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Cookin' With Chief!
Posted By: IbeechuDate: 10/24/12 11:59 p.m.


or: The Best Chili You Will Ever Have in Your Freaking Life

Woo boy, I finally get to post this. Check out this thing I made :D

Backstory:
Last year I was trying to find a Master Chief rig that I could play around with and maybe produce a little character animation test to show off here. As hard as I looked, the only one I could find was for the CE Mark V, and it was very rudimentary. The closest I could get was a Halo 3 Beta model pack which had the Spartan model, but it wasn't rigged. So, having minimal rigging experience, I grabbed some alcohol and decided to rig that bitch. It turned out awful and I more or less gave up until months later, when I gave it another shot. That time, it came out pretty decent. Decent enough, anyway, for a simple character animation test.

Next I needed audio. I thought it'd be funny to find a clip of Steve Downes saying something un-Chief like, and then have the Chief act it out. I remembered this video and, boom, Master Chief is making some chili.

I came up with the general layout of the shot and then built the set myself, aside from a few of the dishes. Of course the Chief's house looks like it belongs to an old woman who bought it in the 50s and hasn't changed it since. Why wouldn't it? Then I textured it all, set up the lighting, tweaked the Chief's textures to react nicely to the lighting, and BAM, set's done.

Finally came the animation. I listened to the track over and over and over, picking out the beats, filmed myself performing reference a few dozen times and figuring out all the business, and got to work. After nearly 3 months on-and-off during free time between freelancing, 780 frames, and exactly 117 iterations of the scene file (srs, almost unplanned), I had something that I was ready to release. I could have spent another several weeks polishing it until it's perfect but, frankly, I wanted to get it out before the forum's overrun with Halo 4 stuff. You know, so people will see it :P

I put it on my renderfarm where it's been rendering at full blast for the last couple of days (about 9 minutes per frame, but spread between 3 computers). Comped it all together, added in some foley, and I can finally birth it to my lovely friends at HBO :D

Incidentally, because I don't want to keep it all to myself because I know there's no other good version floating around out there, here's the rig (in Maya's .ma format): Right-Click, Save As, Please Don't Kill My Dropbox.
[Seriously, don't kill his Dropbox. Here's a local mirror - use this one. -lwu]

There are several problems with it that I hope, once it's out there, people can fix if they want. The fingers, for example, are awful, and the shoulders have some weighting issues. However, I am pretty proud of my topology, having given a higher resolution to the parts of the mesh that actually deform. And I really like how the footroll control turned out, even though you never even see the feet in this shot. (btw Wu, if you don't think giving this rig away is a good idea because the geometry came directly from the H3 Beta, go ahead and remove this.)

Hope you dig it! I made it mostly as a fun little thing for you guys, and secondarily as an exercise for me. I probably won't ever even use this on my reel because it's a proprietary character, lacks facial animation, and just generally doesn't show off much complex acting. (However, if you're reading this 343 or Bungie or anyone: i can haz job? :F :F :F :F ok :'( )

P.S., many thanks to bentllama for giving me some notes on this a few days ago. The ones I addressed definitely made the shot better. The ones I didn't address, well, if I had time, those would have made it better too.

Message Index



Replies:

Cookin' With Chief!Ibeechu 10/24/12 11:59 p.m.
     Re: Cookin' With Chief!stabbim 10/25/12 12:11 a.m.
     Big smile here :) *NM *NM*Mr Daax 10/25/12 12:58 a.m.
     F YEA! *NM*padraig08 10/25/12 1:08 a.m.
     This is totally surreal... and AMAZING *NM*CyberKN 10/25/12 1:34 a.m.
     Hats off!Kermit 10/25/12 3:42 a.m.
           Re: Hats off!General Vagueness 10/26/12 3:03 p.m.
     Nice to see the Chief having some down time. :-) *NM*scarab 10/25/12 5:31 a.m.
     Seriously awesome!LostSpartan987 10/25/12 7:54 a.m.
           DAT SWORDNotTheVacuum 10/25/12 8:11 a.m.
           Made my dayBeorn 10/25/12 10:15 a.m.
     sExcellent work! *NM*JDQuackers 10/25/12 8:34 a.m.
     =DQuirel 10/25/12 9:25 a.m.
     :) *NM*Ragashingo 10/25/12 9:53 a.m.
     Re: Cookin' With Chief!kanbo 10/25/12 10:57 a.m.
     This gives new meaning...Nikko B201 10/25/12 6:15 p.m.
     yous a pro *NM*Hawaiian Pig 10/25/12 9:57 p.m.



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