Ronnie Leah, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester.

 Today I exported the texters to the final character rigs in order to see how the character looked in Maya. I wanted to test how the textures would look when in the Arnold renderer. Initially I was worried that the colours would be off as Maya uses a different colour sample than Substance painter, however the model looked almost identical which was a relief. 

 Today I asked my tutor about the issues surrounding the blendshapes I was adding to my rig. I found that If I tried to move the bend the character, the head and its geometry would become unaligned.  This was due to the head blendshapes being created while the head had transform information applied to it. When creating both the blink blendshape and eyebrow blendshape, I moved the head so that it the mirror tool could be used. In doing so I made it so the head no longer transformed on the same rotation as the rest of the body.  In order to fix this the head had to be unskinned from the model and then have it history deleted. It then had to be rebound and skinned back to the skeleton. After doing this I then had to go back through and redo both the characters blink and eyebrow movement.  I used the same method before in order to create the blink and eyebrow movement and was able to successfully connect it to the main bod this time. I referred to the character expressio...

 Today I followed along with the video tutorial in order to make the Samurai Characters eyebrows move.  I started by duplicating the head to use as a blend shape and adding in two joints for the eyebrows. I then selected the area effected by the brows and binded them to the eyebrow joint.  I could then add in animation and begin adjusting the skin accordingly  Once I had created both expressions, I duplicated them and connected them into them in with blend shapes.  Then all I had to do was connect this up with the face in the main rig, h owever this caused the face to break from the body and changes size. I was unsure how to fix this issue and so waited until I could ask my tutor. 

 Today I continued with rigging the Samurai character to add in a blink control. This was only necessary for this character as the Cyberpunk character does not have eyes.  I started by duplicating the characters head and then adding in an upper and lower eyelid joint.  After adding in the joints I had to skin the weights around the eyes and then add in animation to on the joints to get a rough guide as to see how far the joints should be rotated to close.  I then adjusted the positioning of the eye lids by using the skinning weights. I did this as cleanly as I could get this with the skin weights and then used corrective blend shapes to make them look better.  After finishing one side of the model all I had to do was mirror the skin weights and blend shapes. However I encountered a problem which meant that the skin weights were not lining up and so the eye would close at awkward angles, different to the left eye. This was due to the characters head not being str...

 Today I colour coded my rig and set limiters so that the joints could not move in unnatural ways. This was done in the channel box and attribute editor. This wasn't very hard to do, however it took a lot of time finding the right angle to bend my joints to.  I also added a visibility control at the bottom of the rig so that the controls can be toggled on an off in the viewport.  The main body is now rigged for both characters. All I need to do now is the head controls. 

 Today I continued rigging the characters upper body. I started by firstly creating the controls around the characters arms and connecting them up to the joints. Once I had done this for one character, it was simple enough to export and then connect them up on the other character.  I then had to connect the fingers up to the hand control using the connection editor. This was simple enough to do as I had created the channels beforehand and simply had to connect them up to the correct joint. In order to add hand spread set key animation was used.  Finally I arranged everything into a hierarchy and connected it together with a world control. 

 Todays video started by adding controls for the pelvis and knee joints. This was a very simply process and just required one of the shapes to be constrained to the appropriate joint.  I then moved up further in the body and added controls for the back and chest. In order to prepare for set driven keys, I had to make a set of groups and move their pivot point to the control and pelvis. As my characters do not have ribbon spine, I had to create additional controls for the upper and lower back. When the tutorial went through the method of set driven keys for the chest, I applied the same knowledge to the two controls. Although this is laid out clearly in the video, I am proud that I was able to figure out how to apply the set driven keys to my own controls and now feel a greater understanding of the process.  I then had to go back and complete the same process for the Cyberpunk character.  I am happy that I spent the additional time in the skinning process to really re...

 Today I began rigging both of my characters, starting with the legs. I used the Jetpack Jones video tutorials as reference and decided to complete both characters at the same time.  I started by firstly cleaning up both of the scenes.  I then added in locators around the foot in order to identify points in which the foot will rotate around.  I then grouped the pivot points of each joint to the correct locator ready for animation.  I then connected in the control to the movement of the joints.  After finishing the Samurai character I then also did the same thing for the Cyberpunk character. 

Today I completed the pose space deformers for the Cyberpunk character.  Initially I was worried about completing the shoulders of the character as they are made up of wires, which become entangled when the arm is manipulated. However as I spent a lot of time smoothing this out in the skinning process, it turned out to be an easier process than I thought. I managed to get the arms to look as clean as I could whilst overly manipulated, in the hopes that I will not need to move them that far for the actual animation.    After completing the deformers I also added in the characters additional geometry, which simply required that I add it to the closes joint. For the chest I made sure to mirror the skin weights of the main body.  Overall this character turned out to be an easier skinning process that I expected. I was able to complete the entire process with very minimal help from the video tutorial which I am happy about.

 Today I completed the blend shapes for my character so that the mesh would bend in a clean way when the characters joints are rotated. I started by adding a bit of animation which exceeded how far my characters arms will be able to bend, in order to clean up the geometry as it moves.  This process was very simple and I was able to continue without the video after completing the first part. I then moved on to the legs which was more of the same process.