Rigging & Binding.

The next job after the texturing was the rigging of the character. This was done by building a skeleton using the joint tool, which would then be attached to the character so it can be animated. This was relatively easy and I managed to complete it withe few problems. Besides the hands, because of the way I had modelled it the joints to the hands were not easy to position because in the top view the fingers obscured each other. However I managed to get around this with little problem just using the side and perspective view to positon the fingers. Having learnt from last time the importance of naming, I made sure to correctly name all the joints as I went along. This was infinitely helpful when it came to moving joints and parts of the body.





The next stage was to create the controls for the rig. This meant using NURBS primitives to draw out appropriately shaped handles which would then serve to operate the joints inside the mesh. Circles were used for first two spine joints, neck, head, elbows and feet. Where as the jaw, hands, shoulders, third spine joint, and clavicle controls were drawn out to mimic the rough shape of the body part in question. Except for the third spine joint and the clavicles they were controlled by arrows which showed their direction of movement.

After creating the controls I had to then constrain them to each relevant part so the controls move the skeleton with it. This was all very complicated but I struggled through and then it was time for parenting. This involved parenting each joint to the appropriate one next in the hierarchy this involved thinking of how the human body was constructed.

Weight painting was the next task which was found to be increasingly difficult this resulted in me not weight painting the model extensively just the key parts this resulted in less animation than i had intended. This was necessary as I was tight on time. I simplified the movements to just a wave and a turn of the head. However throughtout this module i do believe my skills in all these areas have improved as most of the things I've talked about i couldn't do before. Besides weight painting which I really need to work on.