Facial Rig: Trouble Shooting Occurrence

Over the weekend, I planned to have my rig finished by Sunday. However, I ran into some issues that I was unsure of how to trouble shoot. After conducting research and seeking my instructor for some guidance, I figured out what the issue was and was  able to solve it. Even though this issue may seem minor to others, or just something that I should have already known about, I am still in the process of learning through trial and error so that I can increase my technical art abilities and problem solving skills for future, more complex projects.

Problem: The issue that I was running into was when I was trying to create a point-to-poly constraint from a vertex to a locator. My process: click on the vertex, command-click the locator, and then create a point-to-poly constraint with the Maintain Offset off. When I performed this operation, the locator was not constraining to the selected vertex, but instead was constrained to a random vertex on the head.

Solution: After conducting some research, I realized that the UV map of the mesh makes a really big difference when constraining to the mesh. Once I looked at the UV map, the UV's were not mapped out properly (or at all). Most of the UV's were lying on top of one another and were not unfolded. From there, I had to re-map the head mesh entirely for a more proper layout. Once the mesh's were re-mapped, the point-to-poly constraint worked perfectly.

Update: Facial Rig

This week I have been working on the blend shapes for my facial rig! I plan to have the first version of it completed by Sunday. As always, critiques are highly encouraged and very much appreciated, so please just let me know what you think! Thank you all for help and encouragement! :)

Robot Rig Update

I decided to edit my Robot Rig by taking out the clavicle control and IK Handle all together. In agreement to the critiques I received on it, the clavicles ruined the illusion of it being a mechanical character, so it seemed best to just do away with it. Here is a short motion test to show how the rig moves now. The rig was pretty excited about the change, so he decided to give you guys a little wave at the end of the video! Anyways, feel free to critique the rig. All critiques are highly encouraged and very much appreciated. Thank you. :) 

Facial Rig: Work in Progress #1

Currently I am working on a facial rig. The model is just of a simple head mesh. All that is created right now is the head, jaw, eye ball, and eye lid joints. The joints are not bound to the mesh yet as I still have to create joints on the face for extra, settle movements for the animator to take advantage of. I created the joints for the eyelids by using the "fan" method. There are three joints chains for the top eyelid, and three joint chains for the bottom eyelids as well. Using expressions, I have made it to where the eyelids correspond to the movements of the eyeball. Example: if the eyeballs look down, the top eyelids will follow the eyeball down, and the bottom eyelids will go down as well. If the eyeball looks up, the top eyelids will go up, as well as the bottom eyelids, etc.

Once I have finished creating blend shapes, the controls for the blend shapes, the joints on specific parts of the face, and am ready to start binding the skin to the joints, I will also add in a "skin tug" around the eye by adding in a very low influence paint weight on the vertices that are located immediately around the eyeball, to create a more realistic look. I plan to create joints for the ears to create settle movements of the ears moving up and down, so the character can be more expressive.

I have attached photos of what my project current looks like. Once I am able to bind the skin, I will post up a motion test video. Thank you for your time and interest! I am excited to see how this rig turns out.

Robot Rig Finished

Today I finished a rig that I have been working on for the past week and a half. Since the model is of a robot, I wanted to make the rig fairly simple but to the point so that it has the functionalities that it needs. I created an IKFK switch for the arms, and a visibility swap for the IK and FK controls as well so it makes it easier for the animator to deal with. The clavicles were created with IK handles (single chain) so that the animator can create more achievable movements with the character. The legs are IK and I created the switch-foot system for the feet so there would also be more achievable and realistic movements for the feet, as well. At last, I created a variety of attributes for the hands using the SDK method. Each finger is able to curl and spread on its own, I created a thumb drop for a more realistic thumb, and there are also attributes for the entire hand such as a "fist" and "spread" so that all of the fingers move at the same time.

As every rigging artist deals with, I encountered several problems with the rig as I was creating it. I was making some minor, amateur mistakes such as using the wrong kind of constraints, having things parented in the wrong places, constraining the wrong things, etc. I was also running into rotation issues with the arm systems when I constrained the Pole Vector control to the it's IKhandle. Once I redrew my joints, double checking to make sure that my arms were planar with a slight bend in the arm systems, I was able to correct my mistake. Now that I have completed the rig, I was able to learn from my mistakes and I feel a lot more confident about my rigging skills now.

The only script used on this rig was a padding script for the joints just for the sake of saving me some time. Other than that, everything was created manually. There is not a face on this model, so I did not have to worry about doing a facial rig or blend shapes for this model. I am highly encouraging critiques on this rig and appreciate them as well! I feel like it is at a finished point, but there is ALWAYS room for improvement so I would love to hear from other fellow riggers and make any improvements to it that are needed. Thank you, in advance!

Animation Production: Final Movie

Last month, my team and I (five people total) collaborated to create an animated short about a clumsy male rescuing his damsel in distress who is tied up in a room. As previously posted, I animated shots three and 11 while my team animated the other parts of the movie. For the final movie, we added in a few sound effects as well as background music to enhance the movie a little bit. This movie is not a fully rendered out scene, we just created a play blast from the Maya scene.

We had a lot of fun with project and are all pleased with the turnout of our final project. I hope you enjoy it as well!