Painting skin weights tool....

For adding influence I have been using the Add option in the tool. If i know the influence is needed throughout i add to the value of 1.

Some of the geometry is needed to be slightly influence by others so i use half the value of 1 or .3 to influence the verts in the right places.

If influence needs taking off i use replace at the value of 0. - However using this adds other influences from other joints so it can make the geometry worst then needed.

When i have all of the influence needed i smooth them over using the flood tool under smooth. If you work from the outside or more influenced down the joints i fid this can work best.

Painting Skin Weights

Painting skin weights is probably where i will struggle with this.

As he is quite a big character he has more geometry that needs to be painted by weights. Here i am trying to do the Left arm. I dont think im doing too badly. The book says to use replace, but some riggers say only use add. Im going to try both....

Here you can see the geometry is acting up, this is because the vertices have different influences from different joints. So i need to remove all the wrong influences from the wrong joints.

IK handles - Problem fixed

TURN SOUND DOWN BEFORE PLAYING VIDEO_SORRY

Here is a video of the problem I came across when I was Rigging the Leg. I found the leg didn't move in the correct way and to fix it I had to change the IK handle to have sticky on it.

Skinned dog - Before painting weights

Here i am identifying some of the key areas that need to be sorted in painting weights....

After skinning my character i animated the main features such as the arms and legs and head. From this i can see a lot of deformation in the character. Above we can see that the stomach isn't moving correctly as its influences are in the wrong place.

Above the leg is nearly there, however the stomach around it needs to be more rounded.
The arms are making the back of the character the wrong shape, so if i paint weights to let the character relax and move better, it will look more realistic....

Rigging the dog - 04

Arms All set up...

Spine- adding the IK spline solver..

Allowing the Bones to bend how a back would adding clusters...

Rigging for our animation- What we need

Out Line...

Both Characters will need to run and Jump and be as flexible as possible.

I will need to make the characters IK stretchy so we can get a lot of exaggeration in the animation.

The marmot needs to hold the Food whilst he is running.

The eagles claws need to grip.

The wings need to bend. I could use bend handles for this.

They need to show expression in there faces. Blend shapes for the Mongol and marmot.

Rigging tests

Here is a Rig i am in the middle of doing at the moment, I have had a couple of problems where i have missed out vital steps, i also have been concentrating more on my other project, so hopefully ill get a lot more finished in the next couple of days.