~Problems,problems - More or less managed to fix, as of 10/05/2009~

Okay, so I'm going to do my best to explain problems I am having. Quite simply, my finished character is not in a position to be animated well. The Scabbard, the ponytail, hell even the eyes and part of the face just screw up upon even moving any part of the character. The hands just rotate into the body and over all, it's complete rookie newbie mistakes, of which I am just that. I am new to this stuff, and I overestimated myself. Just from posing him I have to sit there and rectify many issues in the model to get it to look any good. Consider this posed screenshot for a moment :It took me quite some time tweaking, pushing and pulling vertices and such to get it to look as it does now. If I were animating... Jeez, It would look utter crap. Now, I can't make decisions untill I speak to Alan. (Yes, today was a 'go in if you need help day') but these issues did not arrise till an hour or so ago (It is 12;30 am currently).
Time restraints and lack of experience have made it difficult, I got over confident with my previous character. As someone who is trying to over come his defeatist issues, it would be remiss of me to give up now. I shant do that. However, combined with lack of blendshapes, pretty shoddy texturing, and no normal mapping, I am extremely unhappy. It feels as if I have just taken a gigantic leap back to the start of the second year, and I don't like it.

As of now, I'm not sure I can get the animations that I had planned done. Not without a complete rerig/skin, and then setting up blendshapes. Which anyone whom produces characters will know, is a hefty progress in its self. Let alone doing that for two characters. Right now, I am thinking of completing my boat scene, of which I have been working on today. Also completing my second character, and then posing both characters freeze frame fighting each other. This means there will be no animation, just a still render of two characters. If I were to take this path it would open up a lot more time for me to work on relaying out the UVs on Hal, and completely retexturing him. Gaining me vitally needed knowledge and experience in character texturing. I planned to really get rigging/skinning and animating down over the Summer, and this would make that plan even more important.

Now, the aforementioned idea of course can not be put into action untill I speak to Alan. Perhaps it's not as bad as it seems. However he is not in Uni now untill next week. But I shant waste a weekend, I will complete the texturing of Schreuder, and complete the texturing of the boat in the mean time. I also have to find out if this is an okay compromise. I know for a fact that my Dissertation synopsis didn't go as well as planned, and now this... What a way to finish the second year. The previously mentioned statement of taking a huge step back to the beginning of this year seems truer then ever right now. I am gutted with myself for letting this situation come to this, and if there's one thing I know now. This will never happen again.

I think Ill go in at some point to spak to Phil in general about my studies. I began to really become proud of my work, and my confidence for once was actually getting better. But right now, I just don't know. I need some advice and such I guess.

9/05/2009

Okay, so today I decided to try and fix my character rig. It took quite some hours of reworking the constraints. But now the rig works fully. When I rotate the master control the whole body rotates, and the arms move with it. Both Inverse Kinematics and Forward Kinematics on the arms work completely now too. Not too mention I managed to get the sword moving in the hand nicely, the hair moving too, and the sword sheath is working. Just one problem remains with the tail of his coat. So I am quite happy with the progress there. I just learnt a hell of a lot in constraining control curves to joints, and to each other. In general it was very beneficial to me to sit here and try and work this out for myself, whilst also asking Paul about certain things as he has had these problems and over come them already. So my character has gone from an utter state to being animateable again. Things might be okay after all. Let's just pray I don't run into similar problems with my other character rig -_-
I will upload some footage shortly to Youtube of the rig in action.
Here he is fully rigged and skinned. Everything works, the main control moves it all fine. The arms work in IK and FK mode. I remade the eyes with locators also to control where they look. The sword is now attached to the hand and moves with the hand perfectly. Also the sheaf is now just parented to a joint, instead of skinned to one. So it's more practical and works nicely.


Also here is the ships progress.

1 comment:

tutorphil said...

Hi Jonny - you suggested I read this post (actually, I'd read it previously), but if it was because you'd hope I'd leave some words of encouragement for you, you're out of luck - and why? Well, because it seems to me that you don't those words of encouragement to bounce you out of a negative place, for it seems you managed that on your own - or at least, by talking with Pol and taking your problems in hand and pushing through your downer; this behaviour of yours looks suspiciously like independent learning and problem-solving skills, which rather means that you no longer need a man with receding hair and a silly beard to encourage you to fulfil your potential... it's within you, Jonny - it always was; your biggest fight has always been with yourself - and despite the creative compromises you're having to make, and whatever the outcome of your transcription project and essay - I believe you've had a transformative year 2 and your 3rd year is looking very promising indeed.

About Me

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I am a video game artist at Dovetail games, working on Train Simulator 2014, 2015 and an unannounced title. I also graduated from the CG Arts course at UCA in 2010 with a First Class. www.jonstewart.co.uk