[ND16] 05: Water Character Complete; Full Rig Demonstration

[Major Project] 50: Water Character; Skinning 01 - Skeleton Complete

Once I've created Water's leg IKs, it'll be on to creating the smooth skins and painting skin weights, before rigging her.

Perspective

Front

Side

Top

Water's Joints Group within the Outliner

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[Major Project] 29: Oxygen Character; Full Skinning Demonstration

Oxygen Skeleton: Front View

Oxygen Skeleton: Side View

Oxygen Skeleton: Top View

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[Major Project] 20: Hydrogen Character; New Brow Joints & Vinyl Texture

This marks the end of the texturing and skinning processes for Hydrogen, next up is rigging him.

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[Major Project] 17: Hydrogen Character; Skinning 01 - Nearly Complete

I'm going to add a few more eyebrow joints to give myself more control of them, rather than relying heavily on the skin's fall-off between the joints. I also need to add the eye joints and create the blink, before moving onto rigging Hydrogen.

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[Major Project] 12: Iron Character; Brow & Blink Set-Up Complete

Last things to do with Iron are creating the mouth blend shapes and his Face Cam. After Iron is posed in preparation for his turnaround, I will move on to retrying my modelling of Oxygen.

Iron's eye joints

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[Major Project] 10: Hydrogen Skinning 01; Skeleton Progress 01

The very non-humanoid yet inherently simpler nature of my Hydrogen character requires a unique skeleton, here is my progress so far. The independence of the mouth & eyebrows from the head / body has given me the opportunity to use carefully oriented joints to control them; this will be particularly useful for the mouth by allowing easy transfer between a smiling, neutral or frowning expression. 

I have also given myself the opportunity to control the extension & retraction of Hydrogen's 6 protrusions. Perhaps they could become more prominent the angrier he is, and less prominent the calmer he is; their current position is representative of maximum prominence. Update: Since posting this, I have noticed that most of the protrusions main [inner] joints need to be reorientated so their axis face Hydrogen's centre, rather than following the World axis. The inner-southwestern protrusion joint correctly illustrates the intended positioning.

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[Major Project] 05: Iron Skinning 03; Hand Skinned

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[Major Project] 04: Iron Skinning 02; Head Skinned

Because Iron doesn't have a physical neck, the complexity of the head skin weighting process was reduced. I have attempted to minimize volume loss caused by the jaw's rotation while at the same time reducing the level of movement of the chin's point.

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[Major Project] 03: Iron Skinning 01; Basic Skeleton & Various Demonstrations

Iron will not walk in the conventional way, instead his walk will be more similar to that of a wind-up toy (see figure 1 & 2). Some features of the usual foot rig for a cartoon character will not be useful for Iron, such as Toe Tap or Heel Lift (see figure 3), Iron's feet are to be solid objects that will not undergo deformation. I have also researched into what Iron's blink might look like (see figure 4).

Fig. 1: Sadness wind-up toy walking (front) [source]

Fig. 2: Sadness wind-up toy walking (side) [source]

Fig. 3: Heel lift [source]

Fig. 4: Sonic blinking (edited) [source]

Because Iron does not have a neck, I have improvised his head's movements in the context of the alcove. Below is my demonstration of Iron's head rotations, using locators in place of the joints, and a spare head. This demonstration has also enabled me to figure out the max rotation values to which I can push the head before it hits the torso/alcove.

Using the very basic method of cutting a copy of Iron's head into two pieces, I have figured out the precise position for Iron's jaw rotation joint. In actual practice, the geometry will not be cut up, and will instead use a fall-off to reduce the movement of the 'chin''s point as much as possible, to keep the facial deformation to the front half of the head only; if this skinning method does not work out, I will try another method.

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{Adaptation} A; "Weird Science" Infographic - B; Helium Turnaround & "Art Of"

Adaptation A

Adaptation B

{Adaptation B} 64: Helium Character; Rendered Turnaround w/ Sound

I will post this again once all the required Adaptation work has been completed and compiled later today.