An overdue post :/ Sorry.

Today we had a feedback session with sean about the course overall and any problems we can tell him about in order to make the course as best as it possibly can be, Hopefully any issues can be resolved and make it better overall.

Yesterday we had Neil's weekly feedback session once again. He seemed to like the train progress, However the rigging is still a small problem at the minute. Despite being new to the whole idea of rigging and using the set up machine, the most complicated bit for me so far is the weighting and that is what I'm going to be trying to sort out (Ideally for next week, fingers crossed)

Realistic train in its current stage. Main body is smooth preview and pipe and chimney is polygons as you see. Alot more work to be done, however a good chunk of detail should be textures.

TSM Rigging

TSM: The Setup machine.

A lovely piece of plug in to help make our lives a little easier for us amateurs in a big world. I've spent the past couple of hours just putting together and fitting the Basic biped rig for the Imp character. Having a bit of a test now to see if theres any errors or major issues. Haven't completely worked out where the controls out yet but I will have a browse. Might get some test poses or short jump animation up to test it.

Just a quick note, I was having several problems with the TSM plug in, i had on my own computer, so I came into the studio to utilise it and havent had any major problems, so its good that thats here.

Rigging with The Setup Machine

What a joy to use this plug in is, Glad I've manage to get it working (so far anyway).

Heres progress so far, the plug in works very intuitivly and very easy to understand so should get this nice and sorted soon :)

Problems with the rigging =/

I spent a considerable amount of time last night trying to bind the skeleton to the mesh of the imp character, I couldn't for the life of me get it to work. Being my first experience with trying to rig and only working from a tutorial in a book, its quite a solid wall to get over.

All we needed to do was have the Imp sit down for the test shots. Unfortunatly I couldnt get it to work in time for tuesdays feedback session with Neil.

Speaking of Neil, He really liked the animatic, good timings and a lot more together and complete. Personally i think there could be the tiniest of tweeks in some places but i agree and it looks impressive. Neil did however point out that the camera seemed to move around the central character a bit (We'll call him Charlie the low end buisnessman). So we will bare this in mind when it comes to creating the final short.

I said I was having trouble with the rigging and Neil recommended i use the automatic rigging software that is installed on some of the studios computers. I didn't know anything about it and which i was on but i planned to explore it.

I'm now currently trying to progress through the early stages of The Setup Machine, and hopefully have a rig done tonight depending on how easy the plug in is to use.

Due to me recently knowing about this plug-in, I ask why should you rig manually? But I came to the conclusion that there is still a job for riggers out there for manually creating a rig for a character as it can be extremely more complex and intricate which would benefit the high end animation studios, and The Setup Machine is more for amateurs and trying to get a rig done fast.

Just a few thoughts from today.

Learning how to rig

One of my tasks throughout the ongoing project is to create the skeleton and rigging for the Imp character. From what I've heard about rigging being complex, hard work and frustrating at times I thought I best try and get a hard start on it. The faster I can finish the rig, the faster Aaron can start to animate. I've had little to no experience in rigging. From memory it was one brief lecture with Paul which covered the absolute basics such as creating joints and parenting. Obviously Paul couldn't teach the 30 strong class how to rig as like all of maya its not exactly microsoft paint were talking about.

I had a rough character i thought i might use as a practice run and i followed the tutorials and instructions in one of the official maya training books. Found below

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Autodesk-Maya-2010-Foundation/dp/1897177550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296916881&sr=8-1



Here is my progress so far on my practice model.
Shown above is just skeletal rigging using the joint tool and parenting each joint in the hiearchy.

I'll try and keep posting a bit more regularly.

Progress

After a long day of discussions, feedback, drafts, re-drafts and general working, Finally things seem a bit more clearer on what were doing, more specifically what each of us are doing.

Started off another tuesday morning, with feedback from Paul and Neil and also some assistance and feedback from Simon. The animatic once again got a bit beaten, fortunatly its not too bad its just not completly all together and there yet. I mainly worked on this for the past couple of weeks and I was having trouple making sure I had the right timing for shots so Aaron had taken over this until completion with input from the rest of the group as usual.

I have now been given the responsibility of compiling the test shots. This is a slightly awkard situation, I only say this because I'm waiting on resources from other members of the group but if all goes to plan and i hopefully obtain everything i need by Friday, I have the whole weekend to work on the test shots for both the first half and 2nd half.

In the mean time I'm currently working on modelling the crossing including train barriers and lights. This may not be made final depending on how well the test shot works out. This may just be manually drawn in 2D.

I'm glad Aaron is taking charge, It's refreshing. There is now a spreadsheet live of each individuals Tasks and deadlines. I see myself being alot more focused on my job because of this.

Aaron and I have discussed some problems with the project. Heavily focusing on Sam. Were not sure how he's working and what he's done. He was assigned the job of modelling the train 2 or 3 weeks ago and although he has told us he's made progress we haven't seen anything from it

I have expressed concern that my job title was "Modeller" and I have felt that I have not been used for this, However with the jobs that I have been given I am actually happy to do and they do involve alot of what I would like to get out of this project so its not a big issue.

Think thats all for today. Will keep this posted as regular as I can

Liam out!