Back From Vacation!

Hey guys,

Sorry it's been so long since my last post.  I took vacation last week and for once I honestly took a break from everything I've been working on and just decompressed.

Now I've been back for a couple of days and despite my lack of posts (March is going to look like I haven't been doing much but that is farthest from the truth) I've honestly been working hard on the movie this week.  

T-Boom has been taking up all of my time.  I started off by rigging him but that didn't go very well.  Unlike the rigs I used for my movie short, the rigs for this movie are very complex.  The complexity makes them difficult to work with.  Well, difficult for beginners I think. 

Anyway, after some research I discovered the reasons it wasn't working was because I still didn't have my model built properly.  I decided to do away with all clothing and start over again.  In the end, I ended up building all clothing separate from the main mesh and set up masks to hide the parts under the clothing (something I learned from Dr. Huffenagle and his trench coat in the movie short).

In the end, I now have tighter fitting clothes and a better hoodie, better from a construction point of view.

So, once again, here is the comparison with T-Boom mark II and T-Boom mark III...

Honestly, based on the render, the only way you could probably tell I re-worked him from a couple of weeks ago (see pic in post below) is that the pattern on his shorts is different and, as I mentioned before, his clothes fit tighter. 

But, that is not all.  I also have him completely rigged!  That's right, I can move him in any and all directions now.  All I have left to do is set up the shape keys for his facial expressions and speech. I hope to have that done in the next couple of days. After I get all that done I think I'll do a quick animation with the new T-Boom model.  Give him a test run and see how he works.  That probably won't be done until later next week.

So, if you don't hear from me for the next week or so don't worry.  I'm working very hard on the movie.

Later!