Let the rigs begin

My first attempt at rigging a human head.

It involved using bones and some controls for eyebrows and jaw. and creating blend shapes to achieve a few emotions. The model I rigged is "Samuel" by Leah Apanowicz, found on Creative Crash at http://www.creativecrash.com/3d-model/samuel-free-3d-model

What I've learned:
Lots about skinning and weights due to the huge poly count on the model.
How to build a basic facial rig and model the blend shapes using the sculpt tools to enhance it.
How to link blend shapes to a GUI for ease of access.
How to link blend shapes to the jaw controller to create accurate skin stretching.

Next step is to find a lower res model and try again, this time rigging the entire body and a full range of emotions along with all the controllers I can think of.

Modo Ninja

We've been trying out some new software packages in work. I was asked to test out the animation abilities in Modo. Some great features in it, really nice coming from a classical animation background, the spacing chart allows you create key poses, in-betweens and breakdowns with ease before you have to look at the timing, similar to animating in stepped but a lot more intuitive.  The onion skinning, and motion path and arc tracking are great for sorting out your trajectories. Part of the aim of this task was to see how fast I could animate a basic scene in Modo so I limited the amount of time I had to complete it, took me roughly 8 hours, and I had spent a couple of hours getting used to the basics of Modo before i jumped into it.

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