03:20 MAGAZIN FÜR DIGITALE MEDIENPRODUKTION MAI
20203ISSN 1433-2620 24. Jahrgang weizPubliziert von Pixeltown GmbHMAGAZIN FÜR DIGITALE MEDIENPRODUKTION AusbildungWas macht einegute VFX-Uni aus?TestsEizo, Philips, Soundweaver,Woosh und Akeytsu 17,90 19,–sfr 23,–MAI JUNI 03:2020ProjekteMulm, The Witcher, MarvelHeros, Walking Dead: Mayaund vieles mehrFlame, Blender, InstaLOD,Nuke 12.1, Topaz und mehr
Simulating The Incredible Hulk with Ziva & GoldtoothWhen Marvel Entertainment neededcharacters created for their new RPGsmartphone app “Marvel: Realm ofChampions”, they turned to Vancouver VFX studio Goldtooth. In thisarticle, we’ll explore how the Goldtooth-team managed to bring one ofMarvel’s most treasured CG characters, the Incredible Hulk, to life in justby Irene Pu, Lead Riggerthree days. To kick off 2020, Marvel is expandingtheir footprint into the world of roleplaying games in the form of a smartphone app. “Marvel: Realm of Champions”is a mobile RPG that reimagines the Marveluniverse and 11 of its popular superheroes in40a universe-wide battle themed around theSecret Wars from 1984. Recently, we weretasked with creating an engaging game trailer to help hype the release.Even with Marvel’s sky-high quality barand the inherent pressure of showcasing 11well-known CG stars, we were given onlytwo months to bring the entire production tolife. It is not uncommon for studios to workunder such high-pressure conditions. Withaudiences constantly craving better lookingcharacters and more of them, productioncompanies frequently demand eye-catchingresults with extremely tight turnarounds.After the first mocap shoot and board editapproval for “Marvel: Realm of Champions,”we were left with only 1 ½ months to makeit all happen. Keep in mind, the IncredibleHulk has been played by 18 different actorsand starred in two films, five TV series and11 games. So we had some massive greenshoes to fill!That said, we understood that our previous nCloth and PSD-based approach to character rigging just wasn’t going to make thecut for this high-stakes production. We werealready encountering major tech difficultieson smaller productions, so we were forcedto turn elsewhere. Not long after winningthe project bid, we discovered Ziva Dynamics, a fellow Vancouver-based company thatspecializes in character simulation software.Their main product offering, Ziva VFX, is aMaya plug-in that allows creators to turn any3D object into a soft tissue, such as muscle,fat or skin. The software’s advanced physics
WORKSHOP ZIVAsolver rapidly simulates the natural jiggle,stretch and excitation of these materials, soartists can build lifelike creatures that arehighly dynamic and scalable. We hadheard many positive reviews fromclose friends in the industry, so wemade a point to get in touch withthe team and learn more.Getting StartedWe kicked off our Hulk rigging process by acquiringone of Ziva’s pre-made assets,named Mr. Ink. The Mr. Ink asset isa simulation-ready biped that comescomplete with high-fidelity bones, muscles and fat/skin passes. This free anatomy41
jects. The Incredible Hulk’s bone warp wentas follows:1. Open a single scene with the SourceMesh and bone layer (Mr. Ink) alongsidethe new Target Mesh (Hulk).2. Select Mr. Ink’s mesh.3. Shift Select the Hulk’s mesh.4. Marquee select all of Mr. Ink’s bonegeometry.5. Then, click the Bone Warp button foundin the Ziva menu.was the perfect starting point for our Hulk, asit could be paired with Ziva’s Anatomy Transfer (ZAT) tools to quickly generate a lifelikerig. With Anatomy Transfer, artists can takethe full internal anatomy of one character(i.e. bones, muscles and the fat / skin layer)and automatically fit it to the external meshof another, removing the need to start fromscratch or spend time manually reworkingpoor geometry. Although it was a risk toadopt new software and techniques withsuch a quickly-approaching deadline, we hadseen many Ziva success stories coming outof VFX houses like Scanline VFX and SonyPictures Imageworks, so we decided to takethe leap.Setting Up an Incredible MeshIn preparation for the Ziva Anatomy Transfer,we needed to ensure that the Hulk mesh metthe minimum requirements of the transferprocess – both it and the source mesh (Mr.Ink) needed to have the same number ofvertices so that an accurate transfer mapcould be synthesized. For this reason, I decided against altering the existing Hulk meshand opted to use Mr. Ink as the basis of mycreation instead.42I started by importing the Hulk mesh and acopy of Mr. Ink’s mesh into a single scene inWrap 3, a powerful mesh retopologizing toolcreated by the R3DS team. It offers a host ofmesh-altering functions, including decimationtools, filtering tools, texture projection toolsand more. I used Wrap 3’s landmark-basedwarping tools to simply alter the shapeof the Mr. Ink mesh so that it mirrored theHulk perfectly, thereby maintaining all of thecritical inputs, such as vertice count and resolution, while adopting the perfect silhouette. At this point, the original Hulk modelmesh is no longer required in any of the simulation steps. Moving forward, only the newHulk mesh (derived from Mr. Ink) will be used– it is the Target Mesh and the original (notaltered) Mr. Ink mesh is the Source Mesh.Warping the BonesWith the newly created Hulk mesh readyand waiting, it was time to make use of theoriginal Mr. Ink asset to get started on theHulk’s bones and skeleton. To do so, I usedZiva’s Bone Warper. As the name suggests,the Bone Warper is a specialized tool forwarping Maya meshes that represent bonesin a simulation, a.k.a. non-deformable ob-Within seconds, the entire bone geometryof Mr. Ink is transferred over to the Hulkmesh and is warped to fit within the confinesof its new mesh environment. Any ill-fittingsections are then smoothed down by interactively painting additional landmarks on thenewly transferred bones. Landmarks, muchlike in Wrap 3, are key points on the surface of the mesh that are forced to preservetheir relative positions during the warpingprocess.This process was immensely quicker andeasier than what we were used to. In thepast, we typically relied on Maya’s Wrap Deformer to try to warp the bones and muscle anatomy to new asset proportions, butthe results always introduced a number ofproblems – lots of mesh shearing, self collisions and tons of clean-up. The meshes thatwould come out of Maya’s Wrap Deformerwere also very wobbly and required a fairbit of additional sculpting to smooth out thegeometry and fix head insertions. After allthat painstaking work, it would often feellike an entire redo.Ziva’s Bone Warp solved all these problems, and I love how effective the landmarkpositioning is. It conserves the bone’s overall thickness and keeps the bones straight,which is unique to Ziva. Best of all, the BoneWarp gives the user parameters so that theycan edit how detailed they would like thetransfer to be. Once the bones and muscleswere warped with Ziva, the clean-up wasminimal. Ziva took the heavy lifting out oftransferring setups, so I got to focus on thefun stuff sooner.MoCap RetargetingIt is important to remember that there arenumerous moving parts in the creaturepipeline, many of which can actually takeplace concurrently to avoid undue waitingor bottlenecks. Animation and rigging aretwo steps that can often benefit from somestrategic planning and collaboration.In the case of “Marvel: Realm of Champions”, our team had scheduled their live motion capture shoot about a week before anyactual rigging took place. So, the animation
The ColliderGeometryteam did not have the opportunity to use Mr.Ink’s skeleton as reference for their mocap.Instead, we provided the capture studio witha standard skeleton. It had points that werecarefully placed in the center of the meshbody and limbs.When we realized we wanted to sim theHulk using muscle simulation, I had to rerig the Hulk with an anatomically correctskeleton. This also meant that we’d need toretarget the animation data from the genericskeleton to the anatomically correct skeleton. Standard target skeletons used in thesesessions do not traditionally account for anatomical structures, because anatomy-basedrigging is still a fairly new concept. So riggingworked together with animation to makesure that the animation of the Hulk still fitthe comic-like action animation, with someposes exaggerated, and that the animationwas also not cheated to camera.To make sure that the Hulk was goingto move in a realistic way, the animatorswere given the ability to cross-check theiranimation with the anatomical bone setup.Thus, they were able to make sure that thedistances between bone segments weretrue-to-life and anatomically sound. Therelationship between the clavicle bone andthe ribcage, for example, is very important –if the clavicle were raised inaccurately high,it would cause a tissue tear. The animatorsalso paid close attention to wrist rotationby looking at the twisting of the radius andulna.Although it took our animation team abit of extra time to rework the animationrig, the end results were definitely worth it.If we could go back in time, we would havescheduled the shoot after having settled onour rigging approach so that no alterationsto the capture skeleton would need to becompleted retroactively.WORKSHOP ZIVAHere is a handcollision!Warping Everything ElseNow back to the workflow. With the bonewarp complete, it was time for Mr. Ink’smuscles and skin to be transferred over using Ziva’s Harmonic Warper. The Harmonic Warper is the general-purpose tool towarp the deformable geometry (all of Mr.Ink’s anatomy and setup) from the SourceMesh onto the Target Mesh. This tool workson polygonal meshes, NURBS surfaces andcurves, joints and locators. Seeing as bothmeshes naturally contain the same numberof vertices (because they are essentially justdifferent silhouettes created by the samemesh), I simply had to select the right objects and run the warp. This tool works bymapping the corresponding vertices and creating a deformation field inside the volumeenclosed by the Source Mesh. It then trans-And here the hand collision withoutthe hand – do you see thereaction of themuscles onhis chest?43
fers the corresponding tissues and setup totheir relative positions.Hulk’s wide and stocky structure requiredthat the team increase the input value ofthe zHarmonicWarp.surfacePenalty parameter to increase the constraints of transfer,therefore forcing the Mr. Ink Source Meshto better fit the target. Although increasingthis parameter can result in greater instability, we fortunately did not experience anychallenges.The entire transfer process, includingboth the bones and the collection of muscleand fat / skin passes, each took about half awork day to complete. So, our team – whohad never before used Ziva VFX – now hadan entire simulation-ready Hulk body withineight hours! This was an incredible feat andreally proved the value of Ziva to our team.Adding AppendagesAs you may have noticed from the earliershots of Mr. Ink, he is missing his hands andfeet. For me, this was not surprising. Having worked with assets for over 4 years, Iunderstood that studios often have uniquerequirements for such appendages, andwithout one clear objective, it stands thereason that including these extra bits mayactually complicate or obstruct the warping processes. That said, I knew the Hulk’shands and feet still needed to be part of thesimulations. I had already begun to receiveanimation sequences from my team, and it44was clear that we’d need a collision to occurbetween his hands and body.Given Hulk’s limited motion, however, hedid not require highly performant hands orfeet in any of the shots. So, I baked thehand elements as an alembic cache in theanimation file. Then, I made that alembicinto a zBone object in both the muscle passand fat / skin pass. Changing an object into abone is extremely easy with Ziva:1. Select the object you wish to convert(Shift select for multiple objects).2. Go to the Ziva Menu.3. Go to Add Simulation Component andselect Bone.This approach enabled our team to achieveintense collisions during key moments of thetrailer, like when Hulk first explodes onto thescene and smashes his fists against his chestlike a mighty gorilla.Adjusting the SimsSpeaking of the gorilla sequence, this wasone of my favourite shots to work on. It is acrucial moment in Hulk’s scene and a primeexample of the artistic control I had.For this shot, our team wanted to expressthe strength of Hulk’s punch by creating arippling effect on his body. Simulating theseintense dynamics on such thick, dense muscle would have been a challenging creativetask in the past, likely requiring extensiveshot sculpting or corrective shapes. But thistime it was surprisingly easy. When unsureof how to achieve the results, I turned to Ziva’s online tutorials. There, I quickly learnedabout Ziva’s material variation capabilitiesand the effects of the many unique parameter settings within Ziva’s zMaterial Node.After that, adjusting the soft tissue was easy.I had free reign over the look and feel of thedynamics, and knew exactly how to achievethe dynamics I had been imagining.Ziva’s volume preservation propertieslet users achieve precise and defined dynamics, even under extremely high forceand compression. Whether or not I choseto abide by the natural laws of physics wascompletely up to my own discretion. Toadjust the properties of the pec, I simplyadded a Material Layer atop the pectoraltissue object. The material layers work bysolving the physical properties of the topmaterial layer, covering any underlying materials with complete opacity. The workflowis simple and offers infinite opportunities formaterial variations:1. Select the tissue you want to adjust(in this case, Hulk’s pectoral muscle).2. Go to the Ziva Menu Add TissueProperty Add Material Layer.3. Adjust the material’s properties bynavigating to the Material Node, locatedabove the Channel Box on the righthand side. The new material is locatedabove the pre-existing base material.
Making Metal MaterialsWith the entire Hulk body complete, it wastime to add the cherry on top – his bulkymetal belt. Although armour is not considered a soft tissue (because it does not returnto its natural shape after being subjected toadequate pressure but will instead becomebent or dented), Ziva can still be used tosimulate its relationship with soft objectsduring collisions – which is exactly what weneeded. To incorporate a hard object intoa simulation pass, you can either solve thehard object by increasing the object’s density(essentially making it a very hard deformableobject) or turn it into one big non-deformable bone. Depending on the external object of your making, either approach maybe more or less suitable. I decided to usea combination of the two to simulate theHulk’s armour.I started by importing a cached proxy ofthe belt, then turned it into a single boneobject, just as I had done with the hands.Although this would often be enough, after looking at Hulk’s muscle simulation, Irealized that the belly muscles bulged outquite a bit when he was crouching down. Ifelt that some of that awesome belly bulgewould affect his chain belt, and the rigidityof the chain belt would also affect how thebelly muscles would mush against it. It wasthe perfect opportunity to test out how Zivawould react when simulating a soft tissueagainst a really rigid tissue object. So, I decided to add a hard tissue layer on top ofthe belt.Then, I simply searched for theYoung’s Modulus value of steel in the ZivaDocumentation and entered my findings into the material settings. Since Ziva VFX isbased on measurements and units found incontemporary engineering and science, it’seasy for users to search for the values they46need in order to replicate the properties ofany real-world material, from sponge towood to titanium and beyond. This cachewas simulated within both Hulk’s muscle andfat / skin passes so that the weight of the armour would affect the natural jiggle aroundHulk’s belly.No More Waiting for BakesLast but not least, to bake all of the simulation work we used Ziva’s Batch licenses,which are non-interactive versions of ZivaVFX that can render work without interrupting valuable license seats. With this, wecould focus on the fat / skin pass as the muscles were baking. With animation, musclesimulation and the fat / skin setup all happening concurrently, we were able to savetime on all fronts.Additionally, we also used overnightbakes to see the fruits of our labour rightaway when we arrived the next morning.This was a highlight of using Ziva, as addingnew animation didn’t feel scary or risky. Wedidn’t worry about crashing software, failedbakes or exploding anatomy.Copy, Paste & ReplicateWithin three days, our entire Hulk rig wascomplete. The mocap animation enabledlifelike movement, while the physicallyembedded simulation enabled highly performant secondary dynamics across everyshot. Now that we had learned to use ZivaAnatomy Transfer tools, we knew we couldscale our creature process and make impressive heroes in a matter of days.Armed with this knowledge, we went towork on our next project. This just so happened to be Marvel’s fifth anniversary video, which incorporated many of the existingcharacters from the game trailer but alsostarred the Watcher, a humanoid characterwith a comically large head. Since it wasso easy to make additional characters withZiva, we decided to take it for another spinand try to sim the Watcher using the Hulk’snew anatomy. We literally just repeated theabove workflow using the Hulk as the SourceMesh and the Watcher as the Target Mesh. Iwas sceptical if this would work, given howdifferent these two assets appear. They areboth bipedal, but the overall scales and bodycompositions are so entirely different. In theend, Ziva’s warping tools made the transferflawlessly. I was even able to improve andadd unique details on the Watcher while stillleveraging all of the quality work we completed on the Hulk.For the Watcher, there is a critical scenewhere his calf muscles needed to excite inways that Hulk’s did not. However, the simple anatomy of Hulk didn’t include some ofthe minor muscle groups we needed. So, Iquickly modelled the new muscle segments,attached them to the calf and used Ziva’sCut, Copy, Paste tool to carry over all theexisting muscle attributes onto the newtissues:1. Select the existing tissue with the setupyou want to copy.2. Click the Ziva Transfer Menu Cut.3. Unselect the old tissue.4. Select the new mesh object on whichyou want the attributes to be inherited.5. Click the Ziva Transfer Menu Paste.Within seconds, the new mesh was turnedinto a tissue and all of the elements were interpolated smoothly. Even the Line of Actionmuscle excitation setup was carried over, sothe muscles would naturally fire during appropriate times when the rig was animated.Being able to just warp anatomy and copyand-paste entire setups is fantastic becauseit opens the doors for different layers ofdetail. You don’t have to worry about yournext project being incompatibly complex,because you can just add to what you have,› eiany time you want. When Irene Pu saw Weta‘s Digital TissueSystem VFX breakdown in 2012, she sawthe possibility of pursuing a career making awesome creatures. When she was14, she started playing around with Maya.Four years later, she graduated from theCG Masters School of 3D Animation &VFX and started her career animating forgame cinematics at Goldtooth. She is currently Rigging/CFX Lead, and is responsible for many of the realistic creaturesfor Goldtooth‘s game cinematic trailers.In her free time, she likes playing withher two hamsters, making Commanderdecks, painting miniatures and makingaction figures.
o kick off 2020, Marvel is expanding their footprint into the world of role playing games in the form of a smart - phone app. “Marvel: Realm of Champions” is a mobile RPG that reimagines the Marvel universe and 11 of its popular superheroes in a universe-wide battle t
FS MAGAZIN Österreich: 6,50 Schweiz: 9,90 SFr Dezember 2018 – November 2019 Deutschland: 6,50 14. Jahrgang VST - Verlag für Simulation und Training GmbH www.fsmagazin.de Jahresinhaltsverzeichnis 14. Jahrgang 2019 2019
6 Magazin 24 María del Carmen Alonso Ímaz: Cuentos de Grimm y cuentos tradicionales españoles. Magazin 24, I.S.S.N. 1136-677X, Invierno 2016 pp 6-12. n este trabajo hemos analizado la relación existente entre algunos cuentos de origen popular recogidos en su día por los hermanos Grimm y otros arraigados
Zwischen Stillstand, Hamsterrad und Institutionalisierung: Wo steht der TOA heute? TOA-MAGAZIN Fachzeitschrift zum Täter-Opfer-Ausgleich Mit Beiträgen von u.a.
„Harry Potter und die Kammer des Schreckens“ kommt in den Kulturpalast. Mit Filmvorführung. dresdnerphilharmonie.de 16. BIS 23. MAI Groß hätten die Feierlichkeiten anlässlich 50 Jahre Dixieland Festival Dresden 2020 werden sollen. Nun wird dieses Jahr gefeiert. dixielandfestival-dresden.com 6. JUNI Tanz in Vollendung: Der dreiteilige .
Gore, Al (Autor): Eine unbequeme Wahrheit: Klimawandel geht uns alle an, cbj, München 2009 fl uter – Magazin der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Hrsg.), Heft 35 (Thema CO 2), Bonn 2010 Vollborn, Marita (Hrsg.): Prima Klima. Wie sich das Leben in Deutschland verändert, Bastei Lübbe, Köln 2008 Internet:
und die Patientenkartei geöffnet. Der Kalender zeigte eine in zehn Minuten beginnende Sitzung, die Kartei eine leere Karte. Es war die erste Sitzung mit seinem neuen Patienten und Dr. Martin fühlte sich seltsam unwohl. Dr. Martin war Psychiater, mit dem Spezialgebiet der neufreudschen Psychoanalyse. Sein neuer Patient wurde ihm als .
F2,8 EX DC OS HSM FOTOHITS-CD 7-8/2012 Um das CD-Menü zu starten, öffnen Sie bitte die Datei START.HTML DxO FilmPack 2 für Mac & Windows kostenlose Vollversion ohne Einschränkungen (Registrierbar bis zum 5.09.2012) Vollversion ASHAMPOO Photo Commander 9 Vollversion InPaint 3 Personal E-BOOK Das optimale Heim-Fotostudio GIMP 2.8 für Mac .
Immobilien. Das Amt für Bodenmanagement hat im Main-Kinzig-Kreis von 2017 auf 2018 eine Preissteigerung von 16 Prozent bei Eigentumswohnungen und von 11 Prozent bei Ein- und Zweifamilienhäusern errechnet. Tendenz weiterhin steigend. Diese starke Dynamik hat unser Immobilien- geschäft sehr erfolgreich gemacht. Nun wollen wir, als fest
