Sunday 26 December 2010

Painting weights is a pain in the ass!

Once again I have come undone at painting weights. For some reason Maya is being very temperamental and not holding the weights I paint. Everytime I paint an area for a certain joint and press hold, then click on something else and click back on the joint I just painted all the work I do seems to vanish and I get a random mess instead. I have spent ages trying to get this to work but no success yet. I would really like to know if its just my copy of maya being weird...

Stretchy limbs tutorial

To create the stretchy limbs I ended up using a tutorial from youtube which for the most part is quite easy to follow. It basically involves using three utility nodes : distance, condition and multiply/divide; which are then hooked into the joints and each other.

I was also given a tutorial by Dan on how to create stretchy limbs which involved using the expression editor. I started off with that method but ran into some problems, which I discussed with Clym. He then recommended me the tutorial on youtube which I had much less hassle with. I personally prefer using the utility nodes over the expression editor as I find it easier now.

Wednesday 8 December 2010

More hurdles and progress.

I think my brain is slowly taking it all in and I am starting to feel I can problem solve issues. That being said I have asked Clym for his expert help a few times as I needed guidance. The rig at the moment has stretchy limbs/arms and torso, locators and a reverse footlock. I have managed to get the reverse footlock working well with the stretch and it is causing no problems at the moment. Earlier I added bend to the wrists and I have been working on skinning the skeleton to the mesh.

I have also just begun learning maya muscle as this is the area of rigging I would like to know the most, mainly down to the fact that alot of the models I make are quite realistic and I would love to be able to get realistic jiggle/flex in the muscles. I will continue learning that and see how it goes.