Choosing the bicep as the muscle of choice due to its usal expose on a character and one that has the largest transition in size from the reaxed state to the contracted. I plan to conduct the following tests from earlier reseach on the most popular methods used in the industry.

These are the following

Shapes - XSI

Enveloping - XSI

shrinkwrap XSI & MAYA (cMuscle)

Syflex - XSI

cMuscle (MAYA)

Propriatory XSI

Each Systems Pros and Cons will be weighed against one another to present a clear choice to present as the best method to use. for a single non production line market user.

As i will be using multiple software packages to come to my conclusion i will use consistant geometry as my constant to deform as my skin.

The model used is a full arm, starting from below the shoulder, to the end of the hand. It was initially modelled in XSI. Muscle shapes have been built into the topology The arm was taken from a fantasy character based on acurate human muscture structure. This means that the proportions are exagerated. The arm was then exported as an .obj file, and reimported as a sigle object mesh, into a new scene. This allowed me to calcualte acurate response times from each test.

A proxy smooth which is run as a GL "virtual" smooth will be used for more pleasing results. This does not effect the geometry. Both XSI and Maya have this function "+" XSI key and "3" MAYA

The skin will be bound to a simple two bone chain that will hinge at the elbow. I will not be riiging the hand. This will remain weighted to the forearm and is provided fo aethetic puroposes.

If i have time at the end of the experiment i would also like to test the deformation of displacement maps when placed on top of these muscle soloutions.