Smooth and Scale
I then finished up my alien by completely small final details on the model which first included making it smooth instead of just smooth previewing it. For this it was a very simple process of just selecting all the geometry and then going to mesh and smooth in which we selected there to be 1 division, just so we didn't have too many faces to work with.
I then wanted to be able to control the level of smoothness that I had in the model so I made an attribute for it using the add attribute option and called it smooth and attached it to the master control. I then edited the set driven key menu and made the master control the driver and the 7 pieces of geometry the driven keys. This was fairly easy although I did have some problems where the polygon faces where not showing up but I managed to get around this by selecting the geometry first and then the smooth option at the side with each part and this seemed to bring everything up fine. So I created 3 levels of smoothness of my model so that this could be altered in stages. This can be helpful if you have computers that can't handle very detailed models and you can show them a low poly version instead.
I then wanted to constrain the whole geometry to the master control so that it could be scaled up or down depending on the scene as otherwise it won't happen and the rig will fold in on itself then we need to constrain the eyes as well as they are not attached to the rest of the geometry.
House Keeping
The last thing that I then needed to do to the model was a bit of house keeping so that everything was neat and tidy, making the model easier to navigate around. I started by getting rid of all of the IK handles, just by turning their visibility off.
I then looked at the elbow joint. There was no point in having all of the attributes that it did, it only needs to rotate in Y so I highlighted all of the attributes in both arms, and used the tool lock and hide selected after right clicking on them so that there are not visible any more; making it much easier to edit the elbow joint.
I then went through the entire model and lock and hid any values that didn't need to be touched when animating, this took a while but I knew it would pay out in the end as I wouldn't need to touch unnecessary controls then.
I then wanted to constrain the turning points on the joints so that they couldn't go too far, only a natural distance, like the elbow for example that can't turn completely around. To do this I selected the control point, firstly the elbow, and opened the attribute editor and the elbow control tab which has limits information in it. I then bent the elbow to a point when I thought it shouldn't go any further and then made this figure that minimum that the elbow could move then moved it back to 0, as the elbow can't bend backwards, and set this as the maximum. So now that was done the elbow can now longer go beyond those points.
I then did the same with the jaw. I started to experience some problems at this stage of the control points just not letting me move them once I had entered one minimum or maximum value in and I couldn't understand why. Then I also had a problem where the control would only rotate the wrong way. This, after a while, I found out that I was just entering the minimum or maximum value at the wrong side and it was trying to work backwards. Once this was fixed I had no more problems and when onto setting the limits for the entire model.
I then did another bit of house keeping where I got rid of the eye layer and added them into the geometry layer instead, just because now that they were bound it was not necessary.
I then lastly made a group for the whole character rig and named it accordingly.
Quick Select Sets
The last thing that I was going to do is create a quick select set. This makes it easier to select everything to ensure that if moving the character nothing is left behind by accident. To do this, all of the control points must be selected and then you go to create>set>quick select sets.
I then put my alien into a position and then hit the alienrig quick select button that I had just made. This selected everything and I then hit S to set a key frame in the pose at frame 1. I then moved to frame 24 and put all of the transformations back to 0 and hit the quick select button again and S. This is then a nice quick way of selecting all of the controls if your creating an animation with lots of key frame necessary and will be definitely be something that I will be using in my final animation as it will speed things up so much and allow the animation process to run much more smoothly, and hopefully without any hiccups. This way of doing things will also come in handy when it comes to animating our final characters as well, as when animating them we have a minutes worth of key framing too and this method will really help.
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