I´ve got inspired to develop my own 3D dolly/crane/steady camera rig after looking at some real-world references. Here is the result:

Available for download:

v1.0 | 28.08.2011 rp_CameraRig: 3dsmax 2011

v1.2 | 24.09.2011 rp_CameraRig: Maya 2011

v1.1 | 19.09.2011 rp_CameraRig: XSI 2011

NOTES

1. Please tag rp_CameraRig into your animations/videos/wtv or send me links. Would be lovely to see what you guys have been doing with it.
2. This rig is free for personal use, studios or companies should contact me first before using it.
3. Feel free to drop me any suggestions, comments, ideas or anything else.

Enjoy ;)

This study started when a friend asked me how he could create some sort of mosaic effect inside 3Dsmax. He actually followed this technique, wich works ok. However, I thought It would be cool to build a more elegant solution inside XSI using ICE (Interactive Creative Environment).

Below you can find not only the video result but also the ICEtrees:

In the version 1.0 I did simple math using a null to control the displacement behaviour: affected area (XYZ global kinematic compared to each particle point position), falloff (an average between scale X and Z) and intensity (scale Y been the multiplier).
In the version 2.0 a standard compound called modulate by volume did most of the necessary trick: I exploded it and connected some nodes as seen in the ICE Tree below.

Conclusion:
A procedural “FX rig” system gives speed, freedom and flexibility/art-directable, wich means ability to generate new interations on-the-fly with real time feedback.

Cheers!

M.A.R.S. stands for my brand new rigging project: Modular and Adaptive Rigging Systems.

First of all I´m really thankful for all the help of Fabricio Chamon, Mike Ogawa and Luiz Adriano. Their support in my first steps within Softimage XSI and Interative Creative Environment was great.

I must say I´m so excited about ICE architecture !!! The beauty I see in it are capability, flexibility and definitely the nodal operations. Complex math stuff are made quickly with significant viewport on-the-fly results, wich means freedom to take directions much more easily than hard-coding or rewriting a bunch of lines over and over again.

My goal is to compile a collection of custom compounds for all sorts of rigs…Think about sets or type of presets ready for plug´n play inside a production environment, for example:

Biped
| Foot roll -> automatic roll, heel, bank side-to-side, toe, ball, lift, moveable pivot
| Spines -> fancy Fk, spline IK, stretch/squash, volume controls, n twistable segments
| Limbs -> IkFk blend and match, bendy, lock, soft IK, squash/stretch, volume controls, n twistable segments

and so on..

Wouldn´t it be cool ? I would say If a TD know what´s going on under-the-hood he might be able to dive into this compounds and rebuild connections easily, upgrade something for his own or even create a new function on top of the system itself. Yeah !!!

footRoll compound

ORGANOGRAM

Here is the oficial CGTalk development thread.