Rigging Problems

Laura: Mmkay. I hadn't noticed before, but after setting up all the blendshapes, and renaming all the target deformers....
The inside of the mouth is completely separate to the lips section.
I'm gonna spend this evening, after trying to unsuccessfully create blendshapes with it in this way, sewing the edges together, and connecting the vertices, as it just looks horrendous, bitty and really /really/ wrong.
The bits for the eyes work fine, it's just trying to get any shape out of the mouth and having to move 3 sets of verts to try and get it to maintain a consistent shape. >< It's driving me mental. But yeah, I'm gonna sew them all up tonight.

I'm nearly done with it now. You'll have to sort the uv map out. Shouldn't be too hard though! Just select the edge loop around the inner lip part, and you should be able to cut the UVs there.

Karen:Well Kofi has stepped in to uv map summer, so does that mean we need to give him the updated version now? If so whenever you have sorted it out, could you upload it so that we can pass it over to him, many thanks. Oh how this has been a whole crazy ride!!!

Laura: Summer has the same issue, all the needs to be done is the verts that match up with inside/outside her mouth need to be merged to center, and then alllll the history deleted as it's a fair few. lool. I'll pop the updated pandy on your a-drive account when I'm done. Then I'll crack on with blendshapes. :) Should only be about 10 more mins.

Ryan:I've been doing the uv mapping for pandy over the last few days, but i'm currently about to redo the head/mouth as i had lots of problems. And Kofi is doing the uv mapping for summer. So at the moment, none of the uv mapped characters have been uploaded.

Laura: I'll put up the model in abooout 20 mins? That'll give me time to make sure I've checked it over. Are you gonna sew all the other edges together, too?

Ryan:sew the edges?? whats that mean? do you mean to merge or combine them?

Laura: Merging the verts that are meant to be one together, so all the edges along the arms and hands and legs and stuff, to make the body mesh a single mesh with no breaks. Merge to center them.

Ryan:They should already be merged together, i spent a long time making sure that the arms, legs etc were merged with the body , then again we've had some weird problems where we've opened up the scenes and parts have somehow become unattached.

Laura: Yeah, that's what I mean. It's 'cause they weren't all originally made from one piece, and it's causing all kinds of weird issues. 'Cause the vertices are just next to each other, not /one/ vertex, it's making it go mental.

James:cant you just go mesh>merge vertices and it will merge all the verticies within a tolorence distence of eachother.... there was a way to check all the verts on the edge of the mesh aswell by makeing the outerline thicker somehow.

Laura:Ooh, I didn't know that one. o: Shows how much time I spend modeling. :D

if it's just the one command, it might be easier for him to do it on his end, otherwise, that's the whole upload and download time wasted. Then he can just carry on mapping in the same session?

Karen: Well its technically the same amount of up loading which ever way we went but if you don't wana do then sent it over our way!

Laura: I haven't done much to it, except attempt it on the lips bit, but I think it's gone a bit wrong. I'm not sure what verts are attached to where. x_x I'll put it up, but idk. See what you make of it!

Karen:james you wana sort it out for us, lol, i am soooooo confused on all this. As for the swing could you just send it to my email as it seems have have done everything already.

James:il have a look at it if you want email it to my rave mail or something

found that thing that highlights the edge of the mesh
Window > settings / preferences > preferences > then select polygons in the left hand box and then tick the box that says highlight border edges.
should show were the un joined verts are.
kk il mail it you you right away.

Karen: ok so i took a quite look and yeah the mouth is messed up, it is just that or was there more, i hope not coz there shouldnt be. Oh man the file was never like this before all the arms that were fine, i have no idea what has happened apart from the mouth =S.... I think the arms might still need some work, oh what a damn pain.

James: got it... computer running slow tho arggg... whats wrong with it?... exactly lol

Laura: It's so /so/ difficult to get into any shape for the mouth to make faces. xD When it was separated into bits, it was worse, but now it's one piece, so it's pretty much alright? I'm not sure if I managed to merge it right though.

Karen: Oh man that means ryans gotta uv map everything again in it....

Laura:Yeah, that's why I said for him to do it, so he can just carry on with the mapping and see what's happening.

James: well i cant see any holes in the mesh apart from behind the eyes but there ment to be there lol everything else looks like a full mesh to me.

Laura:Literally, all I have done is merge the loose vertices to make the mesh a whole mesh, rather than bits of mesh joined up to look whole. I can work with that, but I dunno if you wanted to tidy anything else up and get rid of any triangles or whatever? Ryan or Kofi still need to re-do the UV map, so I can't attach the boned rig til that's done, apparently.

Karen:yeah so any triangles need to be deleted so that the uv mapping will be ok

James:no triangles are fine as far as i know lol 5 sided are bad and 5 or more sided stars from a vertex.

Karen:ok james is right again!!! i just researched it and triangles are fine!!!!!

Laura:Once it's uv mapped? XD IF you map it, then bung a rough texture on it, I can finish the rig, and you can still texture it.

Swing

James: hey guys modeld that swing gona start on the watering can later one more thing tho do you want the swing to be swinning in the wind cos i kinda thaught ifi it was windy and then the swing was just there not swinning or anything then it would be kinda strange... i could prob rig something up and then i could animate it and that would be part of my animation folder aswell.

made watering can model 2http://jamesunit306.blogspot.com/2011/04/modeling-watering-can.html

Ryan:looks awesome dude!! keep it up!! yeah a rig in the swing sounds great, it will look good in the film and will help you with your animation folder.

Karen:Oh wow, you made them sooo fast and they look soooooooo good, super impressed and happy. Yep like ryan said if you would like to do a simple rig and all that then that will be awesome. Thanks.

James:what about textures? should i email to someone to do that or shuld i just slap a shader with a coulor on it... it might work for the swing but i dno bout the watering can? what should i do?

il get right on the rig then :D yay animation

Karen: Yeah the watering can will need to be textured properly as it will be in the tree house, but as for the swing, you have a good point, we wouldn't really need a proper texture on it as it wont be seen, so if you would like to slap a shader on it then i am most happy for you to do that. When you are done with the watering can, can you send it to Karenleigh88@hotmail.com so that i can try and place it in the scene. Thanks.

James: oh by the way how strong is the wind?

Karen:Well it has to be strong enough to make a candle light go out, so i am not totally sure how strong that needs to be. the opening shot is about 7 seconds long, but the wind is not strong from the very beginning, i would say it gets more powerful from the forth second onwards.

James: oh ok so the swing wnt have to swing that muchjsut a sublte lil animaiton then il make a swing animation that goes for about 7 secs then its all rotation baist so you shuld still beable to move the swing around and scale it and rotate it with the master control thing... candle?!? is the candle cg? is it in the scene, is it producing light?

Karen:Well mike wanted us to make a lantern just outside the door of summers tree house, so from a distance the light for it will have to go out, it will only be a small light from the distance but we also have a house outside the beginning too, but we are unsure if any lights from the house should be on or not.

James:oh oky dokie so you dnt actualy see the flame of the candle then cos that would b a bitch to make lol have to b done with fluids n stuf lol oh yer that sounds cool :D i animating the swing atm u wnt me to mail it to u wen it done?

Karen: no no, we are to far away to see anything like that, all we need to show is it going out, nothing more. could you do a quick play blast when u think ur done and post it on here or ur blog so we can see how it is coming along

Ryan: Hey laura! guess what?!?! i have the next version of pandy uploaded on adrive, rather than upload the whole project folder I just uploaded the scene file which is called Pandy18pre-rig.mb Most notable changes are that his eyes have been resized and now has the potential to blink with blendshapes, HOORAY!!! also slightly reshaped his ears and the back of the head and positioned him more in the centre of the axis as he was originally floating a bit...oh and i raised his mouth so its now a little closer to the nose....and i think that was it. I deleted the image planes in the scene as well as the history and generally tried to keep things clean and tidy for ya...hopefully this should be the final fix so that the rigging can be completed *fingers crossed*.

Laura: Ah, fantastiche. I'll get IPP out of the way tonight, and finish up the bones tomorrow. I'll upload them for you to play with while I do the blendshapes. The animations should transfer over. :) Then, it's all you guys!

Ryan: Hey laura! guess what?!?! i have the next version of pandy uploaded on adrive, rather than upload the whole project folder I just uploaded the scene file which is called Pandy18pre-rig.mb Most notable changes are that his eyes have been resized and now has the potential to blink with blendshapes, HOORAY!!! also slightly reshaped his ears and the back of the head and positioned him more in the centre of the axis as he was originally floating a bit...oh and i raised his mouth so its now a little closer to the nose....and i think that was it. I deleted the image planes in the scene as well as the history and generally tried to keep things clean and tidy for ya...hopefully this should be the final fix so that the rigging can be completed *fingers crossed*.

Laura: Ah, fantastiche. I'll get IPP out of the way tonight, and finish up the bones tomorrow. I'll upload them for you to play with while I do the blendshapes. The animations should transfer over. :) Then, it's all you guys!

Laura: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TLN87F2S
That's Pandy skinned. I wasn't sure if I'd already given you him, but there he is again.
His weights SUPER need fixing, but that'll happen once he has eyelids, 'cause I have no idea how changing the mesh will affect it. :)
But you can get the basic things down with this guy! Hopefully, the rig is simple enough to understand. If I haven't made the skeleton layer unkeyable, that'll be happening in the final version, so don't worry too much.

Ryan:hi laura, just a couple things i wanted to ask about. First thing, is it possible to switch models for the rig, for example if i gave you an updated character model of pandy would you be able to attach the rig that you've done so far to it??? if not then would i be able to alter the geometry of the rig you've provided so far in terms of the eyes without it screwing up the rest of the rig?? Also i had a quick play around with pandy, everything seems to move around fine, was just wondering if all the mesh deformations from moving the arms and legs will be easy to fix?? one last thing lol just wondering how you're getting on with the summer rig.

Laura: Yeah, I'll just import the new model straight into the scene, and then skin it, so that'll be mega easy to do. :) I haven't painted ANY weights on the rig I uploaded and sent to you, so he needs a lot of fixing. I know that it deforms a little strangely but it should be fixable. The mesh around his fingers doesn't leave a lot of room for maneuvering. :)

Summer's coming along awesome - I had a little trouble with rigging her spine the other day, but I should be able to get that fixed tomorrow night. IPP needs to get done so it's out of my way. T_T The only thing I'm really concerned about for her is her skirt. What did you want doing to that? 'Cause it just gets eaten by the deformations of her legs otherwise. She works alright at a basic level when skinned - I have yet to rig in her eyes, but once that's done, I'll send you her and you can see what you think.

Ryan: ok thats awesome, i've been sorting out pandy and his eyes so he has eyelids and all that. Yeah his hand is a little limited but luckily it only needs to be able to bend so it gives the effect that he can hold stuff.

Laura: Yeah, I'm likely gonna simplify his hand so it only has one bone, so there's no need to worry about spread or anything... I think it's his thumb that moves weirdest.

Ryan: lol yeah i bet his thumb is a bit weird xD i'm glad summer is coming along ok, in terms of her skirt, is it possible to have a simple rig so that it can be controlled on a basic level, it will only be seen in about 2-3 of the shots, it doesn't need to do anything fancy, just needs to be able to be moved so summer can be on her hands and knees if thats cool?

Laura: 'll see what I can do... It'll be difficult to get it to look like it's doing anything skirt-y though.

Ryan: thats fine as it wont really be seen too much, as long as there is some sort of control over the skirt then it should be fine, many thanks!! =)

Ryan: yooooo laura!! i've updated the sumer model and put it onto adrive again. She's now properly orientated in the orthographic views, i tidied up the main problem areas of the mesh a bit and tried to get rid of as many triangles as possible. I got rid of the poopy eyelids i made so that you can do blendshapes by adjusting the mesh around the eyes, also parented the eyes to the body and attached the tongue and teeth in her mouth.....i think that was it lol...now just sorting out pandy at the moment which i'll get to you very soon =)

Laura:Thankyou very muuuuuch. I'll get it done for you ASAP so you can start working on the animations. or in the future, if you could clean up all the unused nodes, poly groups and image planes - basically everything BUT the mesh, as well as deleting the history, it'd be much appreciated by anyone. It was making my maya crash to no end. ): I've just been thru and sorted it all out.

Doing the last bits to her boned rig this morning. Once that's out of the way, I'll start cloning her for blendshapes. I apologise if I've gotten rid of any textures that you were using, but because my PC couldn't find them, it just kept crashing.

Ryan:

ok cool, sorry for all the problems, i really have no idea about what has to be done to the model and the scene before rigging. There were no textures on the mesh either apart from the standard lamberts so no worries there...hope you dont have any more problems