Next rig and updates on the previous rig.

I was about to update a week earlier, but I can't turn back time, so I will just say what it was about. I have been doing corrections after corrections on the previous rig, and now i finally can move on to my next new rig, which is the mum of the first character.

To give an overview of the Mum character (sorry no pictures), she is of normal human proportions but it is her dressing method that needs some work. She is wearing a cardigan and a mid knee length skirt. the cardigan is a little bit loose and the skirt have to be simulated with nCloth. Both clothings will have to be sim-ed. I will be doing more research on that section and doing more improvements on the first rig since that is our most important character.

Our supervisor, have been going through the character designs, once there is a change, it goes down the whole pipeline. Design gets affected, model needs changes, rig have to be redone 50% (edits) and animation have to be put on hold (same for the rest of the pipeline).

Our layout artist, which is also our storyboard artist is having a very hard time since our supervisor keeps making changes to the storyboard/2D/3D layout, thus, she has to keep on making the changes and that slowed down production time a lot.

I hope I still have time to update on this blog on our progress and my progress, still, no promises.

2 months forwards, and 2 months behind

It has been 2 months since I have updated, there is not much to say actually. First, I will start off by saying that our production is 2 months behind (actually that is what I like to think, but it is actually 2 weeks behind). There is a lot of design changes in the characters and this caused changes in the models, without the models I could not rig anything and the animators are stuck with nothing to do.

The design of the characters came out late, and coupled with my rusty rigging skills from not doing any rigs for around half a year, I took around 2-3 weeks, with adjustments and test rigs adding up to 3-4 weeks total for the main character (I am still tweaking for . However, that is not only what I did for that whole time period, I did the rig for 2 more characters, still primary characters, one in T-pose one in A-pose.

I don't think I can post any of the production stuff here since it is meant to be private and confidential and it is part of production secrecy. However, I think our director is setting up a websiite for our WIPs and I will update as soon as that kicks in. Until then, I think I can just post the controls I did for the main character.

Whole control setup, althou not finished yet.

The unfinished part is the lower lips part, figured it was more logical to have upper and lower lips control.
P.S. Our main character's name is called Mei Ling.

Eye aim controls, the slider controls pupil size.

FK setup, can switch with the "EX" control in the background.

IK setup, "EX" control highlighted.

Well, I try my best to provide a comprehensive control system for the animators, if they want anything, they will tell me and I will implement it. Other than that most of the rigs all use these types of control setup and I pretty much consider this my "default" setup way to go. I will reveal my joints placement when we start the website, till then that is all I can show.