nepoenpoepe

Back on blogging-track! This week i've managed to rig two characters :D (not including painting weights, sadly, but I couldn't get started on this until Andy had finished a few things.) Pretty good progress though, I think. And rigging has been surprisingy easy to get back to terms with :D (apart from one horrible day which I will describe shortly). Here's a pictures of the first rig I completed on Swash:


Nothing much to talk about, a very basic rig. The only new things i'll be attempting this time round are a jaw bone, and an extra bone in the arm for forearm twist (although I need to sort this out...) but basically nothing mindblowing. I managed to finish it in almost 1 day, which is great time, but painting weights will be fairly time-consuming I think.

So, I finished Swash all fine and dandy and was really chuffed, and quickly went on to rigging Dodger, the main character. This was all going fine, too, until I got to making the IK/FK arms when it took a turn for the worst. I'd set them all up just like I did with Swash but one thing kept on going wrong. I'd move the IK arm, switch to FK arm and move it and rather than sticking to the location of the IK like it should do, the IK handle kept snapping to the new position of the joint, when the FK controls moved it. Sorry if that's a little confusing, but bear with me.

So I tried a million different things, tried switching restraints on and off, remaking the entire arm from scratch, creating new, test arms along side this one and NOTHING was working. So I wasted pretty much an entire day on this one stupid problem and couldn't figure it out so I decided to leave it. Came back the next day and still no joy for about an hour, but after trying every different thing I could think of FINALLY I got it.


It was this bugger! This tiny, seemingly unimportant looking button, which I have no recollection of turning on either in the menu you see here or the button in the option box menu when you create IK handles. But remember this! It could save you some time. Enable IK Snapping is bad! Glad I figured it out in the end :D and now Dodger's rig is finished too.

Just one more week to go, one more rig to make and then three characters weights to paint... I can't remember how long weights take, but i'm foolishly optimistic that I might still be able to complete it lol. We will see. Here are some cool pictures to finish the blog :) I'm really happy with how the characters have turned out and what's even better is that they seem to come from the same world and all relate, while still remaining individual. Wooo




til next week!

Damn

I haven't posted in ages! And I ruined my one-a-week track record :( Oh well, it was going to happen some time. I won't dwell. Instead here's the stuff that i've actually managed to finish in the time that i've not been posting :D






There's swash. All done and nice and tidy in the outliner :) As far as i'm aware i've done everything that's necessary to have him move really nicely when he's finished rigging, but we'll only find out when it starts (which is hopefully very soon! possibly even today, but more than likely next week). I'm really quite happy with him, I think the face and body have a good amount of character in them, and the topology is pretty clean. Now it's up to Andy with the texturing and materials, which I hope he does a good job of. The only thing that i'm wondering about at the minute is Swash and the rest of the gangs eyes. I've always made the eyes quite er... stylised in the way that they have very hard edges on the rim of the eye, and pretty much all over the eyelid. I've not had to do any blendshapes or facial rigging in the past, so i'm unsure whether this is a good route to take. My instinct is telling me that they should (or maybe i'd just like them to be) a bit more natural looking, so i'm probably going to research this before I model my characters. (which i can't wait to do :D) Anyway, I can't really remember any of the problems that I had modeling Swash, but everything that I came across was solved with basic modeling techniques, so there's not much wisdom I can impart at this time :P So onto Buckle.






There we go, two haphazard turntables for Buckle. I'll probably have to present them nicely for the work submission before we leave, so maybe i'll get some pretty pictures up at some point. Something that i've learnt in this process is that it majorly speeds up your workflow if you can basically steal parts of other models and reuse them or reshape them to fit other characters. Every character i've made has the same ears, the same hands and the same feet. Just move around the topology until it suits you and bob's your uncle. I even reused swash's trousers for buckle, although it was quite tricky because of their difference in mass. Hands and ears were a godsend though, especially. I'm pretty happy with how this guy turned out, as well. I believe it's the first time that i've made an entire connected torso and head, and it wasn't so bad. It can be tricky in places like the arm/shoulder area where you have to choose between extruding the arm out or connecting a different piece of topology (of which i chose the latter) and then sorting out the topology, but i'm quite pleased with the results. I'm yet to see whether it will all work out in the end but i'm sure we'll manage it. Again, Andy will be texturing all of the models so now it's up to him! (Although i'm sure I won't be able to keep my nose out for long.)

Now all there's left for me to do is go ahead and rig. And I have two weeks left. And three characters <_<;;; That's a little worrying. Hopefully the vast (pleaaseee) majority of the rigging will somehow get done, though, and all with be well for us to leave for crimbo and get on with our dissertations (blarg).

Anyway i'm fairly happy with how all of this has gone. I'm happy with all of the models (Although i prefer the baddies to the good guy, but that was gonna happen due to the fact i modeled him first. And i'm sure texturing him will make him look pretty) and given that we've had a fair few lessons in between all of this stuff, along with the presentations, dissertation tutorials and all of that junk, i think i've done pretty well for time. I've definitely put the hours in anyway :) And i'm tired now but soon we'll have a lovely break, and then I can start on my guys :D :D

Seeya next week hopefully xx