The arms, hands and shoulder sections of the rig were built in a different manner then before due to the angle at which the joints needed to be created. Furthermore, the real challenge here was to ensure correct orientation even down to the complex areas such as the figures. The amount of work that goes into these part of rigging is simply shocking if put in simple terms. It is however not without reason. A poorly oriented rig can fundamentally destroy all the work that has gone into it and reduce the rig to the bin. Hierarchy and joint orientation are still, and will always be, first and foremost the most important aspects of rigging.
 |
| The finished arm section |
Much like the legs the arms were built using the ‘cluster mark center’ tool and placing these along the edge loops that would become the joint locations. Like the knees the elbows are double jointed to once again ensure correct deformation as the model moves. Otherwise the bones and joints are placed in a natural manner to ensure a believable result when animated. The standard work ethics of using contains and IK handles were applied to the arms as well. This is then parented to the shoulder bone which was created after the arm had been positioned. The two bones for the shoulder are used to again benefit the animations and end results. The addition here was the control placed above the shoulder to give more depth to the control of the arms. The added bonus on this control is the visual signal to the position and rotation of the joint which helps reduce chance of errors. The last element of the arms is the control applied to the wrist for movement of the arms and rotation of the wrist and hands. The box curve controls the movement with the sphere driving the wrist. These are once again built with a series of contains and locator related orientation checks.
The hands however are a slightly different matter. The creation of the joints and bones was done once again using the ‘cluster mark center’ tool and then snapping the joints to those points. The issue however was that at the stage where I started to build the controls to allow for a much more detailed and robust animation solution I found an error in the arms. The IK handle was not set to the correct model and meant the calculations that were being done for the joints were not close to what they should of been. Additionally this also meant that I was unable to build the elbow controls which would of worked much like the knee controls. Because of this issue that I had found I spoke to the group and raised the concern about finishing the rest of the rigs controls. It was then agreed that, because I felt it would be best to rebuild the arms but lacked the time, that I wouldn't finish the hand controls and move on to the next task.
Finished character rig
In reflection, the rig is in a near to perfect state. Though yes, I will need to rebuild the arms, hands and shoulders and the controls that are associated with them. It will allow for further learning and isn't a step in development that I dislike but rather look forward to. It is always important to learn from mistakes and this opportunity also gives me the chance to put what I've learned up to this point to the test and attempt to rebuild these elements from memory. Extra elements that need to be improved on the rig include the addition of the facial controls. There is also a small bug in relation to the hips that I have since named ‘the butt wiggle’. When positioning the rig the hips always move in a small movement that looks like a wiggle. This is something I’ll need to investigate in due course. Regardless of these errors I’m very proud and happy with what I have accomplish over the last few weeks. Even with battling illness and falling behind on schedule I feel that I have reached my initially set out goal and achieve my personal learning outcome.
The tasks that follow in the coming few days ahead of the presentation include planning and preparing for said presentation. Additionally I need to work with Joe to get the rig into the Unity scene and remap the placeholder animations over. As for the environment animations and particle effects I will need to investigate as to what stage these are at ahead of the live demo. Awkwardly however, I still need to find time during the week to spend a few hours on my dissertation so it is going to be a busy conclusion to the past few weeks.
0 comments:
Post a Comment