I'm Peter Nichols, a 3D artist and insructor based in Chicago IL. I have an ardent passion for helping my students improve as artists, designers and programmers. Right now, I'm teaching for BitSpace Chicago Creating assets for game design and 3D printing classes. I'm also working on some neat projects for
The Plug-in Studio.
If you are interested in hiring me for freelance work, feel free to send me an e-mail.
Cheers!
-Pete
Working with this model presented some fun challenges as the Geometry needed to be able to get down into a crawling position as well as stretch out vertically to climb out of a grave site. I solved these issues by adding in foot roll mechanics to the hand and a switchable COG to help with the transfer of weight from stance to stance. I used some scripts I've put together to automate the roll joints and layered hand control scheme.
Working with such low rez geometry was a little tricky especially because I'm used to quads and clear edge loops. However, The guys at BitGem Really know how to allocate extra detail for deformation. Check them out!
The Plug-in Studio is a collaborative non-profit that uses social issue video games as a platform for community dialogue. They work with Chicago Public Schools to offer courses in underserved commuinities around the city. I'm currently teaching a Unity 3D fundementals class for them and have worked some really interesting projects like the one shown here where I built five arcade interfaces for a block party/outdoor gallery called "the street arcade." Photos by Hayward Suggs.
Another Asset from BitSpace's anniversary game. Many of the models entailed udulating vine animations. I decided to automate some of my work by employing an "auto-sine" technique that I've seen used to rig swimming fish. I rigged the vine with an IK spline then animated the clusters with sinosuidal expresions on Y axis. The rig has custom attributes that control frequency amplitude and phase. The entire chain is parented to another spline so it can be positioned further. Additionally I added some stretch control so the vines can "grow" without losing volume.
A bunch of assets created for BitSpace's Anniversery open house game. We had two weeks to put together a full demo for our new VR curriculum, including art, scripts and a custom arduino interface. Needless to say it was crunch time from day one. I thought the fence would demarcate the Vive's bounds enough to prevent kids from leaving the play area. Sadly this is not the case...
The project gave me an opportunity to try out mGear 2.0s quadruped system.
It's pretty fully featured and I plan to animate this rig more when I get the chance.
#Snippit from multi-Layered auto hand rig
#Creates a control group then
#parents snaps, orients, zeroes out a selected curve.
# by g-kak teaches typing
import maya.cmds as cmds
def orient_controls(ctrl_crv_src, bone):
transform = cmds.xform(bone, q = True,ws = True, t = True)
ctrl_grp = cmds.group(em = True, n = str(bone) + "_ctrl_grp")
cmds.move(transform[0],transform[1],transform[2], ctrl_grp)
constraint = cmds.orientConstraint(bone, ctrl_grp)
cmds.delete(constraint)
ctrl_crv = cmds.duplicate(ctrl_crv_src)
cmds.parent(ctrl_crv,ctrl_grp)
cmds.rotate(0,0,0,ctrl_crv)
cmds.move(0,0,0,ctrl_crv, os = True)
control_constraint = cmds.orientConstraint(ctrl_crv, bone)
cmds.rename(ctrl_crv, str(bone) + "_ctrl")
objects = cmds.ls(selection = True)
for s in range(1,len(objects)):
orient_controls(objects[0], objects[s])
Here's a code snip from a hand auto rigger I scripted. I like to have layered controls for hand animations I.E. individual joint controls, finger controls and gross control of the whole hand. Unfortanately this is really tedious and error prone to do manually, So I decided to automate this process.
Last summer I got to teach 32 incredibly brilliant kids at Duke University's talent Identification program. I created 100 consecutive hours of course material involving 3D modeling, fabrication and some simple scripting demos. The image of the rattle snake is our final class project. While I modeled the head, each student was responsible for creating a a piece of the body using parametric tools and radial arrays. Each portion fallows the exact same technical specifications but the radial patterns were left to the students to design. The point of this excercise was to show my students how STEM excercises can provide a framework for artwork and that both disciplines are equally important. The link below is our student run blog where you can see their individual projects. special thanks to Chloe for setting it up and taking the photos! Student Blog
I created two 3D models of unique ant species for the Moreau division of insects. I retopologized the meshes for WebGL animation and 3D printing. They are currently on display at the Denver Museum of Science. You can download them for non-comercial use here: Ant Models