Soon I have to begin animating again to meet the deadlines required for the Echoes project but I feel I can leave the rig as it is for now and come back to it later if time permits. So far though I have managed to create an eye rig and cotroller as well as a control setup for all the existing joints. The eye rig is simple and efficient enough for an animator to use...
Still going with the head rig, I have begun to work into the more fiddly areas of the rig including the nose and ear joints. The nose proved an interesting challenge that I ultimately managed to complete - after far too long having to sort out the weighting. Placing the joints and setting up their pivots and constraints was easy enough but (I believe due to the wrinkles around his nose) it became tricky to...
So far I'm making good progress with the head rig having so far managed to block some weights for the head pivot bones and upper and lower jaw. It is still a little rough and with no real controls setup yet but it gives me an idea as to how the mesh will deform and what areas are going to be problems ones. I have also begun to block in the eyebrow deformers with cluster...
So this week I have continued to work on my Major Project but slightly veered off from animation onto rigging again. I felt that my centaur rig was OK but overall there was room for improvement and the sheer amount I learnt whilst doing it would vastly improve my abilities at rigging next time I tried. With that in mind I decided to rig a human head (something I never really got to do with...
I am now almost half way through major project and on course to graduate uni in less than 4 months! (scary thought). As such, we had a 'sweatbox' meeting where very student compiles their work together and presents to the class for feedback, checking on progress and generally having a nosey at what everyone is making. So I rendered out the couple animations I've done and compiled them together here. They are still are quite...
As posted before, the Centaur rig is complete and been handed over for animation but I thought I'd post up a quick video and walkthrough of the features available to animate with. If more time were available I would love to get back in and fix those IK/FK switches and arms as, after animating with it for a little now, I really miss using FK arms. Using just IK has been fine for the Bow carrying hand...
Continuing on with project Echoes, I have begun work on a couple animations for various characters including the Centaur, Fae (the player character) and the Bark Basher (our boss character). Each character has a very different personality and function so going to each animation requires a different mindset and ideas on how they interact with the environment. The couple of rough animations I have here are the Fae's primary cyclic animations, the Centaur's canter and...
This last month I've been working on creating a rig for the Centaur character (created by Dean Paupe) as part of the game project that I have the privilege of working on - Project Echoes. Creating a rig for such a character was no easy task, effectively being two characters fused together. Yet the greatest difficulty was surprisingly in the spine, where trying to create a flexible spine that could deform appropriately and effectively connect the horse and human...
