I've Been Rigging on the Max Cat!

Hey guys,

Well, I've gone through literally half a dozen face rigs since I last posted.

It makes me sad, because I really liked what I was doing with the shape keys that allowed me to get the pics you see in my previous posting, but I could never get them to work right.

Since then, I've tried other ways of rigging the face but I just can't seem to make anything work. Rigging a face is considerably more complicated than rigging the body. Either that, or I'm just making it difficult.

Still, I will continue to work until I find something that works for me. Now that I'm looking at the earlier pics, I really like what I see. Perhaps I will revisit the shape keys. That truly is the best looking expressions I've been able to produce.

I'll keep you posted!

Working on Max's Face Rig!

Hey guys!

I've been working on the rig controls for Max's face and I thought I'd share a couple of pics...

Angry...

Happy...

Worried...

Now, this may look pretty good but I've only created the shape keys. I still have to setup the controls which is what will give me the freedom I need to make all kinds of expressions.

So, I've still got a little way to go. I'll keep you posted.

Later!

Hey everyone,

I know. I said I was going to work on the face rigging but I thought it might be a good idea to try and test what I have of the rig so far.

Now, this is just a test. I wasn't worried about how smooth it looked or how believable the running appeared. I just wanted to test the rig, so I did four stages of the run and copied them over and over again.

This is what I got...



Now, I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with this. The rig is bending in all the right ways and all in all, for a quick little run cycle, this looks pretty good!

So, now I'll move on to rigging his face. Once that is done, I'll do a face test and if I'm happy with that I'll actually attempt an animation test that uses the complete rig!

I'll keep you posted.

Rigging Max is a Slow Process!

Hey guys!

Well, I know it's been a week since my last update, and that pic in my last post must have looked like I was really coming along, but my how things have changed.

There was a ton of things wrong with that first rig. Some of it was the rigs fault, some was the models fault. How could the model be to blame? Easy. It wasn't modeled in a way that allowed for the bones to move in a believable way. Specifically, the back legs weren't right and that made his legs look strange when bent.

But, after a few quick modifications to the model I was able to correct that problem. The next problem was deleting the rig that went with the old model and creating a new rig.

Thanks to Blender's (the software I use to create the models) "rigify" feature, creating the new rig wasn't a problem. The problem I've been having is tweaking the rig for a quadruped and making everything work.

I won't go into all that is involved when setting up a character rig. There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes and since this is the third time I've started over you can guess that it isn't the easiest thing for a beginner to learn.

But, after a week of working with the rig I think I've finally started learning how some of these things are done. Here is a couple of pics to demonstrate what I've been able to do...




Now, that may look done but there is still so much I have yet to do.

If you look closely, you'll see he's rather expressionless. That's what I have to do next, work on his face muscles. I figure it will be at least another week for me to figure that out.

Of course, I'll keep you posted!

Max Rig Coming Along!

Hey everyone,

I'm still working away on the Max rig. The good news is that I've got the first part of the rig set up and I can even put him in some basic poses.

Case in point...


So, at first glance, you'd think I'd be done. I'm afraid not. This is just the basic rigging. I still have to do the controls for his face and eyes but before I get started on that I have to work out the bugs in the basic rigging. You can't really tell from the picture above but the bones in his back legs just aren't meshing up right and I haven't even looked at the controls for which way the bones will bend. Right now, they bend in just about every way but that's not a good thing when it comes to animating knees and paws. Ouch!

So, I'm still a long way from being able to call the Max model fully rigged. As always, I'll keep you posted.

Later!

Still Plugging Away with Rigging!

Hey Guys,

Well, I'm still working on rigging the Max model. I'm trying a lot of new things and that is the reason for this delay when I've been rigging models in the past.

The things I'm trying to do are so much more complicated than previous models. How complicated? Well...


And that is just to get his limbs and head to move. I haven't even begun working on the controls for his face!

So, this is going to take a while. I will try to keep you updated as much as possible but I really have my work cut out for me. I'm hoping that if I get one model under my belt the others will be that much easier. If I ever finish this model and start working on another I'll let you know if that's true.

Talk to you later!

Falling Way Short on Figuring Out Rigging!

Well, time has come and gone on my hopes to get the Max rigging up and running by last week. I'm pretty disappointed in myself at the moment.

It isn't just rigging his bones that is holding me up. The truth is, that is pretty simple. What I'm trying to do is come up with a complete rig, one that moves his mouth, eyes, tongue, etc. It turns out this is much harder than I thought it would be.

So, for the time being, I'm not going to predict how long this will take. I get done when I get done.

I promise to keep you guys posted. Don't worry. I'm far from having given up on this movie. I fear, however, that I will be working on this for quite some time.

Perseverance will prevail!

Talk to you later.

Slowly Working My Way Back into Movie Mode!

Hey guys!

The holidays have come and gone and as you can tell by my lack of updates that I'm easing my way back into working on the movie.

Well, that is true. I haven't exactly been starting the new year running. The truth is that I'm pretty tired still and I am enjoying the time away from the movie for the time being. I really worked hard last year and it's been nice giving my brain a break for a while.

Still, I haven't exactly been doing nothing either. These last couple weeks I've been working on resolving the problem I've been having with rigging the Thomas model. I just can't seem to find the trick to making his shorts follow his bending legs and I must say it has been quite frustrating. Especially since I know the answer is staring me in the face and I just can't see it.

So, just as I did with T-Boom, I've decided to put Thomas on hold and try rigging a character that isn't wearing a costume...Max! I just started messing around with that this week so I'm really hoping to have a fully rigged Max by this time next week.

I'll let you know how that goes!

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.