no upload!

apparantly my video wont upload.....tried leaving it over night but was in the same situation i left it in when i went to sleep so no luck on the upload.....poo poo :(

walk cycle

finished walk cycle

here's the finished walk cycle of my character. I know I can do so much better than this for a walk cycle but time constraints meant that I could only do a basic walk cycle with a little fiddle about with the graph editor. Im happy with it though because the character moves well and is easy enough to animate.

Overall, I am happy with the character that I have produced. I am particularly proud of the modelling which I think has turned out well. I am also happy that I have yet again learnt things that are new to me, mainly in terms of rigging. At the start of term, I had no idea where to start, I didnt know anything about weight painting, set driven keys and only had a basic understanding of IK handles and building a skeleton. I think that what I have done demonstrates progress of learning from last term and I can take this further into the third term.

If I was to repeat the project again, I would aim to get the modelling done a little quicker, now that I have built up alot of confidence in the modelling I do and I would concentrate my efforts on rigging. I attempted to go deeper into the rigging process by adding blend shapes and facial rigging but I got totally lost and decided to just go with the IK handles in the arms and the set driven keys in the hands and feet as this was sufficient enough for me to produce a walk cycle, which was my intention from the project outset.

At the start of the term, I was quite motivated to get going with the project and the character building process, but when it came to the later stages and the rigging stage got closer to me, I found it hard to get motivated to do the rigging process. Rigging is something that does not particularly interest me although I am willing to expand my knowledge of the process as it is handy to know how to do it. Knowing how to do a variety of areas rather than just one specialist area is better for a person as they will be more emplyable and of more help to other people.

leg blast

This is the final test play that I have done. It is a test of an Ik handle i put on the leg. The weights could have been a little better but theyre not totally bad, and I'm happy with it

arm blast

this is the second play test for the left arm. It was the first painted weight that I attempted on a joint and I am happy with the result. Yes, Its not perfect but not a bad first attempt at all i'd say

hand blast

Heres and example animated hand. For some reason the playblast wasnt working properly on maya so i just did a small batch render to show my progress. I put some set driven keys in the hands and feet. I thought that this would be complicated at first, but Dave showed me how to set the driver keys up and it was pretty straight forward.

Set driven keys are so much easier for animating rather than having to key each joint in the finger for every key frame.

painting weights

At first I found it confusing to understand how to paint the weights on a model. It was more trial and error before i understood how they worked and saving progress and going back to saved data when i made a mistake. Basicly the solid white shaded areas remain solid when a joint moves and the lighter areas are less influenced by the joint. The black areas are not influenced by the joint at all. The above images are examples of some of the joints that have painted weights