Character and Narrative - Week 5 Summary

This week I completed the rigs added blendshapes for facial deformations and set driven keys to drive the blendshapes visually. I also skinned the characters which was a lengthy process, it was definitely a challenge skinning both the clothing and the body to the skeleton because i had to make sure both meshes were skinned so that there was no overlapping even in extreme poses but still had to make sure it moved like clothing. I spent a while during the skinning process on the shaman for this reason, i made use of the component editor alot to see how the vertices were being influenced if they were not how i wanted them. I found totsi alot easier to skin because her coat, although having more components moves more uniformly to the body Although the tassels at the bottom of her coat didn't skin well so instead of spending hours skinning them i just created an alteration blendshape for them. Because I'm working with Brenda on this project and she doesn't have much knowledge of maya i have made the rigs as user friendly as i can by locking and hiding unused attributes, appropriately naming controllers and appropriately shaping and placing controllers. I feel like I've learnt alot from modelling and rigging these characters and i think having a good mindset is important in learning these skills or any skill in fact. For example if i had a problem, getting angry or discouraged isnt going to help anything but appreciating the problem as a way to learn the program/skill further is a much more healthy and productive way of learning new skills.