3D: Rigging Leo-Posing, skinning weights (part 7)

So I have finally skinned and parented everything. Skin weight painting is giving me a lot of grief, I can't seem to work it out without making it worse that it was before. The head is strangely not aligned, so when i move it it moves on a angle, but I can work with it.




The eye lid still need a lot of work with weights. As it moves the whole face. It does give it a bit of expression, but I need it too blink.




So I have tried posing it a bit, Making him look a bit sassy. The ear indents the skull when moved so I need to fix that too.

3D: Rigging Leo- Skinning ft. attempting Wrist-Twist (part 6)

I Began the Wrist-twist. And all was well. Except that when I binded them, they would change position permanently. I couldn't change it once it was connected. It came out of nowhere; all its attributes were on zero then suddenly one would change and wouldn't stay no matter how may times we tried to alter it. 

We decided that he probably wouldn't need so much wrist-twisting as he arms are so short and stumpy, so one would suffice. But it kept going funny too. Unable to fix it, I'll unfortunately have to leave it. Lucky for me it's no compulsory, though it would have a nice effect on my character. 

This is the effect of the parenting of controls and joints gone wrong. I only was moving the wrist a little bit too! But after retracing steps, it seems to work as it should.

So exciting! The after effect of finally skinning him! I like how when I move his geo up, his legs droop like a jumping motion. The foot controls seem to be working nicely.

3D: Rigging Leo- progress and control feedback (5)

Here I have made the reverse feet, and made a world control. now I have finished coloring the controls on my character and sorting out the parenting in my outliner.




For feedback, my classmate can't control my character yet, I haven't done skinning yet. So I just got feedback for my controls. Everything is fairly easy to access. However since my character has very little of a neck, the controls can get a bit confusing. It was recommended that I could change the color on the jaw or head control just to make it easier to differentiate.
I changed it to a peachy color, something that wont stand out to much, but enough. Nothing that would get confused with the other colors.

3D: Rigging Leo (part 4)

Now, I have done the basic controls. We have worked out how to do the blinking eye thing. Because my character barely has a neck, I only had to do one joint. I used the nail control an had to extend it out quite a bit out the back because the neck is so thick. Hopefully the ear control will be enough for the ears.
For the tail, I'll probably do circle controls like the arms, and maybe a nail one for the base of the tail, just because a intercepting circle might be too crowded and confusing.

These are my eyelid controls, just modified circles. I made mine a bit wider just because my character has quite large long eyes.
















And finally, My character with the controls mirrored!

3D: Rigging Leo (part 3)

Everything is aligned and mirrored now. Been struggling. Despite aligning and rotating my eyelids correctly, I still can't get the blinking motion, I think something has gone a bit funny with my joints in the top eyelid, but I'm not certain at this point.









Now I've added controls. I've actually deleted and re-added them many times, because I keep getting the parenting and deleting history wrong. Now I'm not sure if I am supposed to parent the control to the joint or not at this point.
But nonetheless, I'll keep adding my controls at least, and freezing transformations, but not deleting history because that makes it go funny. I can always parent them later if need be- I think.

3D: Rigging Leo - aligning (part 2)

(part 2)

I have aligned the tail- but it is how I feared and predicted. Because I didn't model it straight, the joints don't curl as nicely as they should, even when aligned correctly. But I think this is the best I can do with my mistake. 

The legs were a bit of a struggle, but it was made a bit easier after being told that the Y follows the joints path, luckily, without realizing it myself, the joints were aligned like that everywhere.

I also added a toe. I originally didn't think I needed one since my characters paw is so short and stumpy. But I think it could make it move a bit better and naturally. 

The face is a bit tricky, and I'm still trying to figure out the eye and eyelid rotations and alignment- but I think it's good? 

The eyebrows aren't connected to the rest of the face yet as I'm unsure of where to connect them. Do I connect them from the same point where the eye come from? does it need it's own extra joint? Connect from the ear? 

I'll come back to it later....

I'm quite happy with the hand. I think it's correct.... it looks nice and tidy and aligned. Y follows the fingers and they move well. However, I'm worried about the extra steps for the wrist, the nbj joints and all that jazz. I don't think I have to worry about that just now, I think I have to focus on connecting the joints again and mirroring and adding controls.

3D: Rigging Leo (Part 1)

We have begun adding joints for rigging for Leo.





This is all the joints I think. I have realized that I have made a mistake with the tail. I have modeled it wavy instead of straight for some crazy reason. Like I understand that it has to be straight for it to be animated properly, so I don't know what was going through my head. I've added quite a bit of joints in the tail to hopefully animate it out properly, so I'll have to see how that turns out for me.




















So now I have to sort out the Z,Y, and X placing on the body and make it all aligned and pretty.