lots of dust around here, but a brief answer to a F.A.Q.

It's been a while, but I was recently contacted by a friendly teacher who wanted to know: (paraphrasing here) 'How do I attach the clothes to Morphy?'

 The ECMWP ran aground after the end of that one semester and I was never able to revisit it. ( it's still my mad, fever-dream to revisit the project. ) Unfortunately as fall 2010 ( Morphy's birthday ) moves further in the past, the tools with Morpheus are more and more unusable. For example, Morphy's tongue skinning seems to fall apart in maya 2016.

There is a complicated workaround to getting the 'copy skin weight' tool to work. Funny enough, the map clothing button never actually worked for me. ( probably my fault. )

 Using a wrap deformer is a simpler solution.

There are a couple of tutorials in this thread here:
http://teatimeanimation.com/threads/how-do-i-add-clothes-to-morpheus.122/

 The last one is a bit long, but a bit more comprehensive.
https://vimeo.com/90906514

Wrap deformers are slow and can be a bit heavy, so I animate on a 'naked' morphy and just swap the reference when it's time to playblast. If you're looking at using the copy weight tool (called skin in a new body mesh) the workflow is as follows.

1. Customize morphy to whatever character morph you want.
2. Modify the clothing model to match (requires some modeling skills) Lattice deform tools for modeling help, or just old-fashioned pulling verts.
3. Use the 'skin in a new body mesh tool' that comes with the morphy shelf and tools from Josh  
4. Profit!

 hope this helps. Dave

Morpheus 2.0!

Hoping to coordinate rolling out the existing costume assets with the release of Morphy 2.0. 
(Click HERE to download the costumes from mediafire)

Check out the Kickstarter page HERE

Spread the word and support this great project.

Trouble with the first link? I've added a Dropbox mirror download HERE
There is also a Google drive link HERE that will allow you to browse and download individual items

Coming Soon - v0.5 of the ECMWP assets.

Ok: so it's only taken 8 months to get this all together. "Why?" you may rightly ask. Well; I left Ex'pression College at the end of the project to start a full time job at Academy Art University. This left me no time to carry on with the wardrobe.

At long last, I've had the opportunity to follow up and get the assets out together. Watch here for word the moment they go live on the Ex'pression College website. Until then, you can download a .rar archive of the entire library HERE.

Now - a quick preview of the goodies to come. Enjoy!




Animation by Logan and Josue, costumes by the rest of the team. Morphy rig by Josh Burton.

Congrats to the E.C.M.W.P. Grads

Today marked the last day of class for my group project gang - congratulations all!

Now that you may have a bit of time available - it's never too late to finish those ECMWP costumes that are still incomplete. Ryan is counting on you!

The Project Continues

Things continue on with ECMWP. Matt Mann at the college had been setting up a website for distribution of the assets. All he needs is for us to finish any last minute fixes. We're getting the clothing bundled up and ready for distribution.

I've learned that some of the issues getting the clothes to map to Morpheus has to do with changes to skinning between 2010 and 2011. So for those of you having the "exploding leg" issue or the "un-openable scene" give Morphy a try in 2010 and you'll likely have better luck.

My students from the project are currently finishing up any tasks that have been left unfinished in exchange for awesome project t-shirts. Thanks to Natalia and Catie for already earning theirs. The rest of the gang...(cue expectant look)

Les Roy - Final Summary

Over the course of the term, I was given the following tasks:

- Distinguish what was what on the stock UV layout for the body mesh
- Texture the Speed Suit
- Texture the Cowboy
- Texture the all 3 Khaki iterations

I UV'ed/RE-UV'ed (and packed) the following assets:

- Speed Suit
- All assets in Khaki (3) costumes
- All assets in Cowboy costume

Everything I've done over the term is in the album (i.e. UVs/Textures):

http://s1180.photobucket.com/albums/x408/enjoiles/ECMWP/

** Sorry I wasn't able to put up the pictures through Blogger, I was running into a couple problems with the uploader.

Also, the UV pack for the Khaki costumes is NOT the actual pack, it's just for display purposes.

Some People to Thank and a Hint of What's Next.

What an incredible five weeks it’s been. We started ECMWP as a group project in February, and April 1st marked the last day of class. This group project was an incredible success, owed entirely to the hard work and dedication of the talented students involved:

Ruby Bhattacharya, Natalia Falciglia, Josue Mora, Joe Oliveira, Les Roy, Logan Penciu, Tony Sumimoto-Ercanbrack, Jacob Van Leeuwn, Catie Vercammen-Grandjean

Thank you all so much. I am thrilled and fortunate that I had such a great group with the perfect diversity of skills. Cookie points for you all.

Special thanks to Andrew Schlussel, Rodney Brett, Miwa Kozuki, Matt Mann, Marcus Day, Corey Jones, and Davy Weinman

Finally, a huge heartfelt thank you to Josh Burton for making the Morpheus rig in the first place. It was Josh’s generous spirit, giving “Morphy” away for free, that inspired me to start this project.

As you can see by the blog postings, the students covered a lot of ground: They established the artistic style of the project. They set the standards of quality for any work to be included in the archive. The students determined best working practices and technical parameters. They built our first set of assets to completion. The students were able to generate all of our initial animation and marketing material. On top of all that, they made a really cool t-shirt to commemorate the entire project. If you check out the “Project Guide” tab you’ll see a summary of everything we accomplished together.

So what is next? ECMWP is moving into a slower, volunteer phase. While I’d love to run it as a group project again, it’s hard to know when the stars will align again. Until then, my plan is to continue recruiting students to expand the wardrobe in their free time. I’m pleased that a few of my group project gang have already expressed an interest in doing so. Have I mentioned how much they rock?

I’ll have to volunteer in my free time to organize the assets and get them ready for distribution. Matt Mann is setting up the website side of the project. Official release date is planned for the San Diego Comic-Con in July 21. I hope to send finished assets out on a “use at own risk” basis to get some beta testing. I’m thinking, I’ll post the finished asset list soon and have folks request them on the blog. Watch here for the beta pre-release.

Keep following the blog and tell your friends in the animation community to do the same.

- Dave Latour