Maya 5.0 - Rig done

Finished the rigging finally, to bind the skin I am using the interactive tool thingy, which is easy enough but my PC is being a bitch and keeps crashing Maya each time I am trying to open the legs joint. I think I can do them separately but I'd rather work on one side and teh other be done automaticaly. Will try it on campus on Monday, if it wont work there either I just do each leg separately. For now only the legs are a problem and also around the shoulders a bit, still need to make it a bit better. Also started texturing it, it wont be great, but if I have time I use the UV editor to stich the automatic UV layout together so I can paint more easily.

Maya 4.9 - More Clown Rig

Took a lot longer than I planned, but thats because more deadlines sneaked up on me so I had to concentrate on another work, and I been lazy to post on the blog all the time. Had few problems with this, especialy rigging the arms and making the controls follow the joints and not screw up movement. Everytime I used pole vector the IK wouldn't follow the main control for everything, but then I just added another controler for the IK and problem solved. Also had problem with main control, making everything follow it porperly, turned out I need to parent constraint the root joint to the body control. I think the rig is ready now and just need to texture the character, shouldn't take too long, I will use projections mostly, only the face will be painted nicely. Here is pic of the rig:

SWTOR

So I was working on my rigging when I got email I can download SWTOR for Beta Testing weeked, of course the game is more important than anything else on this planet so I had to pause and download it. When I saw this on my PC:

 

I thought I am going to cry from joy =D  I only wish I already had my new PC because I can see it now it wont run very well on this old one I have for now, but oh well, better than nothing! As soon as it finished downloading I am doing back to the rigging, only needs arms which I can do quickly and then it should be more or less finished.

Maya 4.8 - Clown Rig

Taking bit longer than planned at first but I am learning a lot about rigging and how to do it efficiently. So far I have finished controls and IKs/FKs for one leg and part of the spine, need to finish that one and arms. Once I have one side done the other side will be quick. I really want to get it done this week, I have lots of other stuff to work on.

MEL script 0.2 - Lab Work Grades

On Monday we got our labwork results, I managed to get 76.5 on it, which was highest from the whole class so I am was happy. Final deadline is getting closer too fast, but idea is to make like a forest generator, similar to city generator, but with trees, flowers, gravestones, etc. Something I can model quickly and make good code for.

Maya 4.7 - Clown Skeleton Test

So my quick rig test turned into few hours of learing how to rig all over again, I could remember some stuff but not enough of it, fortunately I found this really good tutorial on Youtube and it helped me to get my skeleton together and hopefuly also make controls and all that. I didn't have time to make the controls yet, I just finished the skeleton but did a quick Skin Bind test to see how the mesh deforms and I am quite happy. I do need to adjust how some of the joints affect the mesh but that was expected, though the areas I was worried about, eblow, knees and joints like that came out well enough, which suprised me. I think its because now I know better how the rig affects the mesh so I can prepare it. Here is picture of the skeleton and quick pose test of fat clown playing basketball!

Maya 4.6 - Clown model Progress

Today I did some progress on the clown model, tweaked some vertexes around as well as added hands and combined both halfs. I think last thing to do is to finish the face. I will try to do some rough rig and see how it will work, just in case it will need some changing. Then it will be off to texturing it, depending on how much time I'll feel I have I will either keep it simple or do draw texture for everything, so far I mainly plan the torso and face, other stuff can be simple colours. Once the rig is finished then its just the unicycle model and the scene and I can animate it.