Production Diary
Updated: Apr 20, 2023
Challenge One: Demo Character (Jerry Rig)
For Challenge 1, I set off to do Locators in order to have a clear view of my character’s joint placement.
The legs were fairly simple, much like the spine and head. The latter of which was far less complex due to facial rigging not being a focus for the challenge, but rather the body.
Upon working on the arms, I found it was relatively similar to the legs and spine. But when I began work on the fingers, I faced a bit of difficulty in steadily accomplishing it. The initial reason was due to my interpretation that the joint orientation had to perfectly align with the centre of the locator. Upon discussion with my tutor on the difficulty, he clarified to me the centre of the joint had to roughly align with the locator and I seemed to have been overthinking my work. Upon which, my work progressed far more smoothly throughout.
When moving on to skinning, I decided not to overthink my work as it seemed to be hindering my performance. So I quickly blocked out the skin weights, but found a bit more difficulty on the blending. I found the arms and fingers fairly time consuming, especially on the Thumb twist which caused me a fair amount of difficulty in orienting it to the polygons. I found it was due to the level of skinning I wanted to achieve, whereby the character would not be too “rubbery” or too realistic, while being able to achieve exaggerated movements. Beyond that, I found this fairly good stage; just time consuming in the grand scope of the project.
Moving on to the third stage: rigging. I had quite a fair amount of fun in designing the controls: their colour, shape, and designing them to be intuitive and clear. One aspect I did struggle on was the Constrain Parent Controls, whereby I assumed the child must be selected to be attached to the parent rather than the other way around. After hitting that little snag, I moved to the final stage of cleanup.
Upon cleanup, there weren’t many errors. I had some polishing of the knee control to the foot, hiding certain attributes, and that was pretty much it.
I attempted to apply Motion Capture data onto the skeleton with HumanIK, but faced a major issue with the final product. So instead, I did a rough walk cycle of Jerry walking for my Showreel.
Upon reflection, I feel it is so exciting to start this. I look forward to Challenge 2.
Challenge Two: Choice Character (Mr. Buttons Rig)
For Challenge Two, I was given a number of options of characters to choose from to Rig. I chose Mr. Buttons of the list, due to my personal preference towards characters with cartoon-like exaggerated anatomy rather than realistic character style as previously explored in Challenge 1.
Upon discussing the differences between Mr. Buttons as a rig and Jerry rig, there were some elements I noted: in terms of the addition of a tail, a bowtie, cuffs, and the mouth. I really wanted to incorporate some facial elements in so I decided to have Mr. Buttons are able to have its jaw bounce.
My first step was in identifying the Locators. For the most part, it was similar to the Jerry rig. I started by placing locators where I thought the joints would go. For the most part, I just followed the major anatomy points for the Jerry Rig (spine, arms, legs) allowing for some artistic interpretation. Then I dealt with the aspects which were a bit more different than the Jerry rig (tail, fingers, bowtie) by placing locators based on other creatures characters I have used.
For the bowtie, I wanted to use it as an exaggeration of Mr. Buttons' emotions. So when he would slouch in sadness, the bowtie would also droop in a downward C-curve. Whereas if he was happy, the bowtie would be in an upward C-curve, almost smiling. This would allow for more exciting character expression for him, which I felt really ready to explore.
Stage 1: Skeleton. The legs were fine, but I later encountered an issue with the ball joint which I oriented incorrectly causing the foot to bend at an angle I did not intend to bend. I fixed it with some guidance from my tutor, and I’m overall satisfied with how it turned out.
Although I faced no issues with the arms, I encountered an issue with fingers because I thought to place the joints in the middle for an exaggerated feeling, but actually the vertices I wanted to blend would show the joint placement would be better between all of the vertices I wanted; so I had to reorient them. Blending was fairly simpler due to Mr. Buttons having less vertices and edges than Jerry. I did have a bit of a tricky time with the spine because I didn’t know how to get the exact blending for rotations to feel okay. I did my best for the spine, but I’m not too happy with how it turned out.
Onward to rigging, I found the legs were tricky. The left leg was specifically uncooperative, and kept bending at strange angles. With additional guidance from my tutor, I think I fixed it. Upon solving it, I continuously debated whether to follow the rigging style I found in James Crossley’s video on Leg Rigging and make the character a lot more exaggerative. However, the geometry build and the objectives of what I wanted out of my character was different from what he would want to achieve, so I went on my way.
Spine through to the head was good. I wanted a pelvis control and a hips control, but they were too close together; so I differentiated them with different colours. I also alternated tail controls as well to keep a visual understanding of local space between controls. I wanted to make these controls intuitive and clear as mentioned in my research.
Challenge Three: Organic Modelling (Alien Model)
I struggled a fair amount with the actual modelling of the alien creature. The attention to detail required to model the creature was to the point where I wasn’t really able to concentrate as I was nitpicking the details. Upon this realisation, I recognised I need to pay closer attention to smaller details, as small details add up to form the big picture. An example was the mouth and lips, since I felt as though I couldn’t accurately capture the character exactly. Which I expressed to my tutor, who drew my attention to the difficulty of capturing a 2D image in 3D without a fair amount of experience. I tried my best, but I am ultimately not the happiest with it.
After which, I went on to the UV Layout for the eye, which I then encountered certain issues as I had a visual error with which side of the eye to choose. Lighting, rendering, and texturing followed without hindrance afterwards. If you see below, you will find a timelapse of my work post-modelling.
Overall, I am satisfied with my work.
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