Girl Rig!

It's 5:50am and I've forgotten how to write, but here's a picture of Ellie's body, all rigged and what not.

Sam Rig is DONE

So, after several different attempts at several face rigs that broke... it's DONE!

And the icing on the cake is... the way that worked in the end only took me 3 or so days. And that's with thinking time! So here's hoping the Ellie Rig'll take no more than 2 days.

So annoying that I've been hitting a wall with this for about 3 weeks, and suddenly it clicked. I mean, it's good that it clicked, but it took so long. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy the learning process, but I don't really have time for it at this point!

I won't bore you with technicalities at this point, I'll just stick up a few pictures.
I'll try to put up a video over the weekend of the rig working!

Cheers!

Why did I decide to rig the faces again...?

Been rigging the face solidly for the last 2 weeks. And when I say solidly, I mean amongst doing a draft of my D&TM report and doing some work for Fearg Na Mara and Stupid Kow (other class films).

Sometimes it's going well, and sometimes it's a bit of a pain.

We have working jaws, eyebrows and lips, although I haven't done the lip-roll yet, that's next!

Had a bit of bother with the eyes when I tried to rig them, as it turns out the eyeballs aren't perfectly spherical, which is causing them to pop out of the eyelids. Dan's sorting that out as we speak!

At this point I'm completely fed up with following tutorials step for step. Especially since the best ones I can find are for realistic human heads, and that's not what I'm dealing with. 
It really feels like my brain is melting... I keep going between stages of wanting to learn absolutely everything and give the head a million controls, and being fed up and looking for shortcuts.
So I've decided to take a wee break for the sake of my health and work on my dissertation. On Monday I will have a meeting with myself and decide just exactly what I need in the rig, and what bits I can miss out. 

Things we definitely still need set up are the lip-roll and the fleshy eye rig. Also think it may be worth setting up some blend shapes for cheek deformations. Then I just have to build the controls an he's done. 

main face set up (at this stage)

lip control curve with clusters

jaw with weights sorted out

Just have to keep repeating to myself that it'll all be worth it when its done haha. This poor wee model is my learning tool, so he's getting the worst of it. After I've sussed everything out on him it'll be plain sailing for the other characters! (surely...)

Riiiiiiiiiiiiig,

The rig continues!

Had a bit of a mishap at the end of last week which resulted in a complete do-over. I won't bore you with what went on, but I think at one point I've opened the wrong saved file to work from, so I completed the rig with the joints in the spine facing all different kinds of wrong ways :/ 

Alas, it's been done again. Few new bits of progress for you too!

We now have a Centre of Gravity control, and working knees and elbows. 

I've also just completed the hand controls!

Typical box round the hand, with little squares attached to control the individual fingers.
Each finger has Custom Attribute "Curl" and "Spread", which do exactly as they say on the tin. The hand control itself has master Curl Fist and Spread Fingers attributes, which are linked to each individual finger's attributes. 

These images show the controls working- 

Index finger with Curl attribute set to 5



Fist with Curl Fist set to 5



Hand with Spread Fingers set at 5

Hopefully I can find a way to mirror these controls across to the right arm, not really up for making them all again, but I fear I may have to haha. Also going to add in small controls for the individual joints of the fingers, for when more specific poses are needed, or to tweak dodgy results.


After the fingers I'll be making the inverse foot system, and then it's on to the face! 

Thanks for reading!

Rigging!

For the past few days I've been rigging our little boy character, and I'm almost finished with his body rig. A few problems have popped up today, which I will hopefully fix by tomorrow, and I'm sure more problems will appear as I add my final controls.

Anyway, where's where he is-

Controls in the rig so far are-

IK arm and leg controls, with pole vector elbows/knees.
FK spine rig, with individual joint controls custom attributes
Simple head and neck controls
Shoulder controls

To be added-

Foot roll
Finger controls with individual joint controls and custom attributes

Hip control
Global Control

I've gone for an FK spine (rather than an IK, or a combination of both) purely based on the positions I will need the character to be in when we start animating. As both child characters are mainly sitting in various slouched positions, I thought an FK would be easiest to manipulate in this way. Why over-complicate things?

Here's a wee look at the FK spine!- 

Individual joint controls are coloured pink and have a handle at the back for easy selection.
Each control is parented to the control below for convincing FK movement.

"Torso Control" is green and is a distinguishable spikey shape, again for easy selection. This control contains the custom attributes- Spine Bend, Spine Side and Spine Twist. 

Spine Bend, Spine Side and Spine Twist are attributes that control rotation of the individual spine controls. Spine Bend makes the spine curl forwards, Spine Side makes the spine curl sideways, and Spine Twist twists the spine to either side.

Each attribute can be given a value of between -10 and 10, with 0 being the default. A value of 10 will add a rotation of 30 degrees to each control, thus creating a convincing curl. -10 will add a rotation of -30 degrees. Values in between will be somewhere along this scale. 

Spine Bend at extreme value 10.

Spine Bend at extreme value -10

Spine Side at extreme of 10

Spine Side at extreme of -10

Spine Twist at extreme of 10

Spine Twist at extreme of -10

These attributes can be altered in various combinations to achieve desired movement, and if they don't quite get the movement you're after, individual controls can still be used to further rotate joints on top of these results.

Depending on how my hip control works out, I may add similar attributes for the hip bone.



So that's all for now, any questions you know where I am! Off to work out why my elbows and knees have suddenly stopped working, and sort out some hip controls. Hands and feet tomorrow, then it's on to the face! (wish me luck haha!) Oh and I'll be adding a global control at some point.

Thanks guys!