Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday Everyone!

Hey guys!

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to all of you!

I wish I could say that I've been busy on the movie since my last posting but the truth is that I've accomplished very little. That's not to say I haven't been working hard, but I just haven't been able to solve the problem I've had with rigging the clothing yet.

And, now that the holidays are upon us, I seriously doubt I'll be working much on the movie these next couple of weeks.

Don't worry though. I know I'll have a few spare hours to work on the movie and if I have anything worth reporting I will certainly let you know.

Until then, let me say that this has been an excellent year for the film. It may be true to say that I'm no further along at the end of the year than I was at the beginning but if you take a look back through this year's postings you'll see I've actually accomplished quite a lot. I absolutely love that I took the time to redesign the characters. I'm so please with what I've learning this year concerning modeling and I'm even more pleased I took the time to apply that knowledge toward what is truly my most prized project. I love all these characters so much and I think that is finally starting to reflect in the work.

So, for the time being, if I don't have time to post another entry this year, everyone have a truly wonderful holiday season with a spectacular new year!

2012 is going to be a great year for Xam and Power Dog and I can't wait to get it started!

Moved on to Rig Thomas!

Sorry it's been a while since my last post. I know, I said I was going to have the T-Boom model rigged by the beginning of the week (which was yesterday).

Surprise, surprise. I kept running into problems that I just haven't been able to figure out. The main problem is his hoodie. I just can't get the hoodie to conform with the moving mesh. I know there's a little secret I'm missing, but I just haven't been able to figure it out.

So, I thought I'd move on to a model without a hoodie. I decided to go with Thomas and so far that has proven to be a good choice. Here are a couple of pics of Thomas. The first is his default pose and in the other two I've moved his arms and hands...




The reason I decided to go with the Thomas model is that I'm going to have something of a similar problem with Thomas as I had with T-Boom and that is that his pants are separate from his body, just like T-Boom's hoodie. While I was working with T-Boom, his pants were something of a problem. Of course, I'm having the same trouble with Thomas since they're both basically wearing the same pants (only mapped with a different texture). So, now that I've got the arms moving I will tackle the pants problem.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, here's what happens when I move Thomas' leg...


As you can see, his leg goes right through his pants. That clearly won't work so I'll be hitting the internet again trying to figure out how to prevent this.

I'm hoping that figuring out the pants will give me some insight on how to fix the hoodie problem.

I'll let you know how that goes.