Maya 5.2 - Let the animating begin!

Yesterday finished sorting out the movements and controls for the wheel and feet. Today I build small scene and set the character into its starting position, just gotta remember to key everything now and its ready to animate. Starting way later than I planned to, but I have 5 days for it, so should be all good.

Maya 5.1 - It spins!

Since the last post I have created a unicycle model and managed to set it so the clown's feet are following the paddles, so animating it is relatiely easy now, at least that part when he rolls around on it. I have about a week to finish the animation and remaking everything I did in uni at home is annoying, fucking 2012 files keep crashing when I try to Save or Save As in Maya 2011.

I am not sure yet if I can make it move forward easily or not, so far the main control alone doesn't work, but will see, it shouldn't take too long to fix.Anyway, here is test render of the feet rotating and following the paddles.

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.