Creating the Alien - Week 4

I was then ready to bind my finished rig to the model, I did this by using bind, smooth bind. So his body had a less rigid surface and felt more realistic. We had to tick certain boxes in the smooth bind menu to give him his correct influence, for instance I only upped the smooth by 1. I then went on to do the weight-painting which I found difficult at first, but after finding the colour graded view and the feathered edged brush it became alot easier. I also found myself moving the model round using the control points, seeing how the weight-painting effected the movements, using a large amount of trail and error to create the right flow. I mostly used the green and yellows, with blue on the sides to create a gentle fade but this mostly considered on the joint. For the mouth, and jaw joint I had to select the certain faces I wanted to paint, change the view to 'view only selected' and then go into paint-weighting, to create a more controlled environment and refined workspace so I could create a contrasted paint weight. So only the bottom half of the mouth would move.  I was also very careful when applying the eyebrows, creating a thin, feathered line. I lastly went down the list of controls, making sure I had not painted another part of the model in the background, and tested him out until everything was working as it should.

Next I added the attributes, the peel heel, tap toe, stand tip, twist toe, and twist heel to the foot controller, I then added the fist attribute to the hand controller, and blink to the eye adding the maximum and minimal values, mostly 10, 0 and -10 where necessary. I then opened the outliner window,  so I could select the driver. then selected the attribute and selected edit attribute. Making sure the foot controller was the driver, and the attribute's right rotational value was the driven. We then key framed the motion and made sure the attribute was on the right value. I did this to all the attributes in the feet before moving to the others, in the hand I had to select various joints in the hand, and use their rotational value as the driven, and the fist controller as the driver. We then key framed the fist movement in the same way, taking the thumbs movement into consideration. When considering how the model would blink, we had to start by using parent constraints. The eyeballs to the skeleton's eye ball movement, and the eyelids to the head skeleton. I then used set driven keys to create the blinking of the eyes, using the the eye control as the driver, and the mesh's rotational x value as the driven.

The forearm roll was probably the most complicated part of this process as it involved alot of thought and maths. I went into the Hypershade menu, and selected the multiply/divide option. Then I selected the wrist joint, then shift selected the multiply/divide, and then the forearm joint. I then opened up the Hypergraph window, and middle clicked the first in the chain, and dragged it to the second. This opened up a new window the 'connection editor' where I could place the inputs to the rotational values. This is where it got complicated for me, in the outputs, I had to choose the 'Input x 1' option, and in the inputs, we had to select rotation x. Confusing. After the options are highlighted you can close the window and it saves them, When applying the multiply/divide to the forearm, we had to choose the rotate x in the output, and select the forearm rotate value for the input. This took me a long time to understand, and seems to be a complicate way of doing things, but it has to be done this way for the chain to make sense, and the mulitply/divide has to come between the two joints, so I can set the multiply to 0.5, so the forearm only rotates half of what the wrist does. We do this by double clicking the multiply/divide in the Hypershade menu and change the inputs in the attribute editor.

The last thing I did was put in limits for the controls, so the joints could not bend in a way they could not, or should not. E.g elbows bending backwards. I did this by clicking on the control, going to either the rotation or translate tool (whichever applies), and ticking the max and min box's and setting your number manually in the attribute editor. I did this to all the necessary controls. I then went to mesh - smooth to give him a nicer texture and added a attribute to control it. I also had to fix an unforeseen problem as he seemed to fold in on himself, This was fixed by grouping all the layer together, but the eyes still remain the same size, I solved this by selecting the eyes, right clicking the layer and pressing remove selected from layer, and putting them into the geometry layer by right clicking on the layer and pressing 'insert selected into layer'. I then grouped all the layers together again and named it do not touch.

Although this process has been difficult for me, I am glad I have the skills I need to create a fully working model. It is something I shall practise and make sure I keep on top of, as it was a hard skill to learn and I do not want to forget it.