The Plan

Before I start up the first series of posts I wanted to talk a little bit about what this blog is all about.  The main focus will be on how art and technical art come together, though I'm sure I'll also get into some more of the gritty details of the tech.  I want to touch on a lot techniques and approaches to technical art that I've come across, as well as some of the short comings of the programs we use, some big problems to watch out for that aren't immediately obvious, and how to get the most out of the often limited resources we have available.

I'll be starting this out with a series of posts focused on bone based character deformation and how to get the most out of deforming models.  I want to start here because I feel this is an area of game pipelines that often suffers from a rush to get it done without taking the time deliver the highest quality.  It's also an area that is highly reliant on the production areas around it, which can make it tricky when the initial model and rig you're working with have a huge impact on the quality of the weighting.  You have to corral the model, rig, and animation and make adjustments to each area along the way to get the best deformation, and there are plenty of tricks that will let you make changes without loosing work.  Like everything in CG, if you slack in one area it will negatively impact every aspect of that character.  Bad deformation can even make models and animation look sloppy when the model and animation are excellent.

After this first series I've got a few more planned to go over rig and character pipelines, but I'll more on that as this first series winds down.

Also, along with each series I'll be intermittently touching on the short comings of software we use and other technical problems I've run into.  If you've ever worked on a production using software like Maya I'm sure you've hit your fare share of technical problems, they always come up and despite having been searching them out for years new ones are always right around the corner.  So, in these intermittent posts I'll talk about the issues that I've hit and not only how to fix them, but how I went about digging out the root cause to really understand what the problem was.  This is probably one of the hardest things I've found to make the time for in a production environment, but it's essential to understand the problem.  It can be easier to find a solution and move on than dig deep into the problem to fully understand what's going on, and as well as a quick fix can work it's usually more of patch work than a solid solution, and too much patch work will wind up biting you in the end.

So, hopefully anyone reading this will enjoy learning from my experience, and maybe I'll even save someone out there some time!