A Time Apart: Doris RIG COMPLETED!!!!!

So I have done the last of Doris's rig which was to make blendshapes for the eyebrows and plug them in, I had a problem where the original blendshape would jump to the location of the target blendshape - this was because I froze the transformations on the target blendshapes which you're not supposed to do, I fixed this by re duplicating the original eyebrows, moved them up the same value and this time I didn't freeze the transformation - I left the values. I aim to have Rosa's rig completed by the end of this weekend - that is my goal so here we go!

Below are some facial expressions I made to test the rig and below that is her rig demo!

A Time Apart: Doris Lateral Mouth Movements

Today and yesterday I have been trying to do the lateral mouth shapes on Doris, I'm not 100% happy with her mouth shapes but I think I've done an OK enough job, below are a couple mouth shapes I have done just to test the rig. All that's left is the eyebrows then that's Doris complete!

A Time Apart: Doris and Rosa Mouth Rigs and Extra Facial Controls

These screenshots demonstrate the mouth rig and extra facial controls are completed and working correctly, however, the lateral mouth blendshapes are not done yet. I decided to do the extra facial controls before the blendshapes because I knew roughly what to do without having to look back at the tutorial video and felt I could achieve more today by doing it in this order.

Left to do: Lateral mouth movements and eyebrow blendshapes. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to give my characters sticky eyes, (where the eyelid moves slightly with the eyes) and the squash and stretch because of time mainly.

A Time Apart: Doris Facial Rigging - Head Controls/Cheek thinning/Blink CTRLs/Eye Look/Tongue

After being silent for a few days on blogger here's a progress post of Doris, but before that here's a little bit of what I've been up to the past few days... Wednesday I had animation class where I attempted to fix my Fred "hot" animation and my half character's demo reel stomp as both were missing the follow-through/overlapping animation which I struggled with animating so I'm not posting it until after next week's lesson. Thursday I went to the VFX festival with Rachael at the Southbank Centre in London where we listened to talks from different studios in the industry - you can read about it from Rachael HERE. Friday I took a day out from computer work to film my animation reference that I still need to edit together - thanks again to those who helped me: Jen, Laura, Jesus and Tom.

Yesterday I was skinning Doris's head and putting in the controls: so far I've done jaw rotation, cheek thinning, tongue controls, and the eye look rig with a blink. (Last night I was having problems with the pose space deformers so I took a break and came back to it with fresh eyes this morning), whilst this is fresh in my memory I'm going to do the same for Rosa now before moving on to mouth controls and lateral mouth movement.

 

A Time Apart: Doris Body Rigging Complete

Today so far I have completed the body rig, except for one problem - the scale constrains don't seem to work. I have scale constrains on the spine bind jnts, all the rivets, and I have tested all the groups with inherit transforms in case I was getting any double transformation... I can't figure out what's gone wrong. (Left image is when I shrunk the world control to a scale of 0.15 and the right image is a scale of 2).

Also my coat rig isn't working as it should either... (Below image)

Other than that all seems to be working.

A Time Apart: Today's Progress - 01/02/2019

Today has been a fairly productive day! I've been modelling what indoor (poor condition) Fred will look like. He has longer scruffier hair, messed up collars and part of his undershirt hanging out untucked - I will be relying heavily on textures to make it completely obvious his poor state, I plan to fill the hole between collar and neck but I don't know the best way to do this because of the UV mapping and skinning.

 I have also created the coat rigs for both Rosa and Doris meaning Rosa's body is animation ready - time to move on to the head for Rosa, I've started setting up body controls for Doris which will be finished tomorrow.

A Time Apart: Doris Body Skinning

Today I have skinned the majority of Doris's body all thats left is to rig it/put in controls, rivet script the buttons and create the coat rig which I will do tomorrow. I am very pleased with the time it took me to do this in comparison to when I was skinning Fred - I have definitely improved and remembered more than I expected too. Today I also started skinning Rosa's legs but I haven't done much to warrant a post.

Little detail is when the arms are held out in front of her her collar bends against her arms.

 

When I was skinning Fred a problem I had other than the space deformers playing up was I hadn't blended the weights correctly but I think I have done it much better this time round. Also I was able to skin the hand (especially the thumb) faster too.