Cedric

finally cedric is perfect... apart from texturing. the fave works wonderfully, after adding an edge loop in the eyebrow, the controlls now have some decent geometry to move and make shapes with. the only thing that bugs me is i need to find what to parent the eyes , teeth , moustash and eyebrows to, to stop them from not moving with the head, i think it may be a case of i forgot to define their geometry while in face machine...*sigh.. back to the grind!

Facial Rigging mark 88

well this must be the 20th time iv had to type in the TFM-*"^"*&^*"E*^E&*T code to load up the damn face machine programme.. and i would like to stay synical about the whole thing but in truth it has saved me a lot of time in trying to find online tutorials and understand them- not to mention the fact it does an impecable job. so i am only a few paint weights behind having my second fully working second rig! however this hasn't been completely smooth. Yesterday i found a flaw, after painting the final weights and more ajustments, i tried to rotate the head up and the chest cavity came clean out of the shirt. Back to work ....

exclusion sets

Just a quick note,exclusion sets cut out a lot of time when it comes to paining weights, as with the webbed hands fiasco, i managed to solve a problem where the legs affected each other and the stomach. This almost looked cool as the portly gents abdomen appeared to bounce, though i think i may have to add an influence object or some blend weights to pull this off properly

Webbed hands

Today i have started to use 'The Setup Machine' and am in the process of rigging my character, after defining the character to the machine, it snaps all its joints and artificial limbs to my somewhat hollow character. Over all this has worked very well, and left me with just a few weights to paint but wait, what happens when i move the finger?! NO thats not right, i have somehow made webbed hands, and now i have aqua man dressed as a farmer.. with a lot of luck, Matt is a fountain of maya knowledge, and spotted a quick solution for me ( well, i say quick ). what i have to do is select the vertices on an individual finger and then through the setup machine, i define an exclusion set, then exclude it from any fingers that may be having an effect on it, i.e. if i want the middle finger to work i have to exclude it from the index and the ring finger , but also have those excluded from the middle finger too- if that makes any sense. Onwards and forwards!

More Man in the mountain

d's stuff