Final Conclusion

The project is finally finished and i am in some ways relieved. It has been a long 9 weeks of intense concentration and patience and in the end i did learn a hell of a lot.

In the beginning i said that i wanted to do the whole process of conceptualization, modelling, texturing, rigging and then finally animating it for one single character.

The modelling stage was thoroughly enjoyable and it is an area that i am definately interested in going into. I followed some tutorials which i got off the web and that was a major part in me getting through the first hurdles of modelling and from there on i never looked back.

The UV mapping was a major headache for me as i struggled to learn it. The main problem was choosing the right form of mapping for my model and i never really decided whether i wanted to planar map it or automaticallly map it first. In the end i chose to automatically map it and then texture it. I feel as though i haven't fully learned how to UV map and that is something i will work on and rectify over the holidays.

UV mapping is still an area that appeals to me and i am gonna work on it and improve my skills so it becomes second nature to me as with anything in maya.

Rigging was interesting and i had mixed feelings about it but learnt alot. I found out that when i was rigging, my model should have have been modelled seperately and not as a one entity. It's something that i will take into account and also that was one of the reasons why UV mapping was difficult for me as i combined the hold mesh and i couldn't take it apart for mapping.

Putting in the skeletons was pretty easy, especially if you know your human anatomy. The paint weighting stage of the model was frustrating as the amount of time it took to paint it and get it right was a long process. I also found out while paint weighting that there were still problems with the geometry of the model and that is something that i will work on when i model in future.

Animating the character was fun but i didn't really spend a lot of time on it because of the other areas i had to work on. Using the Richard Williams Animator's Survival Kit Book was a really good point of refrence and it teaches you the basics of animation and its principles. A really good book and one that should be with everyone for life. Animation is an area that i will also look to improve upon as well as the other areas that i mentioned.

Overall i think i have learnt and improved in most of the areas that i have explored for this project. I will continue to learn and improve and take what i have learnt so far and build on it.

IK handles placed and Walk Animated

i have placed the IK handles on the model and that was pretty much very easy to do. I didn't fully rig the model because the IK handles that i have placed should give me a competent moving rig and animation on the model.

For the walk animation, i used the Richard Williams Animator's Survival Kit book as refence for my animation. In the book, there is a page where it shows you how to do a 2D walk cycle and i basically applied the same principles on the 3D character model.

This is the first test that i did with the IK handles and the walk animation. I hid the mesh so i can see what the animation looks like on its own with the rig and handles.

The animation is okay but could definately be better.

Here is the walk animation cycle with the mesh and it looks again average but its gonna have to do for now.

So this is the final animation rendered and surrounded by textured backgrounds.

Textured Model

Ok so i have textured the model using simple colours as i intended and i think its come out pretty decent.

So as you can see here is the model and its been textured pretty much all the way.

I did consider putting a logo on his T-Shirt, like a london zoo logo with some creature designs but i just ran out of time.

Rigging & Paint Weighting

Haven't posted in a while so here's what i have done so far.

I decided to start rigging the character first rather then texture it as i wanted to get the more time consuming rigging out of the way.

I pretty much started putting the skeleton joints in the mesh from scratch and i was following a specific tutorial in placing and position the joints in the correct way. Its all based on the human anatomy and if you know where your joints are in your body then you just apply the same principles into the model.

Once i have finished putting the joints in the model i then binded it together as one entity. The process is called skin bind. After that was done i then started on the paint weighting of the model.

Paint weighting is important as it adds weight to the model, this will help to keep the mesh in place. So when your animating, the mesh will stay intact and will not go all over the place.

When your paint weighting, you basically paint on to the model like a brush. The white area is where the weight is applied and the black area in the model is where there is no weight applied.

I have come across problems during paint weighting. One of them was that my macbook couldn't handle the paint weighting process and kept quitting. So i decided to use a PC and also upgraded from using Maya 8.5 to Maya 2010. I did purely because it was the only version of maya that was on the PC at Ravensbourne.

So as i expected, paint weighting was time consuming as with anything in Maya. Once paint weighting was done at around 70%, my next stage was to start putting in the IK handles which will help to animate the character. The reason why i stopped at half way at paint weighting was because putting in the IK handle and animating it revealed more anamoly on the mesh of the model. So thats why im gonna paint weight it more when i put in the IK handles on the model.