Dissertation finished

After a three week extension the dissertation is finished. if im honest i think the film has taken another hit because of it and the speeed of which i am working needs to be doubled.

A test with a bit of depth

This is just a little mess around ive had with the character as she stands at the moment! obviously their are areas of her model still missing and areas of her not yet textured. But for now shes looking quite funky.heres a render test i have done with a bit of lighting and depth of field, it is a shot from the film, and i am reasonably happy with the result! obviously its not the finished piece but its a step in the right direction.

There may be trouble!

I have run into quite a BIG snag! My blendshapes have encountered quite a massive error and will have to be re done. What has happened is that the movement on the jaw does not effect the mesh when a blend shape has been applied. This can be fixed via the meshes input option, but considering that the head has been combined with the body, the input does not recognize this as the origin for the blendshapes and as such will not do as its bloody told! I am having to redo all the blendshapes which is a pain. Unfortunately i cannot get a screenshot showing the where the error has occurred, so below are images showing the knew blendshapes as they are.

The good old tongue

I have rigged the mouth. I used clusters on the tongue and an IK spline to give the animator the opportunity to play around more freely with the rotation and movement of the tongue. Below are images showing this.

The jaw rigged and ready!

The jaw has now been rigged quite nicely. I have rigged it so that the animator has the freedom to rotate the jaw on the X,Y, and Z axis. It should provide some nice movement. Below are images showing what has been done.

Set driven keys

Set driven keys give the animator an easier time of controlling your rig. I have created set driven keys around the fingers and feet, this was at the request of our project director. Below i show the image of the full body rig, and the set driven keys that are assigned to the curves shaped like hands.

The Rigging

I have almost finished the layout for the rig. I have included curves that act as controls for certain areas of the rig, such as around the arms, the waist, the jaws, legs, etc. This will make it easier for the animator to work with! the following images show the layout of the rig!

This Weeks Agenda

This week is going to be a challenging one in regards to my 3D skills. I am setting myself the target of properly rigging a character, This may over run this week as it is an area i have not tackled since the first year of my animation course!