WK4 – Update (Weight painting, rigging, UV mapping)

·         Sally- Anne modeling: Seon

·         Texturing: Craig

·         Set modeling and texturing: Craig

A couple of smaller things have happened this week. While Molly is still being modeled up, I have decided to focus my effects on Sally Anne’s weight painting and texturing as well as texturing the building. 

Painting weights on Sally Anne has been an up and down affair. Generally painting the weights on the body and arms has been relatively straight forward, with only a couple of minor changes around the armpits and neck area. The main challenge has been the face, in particular the eyebrows and lips.  

Even though Sally Anne has only one line I am using her as a starting point for the other characters. The eyebrows while it may seem simple has been challenging because the weights move all over the place. I am trying to achieve movements for various facial expressions and after many attempts I got there in the end and her one line can now be very expressive in the eyebrows.  

The lips on the other hand have at times been a nightmare. The main reason is trying to get the weights in roughly the right positions for lip synching, so when the mouth opens and closes along with a slight forward movement for the o’s, it looks close as possible to human movements. A lot of testing has occurred and I have many times started over again. At this stage, I believe I have it close, but more testing will be required to fully test this. A GUI system will be made so when animation begins, it will become easier. 

In terms of the rest of the facial rigging, I believe I am close to completion. I have learnt a few things and will employ them in the next lot of facial riggings. I believe I will continue to learn new things every time I do this and I hope every new one will be better than the last.

As well as the rigging, UV mapping and texturing has also been conducted. This was a fairly easy process. Unwrapping the face was easier than expected as it is to be one colour, and the body took roughly 2 hours without a lot of hassles. Painting them was simple as I used a basic brush within Photoshop (See below)

 

 

Finally, the hardest was the exterior. I had difficulty getting the correct texture for the ground so it can look somewhat recognisable, without any blurriness and flatness. This was solved eventually, within Photoshop and it now has a look I am looking for (see below).

Work on texturing the building has begun. UV mapping has also easy, as it has all flat edges, however, I only unwrapped the areas I see through the camera, as it will be pointless to do areas you cannot see and therefore will not need to be textured.  These results will be posted in the next day or so.