Mum Rig and Animation

 

For the model of the Mum, Amber modeled her but I did the rig and this one as well as animating it. This is the first time I've ever rigged anything and I had no idea how or where to start so I looked up a tutorial online to follow. I did switch tutorials halfway through so it got a bit confusing towards the end but I know a bit more for next time and I think I could do a better job then. The easiest bit was definitely drawing the skeleton in and it was ok attaching the various IKs to the model to help it more like a real person. What I found the hardest was after when the skeleton was bound to the model and I needed to paint in the effect of the joints of other parts of the body to make sure there was no warping in the mesh. The tutorial I followed put particular detail into the foot so I may look into doing that again to practice and although it has no used in this project the model is able to go on her tip toes and the balls of her feet as well as move them independently. It is definitely a little bit of a shoddy job but I enjoyed learning this part as since I'm interested in animation it would be bad not to look into the rigging and how the animation can actually work.

 Here you can see how the model bends at the knees and that the IKs are attached between the ankle and the hip.There isn't much warping around the leg area and you can see how the toes bend separately from the feet.

 

 Here is the position the model will stay in during the animations. She was difficult to animate as the rig was a little hard to get used to and use. If I'd had time I think I would have re rigged her with the new knowledge I had of how to rig something. I would like to experiment with rigs in the future and learn how to do it much better. It was a fun part of the project, but I think one of the animations I did didn't export properly and so doesn't look quite right in the games, however there wasn't time to fix it.