geometry in Maya. Agents use sound-based avoidance to prevent collisions. Agents look toward each other when within proximity. Some movements are driven by flow fields. Others adjust movement based on a painted terrain map. Fuzzy logic brain determines when, and for how long, agents will move based on an “energy” variable. More movement uses more energy, which requires agents to rest. Energy is recovered while agents rest.

Software: Maya, Massive, UV Layout, Mental Ray, Photoshop, Nuke

In order to create more variation within the agents, sets of mirrored animations were required. Rather than animating both cycles, a MEL script was created to mirror animation cycles. The script cut animation time in half and allowed for the easy creation of a larger library of animation to pull from. Once animation cycles are baked out to the skeleton, the script steps through each frame; groups the joints into left side, right side, and center; switches the sides and reverses the y-axis of center group; keys all joints; and steps to the next frame. Script takes frame range as input and may be expanded to work with other skeletons in the future.