Update Week 5

This week has been very productive. Sally Anne rigging and weight painting has been finished, and animation blocking has begun with some success. I did have some problems with some of the face, however after solving the problem, blocking continued. At this stage it is very basic movements, any changes will occur in the next day or two, however these changes will not be dramatic as Sally Anne is hidden for most of her appearance, apart from one line.

 

Moving on from Sally Anne, rigging and weight paint work as just started on Molly. This weight painting has been so much easier as many of the mistakes I discovered while working on Sally Anne, I avoided and improved during Molly Campbell rigging. These mistakes mostly concerned weight distribution and joint selection. Weight painting is a challenging aspect of rigging (not a particular favourite of mine) and if you select or don’t select the right joints, things will go astray and headaches will occur. With Sally Anne, I didn’t select any of the internal joints and therefore there were too many weights on the skin. This was taken into consideration with Molly and only minor weight issues have occurred this time around. With the weights working on Saturday I developed the GUI for Molly, with only a couple of small changes to the weights that needed to be conducted for the face to work at a reasonable level. 

 

 

 

The biggest problem I am having with Molly is the right arm for weight painting, it is to do with the IK/FK switching. At the moment, the modeling is turning its self-inside out, without explanation. I have checked a number of times, and spent time redoing it, with the same results. The left arm works great, but for whatever reason, the right arm always seems to fail.

 

The main task this week was the exterior of Bradford’s house. This went through a number of changes and modifications. As you can see in the first image, it was flat, lacked any style or character, general a boring looking home, not a true representation of a 19^th century mansion. This design and style was based on a home I found online earlier this year and Sean the teacher indicated it didn’t portray the right century. Having looked at it from Sean’s point of view, I agreed and went back to the drawing board.

 

Finding a good example online was a tad difficult as many were either 19^th century American or Australian. After a while searching, Sean picked a perfect frontage, and indicated I should use this for Bradford home. Upon building and redesigning the front, I become somewhat attached to this new design, constructing and modeling pillars to a style of British Victorian 19^th century.

 

Texturing also changed a lot especially the bricks. I wanted to go for a slight rough and old style brick; however a clean brick was suggested. At the time, I believed a clean brick looked to modern and not that of the 19^th century. Trying a more modern looking brick has worked within reason, but this current texture for the bricks may change. However, a more clay traditional looking brick works far better than a white stone-like brick I had originally.

 

The toughest component so far was getting the red-like clay colour for the pillars. A number of colours and styles were tried and failed. It just didn’t suit the brick behind. After Google search I came across a render like texture, and in Photoshop I played around with the colour balance to get a red clay colour. This new texture, placed against the bricks works, it looks like it has been cement rendered and coordinates well with the bricks. Previously I had a flat colour and it stood out like a core thumb. It was also decided that having a clay like cap within the brick stood out and has (for the moment) been replaced by bricks only.

 

When looking back at the front, many alterations have occurred, each improving on the last. I can be assured that changes will likely occur and this will only improve the look of the place, and transport the viewer to 1895.

 

I found the hardest to model over the last few weeks was the ballustrates which should have been the most simplistic. I found a great image from the Victorian era. Only problem that was it had a swirl spiral ballustrates. I looked for a while online and came across a tutorial of something that resembles what I was looking for. After testing and retesting, I produced what looks close to the image (without a heavy amount of detail at the moment). However as it’s in the background (which will be dark), and on an angle, this high detail may not be required until I do light test and test renders. 

 

Next week, my main aim is to complete all the rigging for Molly, start basic blocking for Molly and finish main model building for 1895.