Rigging | andy moorer

Misc Shots

3D Graphics, Creative Work, Examples, Film, VFX / By andy

I haven’t edited an “official” demo reel in a very long time. People know who I am, and hire me for projects based on peer testimonial and having seen past work directly. A reel just hasn’t been needed, since I’m fortunate enough to be a freelancer who gets approached regularly. So when I started teaching students who knew nothing about me I had the challenge of presenting myself to an entirely new audience who were eager to see some work I’ve done in films. I really haven’t had time to edit much, so instead I spent an evening grabbing various shots from films and the like. Stuff I’ve either worked on directly, supervised, or had some hand in.

I have only grabbed a portion of the films I’ve worked on, plus some TV and game stuff, pretty much in the order they were stacked on my desk. The choices are fairly miscellaneous – at the moment I just don’t have time to go through film after film and say “oh yeah, I did that,” then tighten it all down into an edit with music and polish. I know, this breaks all the rules where I’m supposed to present only the very very best, nothing less. But the policy that seems to work best for me is to just be open, good or bad just get it out there and get back to making the next thing. I will never be a charismatic showman or clever self-promoter. I’m a creative geek and frankly I like showing failures, too. It’s part of the process, and that’s what really motivates me.

So all of that said, here’s about 6 minutes of footage and, well, stuff. I basically play it in the background when I introduce myself to students, so it is what it is. Enjoy!

GEAR – Use softimage? Get it.

3D Graphics / By andy

Jeremie Passerin is a TD and Rigger who has put a huge amount of time, thought and effort into an open source rigging toolset for Softimage, which he calls GEAR.

Very cool. But, you say, it’s for softimage and my stinking studio makes me use Maya. Well, Maya users, have hope. Jeremie has also been beta testing a Maya version, called MGEAR.

Let’s face it, there are more animators needing high quality rigs than there are high quality riggers. And rigging takes a lot of time. That’s why autoriggers came into being. If you are laboriously assembling all your rigs by hand and you just want to get to animating, you really, really need to be using a solution like Gear.

GEAR has the openness and enough well -thought tools to appeal to a dedicated rigging TD while also providing a fast and reliable way for animators to generate sophisticated rigs with a minimal learning curve. It’s modular in design, meaning it isn’t restricted to rigging only humanoids or quadrupeds, and it’s extensible, so riggers can use GEAR as a framework upon which they build in their own particular style.

It’s a very well thought out system and highly recommended for small studios and individual animators who need good rigs fast, as well as riggers interested in having the capabilities of an autorigging framework without the desire (or time) to make their own.