Week 8

Rigging (continued)

Before continuing the rig, i decided to add a little more detail to the mesh and make some final changes.

firstly i added slightly more definition to the feet by making a big toe shape. this just adds more detail without affecting the face count very much.

the next step was to add fingers which could be animated. to do this i decided to start the hands again, as it would take longer to try and fix the current hands.

the outcome is shown above. i gave each finger three points to bend, and kept the palm very simple.

the final tweak was to slim down the arms and thighs, as they were too large when i tried animating with the previous rig, and crossed over too much when the arms/legs bent.

i refined the character rig by adding more control objects, which allowed for more controlled bone movement.

i added controllers for the head and both eyes. the head controller is linked with an orientation constraint to the control object. the eye bones are linked to the head bone. the eye objects each have a control object with an orientation constraint. the controllers are linked to the head. finally the head control object is linked to the root so that it stays with the body.

constraints allow good control over rotation without affecting the position or IK chains.

i changed the rig for the arms to allow more control.

here is the new arm rig:

the purple controller is for the elbow rotation. this allows the arm to be rotated independent of the bend. is used 'pick target' to select a target for the IK chain to follow. moving the control up and down rotates the arm at the elbow.

the green controller is linked to the IK chain to move the arm, as well as being linked to the hand as a constraint, to allow rotation. this gives lots of control for different postures.

the last control is also connected to the green sphere. the sphere has a two custom parameters (circled in red) which control the fingers and thumb. i decided that moving all the fingers at once was high enough detail for this character. to create the movement the parameters were wired to the rotation values of the fingers, and the same for the thumb. this creates an easy control for the finger movements without any IK.

the last change was to add targets for the knees, using the same method as the elbows.

the rig is now complete with a lot more control than the first attempt.