Work update

When i re rigged the legs with the hand controller to be placed underneath the hands, i then realized that when i posed the dragons front legs into place it was not easy to set the animation from here, and the dragon (in the Musion storyboard) isn't ever in that pose.

I have now re posed the front legs on the model in the correct front facing position, where the controllers on the feet are facing forwards. I re rigged the arms again as it is always best to start from scratch rather than moving the joint placement. I also had to re set the attributes for the fingers and toes so that they curl and the fingers spread.
This certainly helps to animate the fingers using its own separate controller placed above the hand with attributes and set driven keys, as opposed to selecting each individual joint and setting key frames.

I had difficulty attaching the head controller to the spine so that i have more control over which way the head turns. Before the head just followed the movement of the neck cluster joints and would permanently be at the same angle. To achieve this i added a parent constraint to the Neck cluster controller and now i have control over the head movement.

For the jaw i haven't rigged it up because there will be blend shapes added to the face. Blendshapes allow you to create a controller set up so you can animate the face without placing lots of joints to the head, depending on what animation style you want and what provides the best movement. I am using blendshapes for creating surprised, angry, happy looks on the character.

This weekend i am just adding the final touches to the rig for the wings and feet.
I will be animating the rig in the low poly mesh and create an animatic so that the sound student can work with the file to create the sound.
Whilst i'm waiting for my high poly mesh this keeps me busy and will have me ready for painting weights on the new mesh - to make sure that the new dragon mesh bends correctly to the joints movement.
I am also waiting for the blendshapes to be created by Sanjay and the textures and displacement maps to be done by Ollie and Steph. These are my helpers for the Musion deadline, I will not be using Andi's model as it wont be ready in time.

So this past week i have been sorting out trouble with the rig, sorting and briefing a team together to help me get this work finished for the musion deadline. For the Ology project i am going to re draft another storyboard for the punchline which works really well. But i am on task for the rigging the dragon, although blendshapes will need to be added when we come to Andi's model.

Next i will put together the rig, mesh, texture and blendshapes of the dragon and animate.
Meanwhile in the Ology project Andi will have finished his model and begin modeling the environment.
Once i have the animatic for the Ology ( of the new dragon with my rig ) I will be collaborating again with the sound students to create the sound and keep working towards the final.

I feel that this last week has been a little crazy but things are going well :)