The digital reproduction - The Living Puppet

The Children's Museum charged us to create accurate reproductions of the puppets, including not only their personality, but also all of their signs of aging and wear.

In many ways Puppets are just like you They have homes and families They have to go to school And they enjoy spending time with their friends

Puppeteering is a performence, an action which contains not only the puppet itself, but also the movement it makes and its environment. Action refers to the movement of the puppet. Shape is the model, or form, of the puppet. Place is the world in which the puppet gives its performance.

 

Modeling- SHAPE

Modeling pipeline

Model puppets in Maya(3dsMax) - Deep paint -Set up bones in Maya(3dsMax) - Lithtech

3D scanner

The puppet is placed inside a device that creates a 3D digital represenation. However, our last scan lasted four hours. Additionally, many of our puppets are too large for the scanner.

ddqf

Action - Character set up

Movement-Many of Maya's animation tools cannot be used here, since the animation for Virpets is done in real time by the user.

Constraint Virpet FK

Stage-The performance space

Challenge: Multiple puppets in one stage

 

Moving Forward

The pipeline from modeling software to graphic engine is in place and has been used for three puppets.

We received more puppets from the Museum Warehouse

More Focus on the character set up , environment design- since animation is done by the user, this places a greater importance on the setup of joints and input controls.