24th June 2015

Today I have been texturing the male character, and have made significant progress towards his completion. 

22 June 2015

Today I re-rigged the female character from scratch, and have made some progress on the skinning. there is still some work to do but I have made a solid start.

19th June 2015

Today I finished the male rig, including facial controls. Apart from textures he is completely ready to animate.

18th June 2015

Today I started off by working on facial controls. I have got the jaw working, and have been working on the eyebrows so far. Sean has also taught me about curve controls during the day which I will be finish off tomorrow.

I am having some issues at the moment due to trying to use a wrap deformer to try and bypass a problem I faced, so I've decided to just work on texturing and look at the facial controls tomorrow with fresh eyes.

I have also done a little more texturing.

"It's ALIIIIIVE!"

I just had some help from Sean with using EP curves to make facial controls. This is a method I had never used before so I decided that would be the way to go, as the main point of me being here is learning anyway. 

To create these controls I need to start by using the EP curve tool on the linear setting, and snap to at least 5 vertices in a row, and a linear curve will follow them. This is my bind curve. After I have my bind curve I use the EP curve tool again, but I use cubic 3 in the tool settings, and snap to at least 3 vertices along the same line. This is my control curve. I will use my control curve to move the bind curve, and the bind curve will move the geometry. I should add clusters to the control curve, and parent them under the controls that I want to use.

Once I have my two curves I go to the create deformers menu and select the wire tool. I click on the bind curve and press enter, then the control curve and press enter. This links the two curves together.

An important step to allow this to work is to go into my skincluster input, and make sure that use components is turned on. If it's off, then the bind curve won't affect the mesh at all. 

Once I have the two curves connected and my mesh is allowing the use of components, I select the bind curve, then the mesh, and add influence. I make sure that my weights are locked so that it doesn't ruin the skinning that I did previously. 

As soon as it's added to the skin, I can open up the paint weights tool settings, select the curve, unlock it and paint weight in the appropriate area. 

At this point it's ready to go. 

Shout out to Sean Davies for teaching me this process. I really appreciate it man. 

17th June 2015

This morning I started off by fixing the file that I worked on yesterday after a team mate accidentally saved over it, but it didn't take too long as I remembered how I fixed it previously. I did a quick re-skin, and was caught up after only a couple of hours. I then began texturing the male character.

16th June 2015

Today I did the main skinning for the male character, but when I did a test, I encountered some issues with the root control, AGAIN. 

I discovered some hierarchical issues after pulling my hair out for a while, and finally managed to get it running correctly.

I need to add some SDKs in the hips to get him working, but other than that I can get started on his facial rig! whoop whoop.