Minor - Blink Rig for Junior Character

After creating the controls for the character I have gone on to add colours and restrictions to these controls. I have also added a simple head rig with an eye follow rig. I used blend shapes to create a blink rig as well, to allow the character more eye movement. When creating the blink rig I realised I had too little geometry in the eyes. So I un-skinned the original head, saving the skin weights, and then added the geometry to allow the correct movement for a blink. I will now go on to texture the character and then finally create the 2d mouth rig before rendering some turn-arounds of the character.

Minor - Character Rig Body Controls Set Up

I have created the controls for the body of my character to allow me to easily move him around. Originally I was planning on using an IK/FK switch with the arms but whenever I created it on the right arm this would cause the hand to flip 90 degrees. I repeated the process several times and looked over my joints and rig set up but could not find the reasoning for the flip. So I decided to go with the standard arm controls that I have used previously. Also as I was working on the spine bend I noticed my ribbon spine had broke again. I had to create a new ribbon spine as I was again unaware as to why the original one broke, making it difficult to fix. But this caused issues with skinning due to new spine, Maya did not recognise the joints when it keeps the history for unbinding, so would not let me bind to the skin with this history. But after a bit of research and looking into the different skinning tools, I found the export skin weights tool worked for what I needed. It managed to keep the skin weights for the rest of the body, meaning I only had to re skin the three joints in the spine, rather than the whole character. I will now go on to create a rig for the head to allow that to move, an eye look rig with blink functionality, before going on to texture the character and adding the 2d facial rig.

Minor Project - Character Rig

I have created a rig for my Junior using a ribbon spine. For the forearms and shins I have also added an extra joint to allow falloff when rotating the wrist or ankle joint. Once skinned I will use a IK/FK switch for the characters arms and a no flip pole vector for the knee. I have already been experimenting these before skinning the rig just to confirm they will work for my rig and character.

Character Rig

Character Rig

Character Rig

IK Arm Controls

IK FK Switch

FK Arm Controls

Narrative - Characters Rigged and Skinned

Rig

Space Girl with rig and skinned

Space boy with rig and skinned

Space girl with rig and skinned

Space boy with rig and skinned

Fantastic Voyage - Character Development - Rigging

Today I added rigs to all three of my police cell characters. For two of them I also had to make eye constraints for eye movement. My next step will be to work on the characters textures and once that is finished I will be ready to animate them.