450 progress: rigs and walk cycles

A short clip of a tango walk cycle with one of the potential rigs to use for my project

Art 450: Tango walk in progress

I'm experimenting with various rigs to find the right set of controls to get the feel of a tango walk cycle for my characters.  Here's one of them

Here's an image of the rock star rig I'm currently working with

3D Animation: Lt. Dan walk cycle

Here's my first walk cycle with Lt. Dan

Art 450 week 3 progress

I renamed the project TangoMania

So I worked on some rough models in Mudbox, but don't currently have any images rendered to post here.

I also explored some reference material online, as well as consideration of kinesthetics of the basic tango walk movement during my tango classes these past couple of weeks.  The tango classes that I am co-teaching will be considered part of my reference material.


I have realized that it may be beyond the scope of my abilities to create an adequate working rig for this process, so I might use a borrowed rig for my animation.  There are dozens of free rigs available online, I got some from Creative Crash web site, and am experimenting with the movement of which ones might be best suited for dance movement.  The M2 Miranda rig demo dancing here...this one might work.



Here's a nice video of one of the tango festivals that I went to in Portland a few months ago.  I'll use videos as such to reference to try and get a better understanding of how to create realistic movements of my character for the dance.

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And here's something to inspire...and something to aspire for....

Art 450 Project Proposal

Tango(logy)Aesthesia

Tango(logy)Aesthesia is a 3D visual exploration and study of the kinesthetic dynamics of Tango.

Tango becomes obsession, and obsession can lead one to become consumed by an incessantly thorough study of the subject matter.  This project will reflect such an obsession with Tango.  Definition: "kinaethesia"= (noun) awareness of the position and movement of the parts of the body by means of sensory organs (proprioceptors) in the muscles and joints.  For a definition of tango go here: http://tangobsession.com/history/.   And so, this project will be a 3 dimensional visual study of the kinaethetics of the tango through the animation of characters using the computer aid of Autodesk Mudbox and Maya.  Initial characters will be sculpted in Mudbox, then exported into Maya where they will be fitted with rigging, skinned, and animated for pseudo-realistic representation of tango kinaesthetics.  Above is a rough visualization put together last term in 3D modeling.