Running Comp... I guess

While it still needs some tweaking and it's not actually rendered, obviously, here's my opening.

Oh and the teddy bear is missing but... let's not worry about that.

Old Man Rigging

Today has been... interesting to say the least with trying to rig the Old Man. Too many times I thought that I had everything ready to go to just rig and move on but I don't know when it happened but the rig was (trying not to swear here) buggered. The join orientation was all wrong for the legs and feet, I didn't realise this until I had skinned him (ok so there were some minor hints, like the foot controller was a different shape to what it should have looked like, but anyway...) so I had to go in and manually re-orient the joints basing it off the Little Girls rig which was a pain but I eventually got it done.
I'm currently weight painting the at the moment, all is currently going well (knock on wood), but I stopped for a moment to post this. I found an AMAZING script/tool for helping with weight painting. It worked perfectly with the Little Girl and at the moment it's working for the Old Man. Basically I can simply mirror the weight paints across (sure Maya has some stuff in built but this just works).
It came in handy with the Little Girl as some of the weight paints I did just seemed impossible/ridiculously tedious to try and replicate to the other side. I contemplated doing it all in Photoshop but I had already spent SO MUCH DAMN TIME playing in Photoshop with exporting and importing, and custom painting weight maps that I could no longer think properly. I decided to look around on the internet and yeah, here we are, happy that things are progressing at the much nicer pace.

Anyway, with all that said, I feel like I am so damn close to having everything in a scene soon, like Sunday even. I doubt it will take longer but hey, if I'm not there by then I'm going to email Jack like crazy with advice... or just cry.

Little Girl Rig

So. From what it seems the rig for the Little Girl is done. The hair works and so does the cloth, oh and the blend shapes (thanks again Jack). Sure it takes a little while to render but it looks so pretty. I could tweak the cloth a little but I've spent so damn long on this damn thing (holy balls did weight painting take a while but I think I have it down to a fine art now haha) that I'm sick of looking at it. The Old Man shouldn't take all that long to put together as I knew this was going to take ages, and I've learnt a lot doing this so yeah, he should be up a running in no time.

P.S. Yes the hair is just curves but it shows how they're dynamic and move when her head moves, the paint effects don't show in play blasts.

Update: Blend Shapes

Finally got my blend shapes working for the Little Girl. While they aren't fully implemented, no eyes and no eyebrows, I think it looks quite cool. Thanks to Jack for helping my tired self to remember just how to do this.

I should be posting here again soon with more little updates as things are just about ready (finally) to start animating.

Another Freaking Update

The Little Girl now has the skeleton and influences in, the hair parented into where it'll move with everything else, all that needs to be done to this is the auto rigger. I know it's not where I should be but it's ready to go.
Also, little side note, this one is for nCloth. I only want to use it for one scene, I've read about how to implement it easily enough BUT I do have another option. I've put a separate rig aside that won't have nCloth, it's just the mesh.
By Tuesdays class I won't have the rigs finished, they will be ready to go though, I just want Jack to check over everything first, mainly the influences cos I'm not feeling too great about the placement at the moment.

Updates Updates Updates.

So, here we are, coming into week 11. I am behind where I'd like to be but I am trying to get up to speed.
I've got some blend shapes together for the Little Girl, and her hair is basically done. Her rig is basically ready to go too, same with the Old Man.
As for the bedroom it's almost all coloured/textured which is nice.
Before the next production class I'd like to have my scenes all broken up and ready to go. I have all the cameras in one scene at the moment locked down. It would be really handy to have all the scenes referencing the models because I need to start animating but things haven't been finished so that would make it so much easier to go back and finish things up later on and not have to import things into 10 different scenes.
I'd also like to have my characters done. I'm so close to that but I keep getting distracted by the little things that it's just not getting done.

Anyway. Better get back to it.