Telling Tales: Modelling My Own Character - From Texture To Painting Weights

I have done a lot of work on my model since my last blog post. Since then, I have created the skeleton, made the controls, created constraints on said skeleton and controls and connected them accordingly. I have also bound the body mesh to the skeleton and painted the influence weights. For the most part I had to follow the video guides that Mat had provided us with, as it was a long process and I couldn't quite remember how to do everything, and I wanted to make sure I did it right so I didn't reall encounter too many problems. I had to get help when it came to making the arm IK handles as I was unsure how to do this, and I had made the odd mistake that Mat helped me to put right (for instance having single chain IK handles in the legs rather than rotate-plane) but other than that I didn't find the process too difficult as it didn't differ from my first experience doing it.

My Controls

When it came to connecting my controllers, I soon realised that I didn't need all the ones that I had made (I.E the forearm roll, the elbow and the shoulder) due to having IK arm handles. Had I have realised this sooner I would have saved myself a fair bit of time, as I wouldn't have had to shape the controller, position it, create a null group for it and set up a constraint. It wasn't a massive hinderance to remove, but I definitely know for next time that the controllers are going to be different if I am using IK handles.

 Weight Painting - Before

I definitely found painting weights much less frustraiting this time around. For some reason on my demo character, my painted weights kept resetting (in the fingers especially) which was making me very frustraited. It also made it very hard for me to make the mesh do as I wanted. I think this was down to how the mesh was bound to the skeleton, but I can't say for certain, but just as a small experiment when I was at the binding stage, I decreased the maximum influences to see if this would work better, and I didn't seem to have any problems in terms of the paintings refreshing, so I guess it must have worked.

 Weight Painting - After

There isn't much left to do with my character now. I will probably have another look over my weight painting to make sure everything is working correctly and get another opinion on it, but then I've just got a few finishing touches to add; I couldn't be happier.