3D Animation

For those of you that have read my posts before, you know that I've had many struggles in my Digital Art major, especially in the CGI aspect. CGI stands for Computer Generated Imagery, which is the kind of animation you see in Pixar films as opposed to traditional Disney movies.

Something really cool for us in Digital Arts, is that we have a new professor! Leigh Rens, who has worked on Pirates of the Caribbean among other films, is now teaching Intermediate Character Animation. He set us up with an absolutely amazing character rig. A rig is a 3D model that has been made to move with joints and controls.

Creating a rig is super hard for me because I'm more artistic than technical. Professor Rens gave us a character rig that is entirely customizable - you can change EVERYTHING about this person, whether it be height, weight, skin tone, hair, or even male or female. You can also pull and control it into any direction. It is called the Morpheous Rig, and it is an Autodesk Maya character.

This rig is super useful for anyone interested in CGI because it can become a huge variety of characters.

In the picture are some examples for the possibilities this one character can become!

- Holly