Extended Practice: Creating the Egyptian Ancient Character - Rigging, Binding and Animation Tests

Rigging
I then moved onto the rigging process for the Egyptian character and once again followed the same videos that I had done previously in order to generate the rig for this character. This first part proved very simple and I was able to create the rig in about 5 mins as it was very similar to the rig on Keith. I first started with the leg and feet joints.

I then moved onto the arms, ensuring that they bent properly around his waist, which is rather large and round.

I then added in the joint for his spine, and then ensured that I joined the rest of the joint chain up so that it was all connected.

I then moved onto the head, adding in joints for the ears, eyes, brows and nose so that everything could be moved.

Then finally added in a joint for his belly so that it could have a wobble to it. Overall I think the rig is going to work really well as he will only be basically moving and talking to the main character.

Controls
I then moved onto adding in the controls for him, again following the videos from Mat. I added in the basic circular controls, and then some custom ones as well for the ears, spine, feet and the master control.

I then coloured the controls again, like I did previously with Keith, so that I could determine quickly which was the left and which was the right hand side of him.

Once all the controls where coloured correctly I moved onto constraining the controls to the joints in order to be able to control him. This process was again fairly simple as I had already done it for Keith and this rig is less important as it will not be moving too much.

I used a mixture of point, aim and orient constraints on the corresponding joints in order to constrain them properly and get the correct movement on the joint.

Finally I added in IK handles onto the legs as previously done, in order to get the correct leg movement that I desired and this finished him off completely before attaching the rig to the geometry.

Skinning 

I then moved onto binding the character and ensuring that the movement of the character worked correctly and fully. I first choose the correct settings that would work the best for me and this was again following my tutors videos so that I could ensure that I was doing the right thing. 

I then looked at the model in more detail and noticed that there were a few things that needed sorting out with the model, and this involved painting the weights on the model so that the joints moved in the correct way and moved correctly. This was the part of the process that took the longest and I wanted to ensure that it worked effectively so I took a lot of time at this to ensure that it was looking as good as it could. 

Once the painting of the weights was done I did a quick test on all the joints to make sure that they were working correctly, which they were and they were looking good.

Custom Attributes
I then moved onto adding in the extra details on the model which involved looking at how we could get the heel to peel off the floor and the toe to point when moved up. These little details that can be added add a lot to the model, and especially was this character will only be basically walking around the environment. These details don't have to be added but when looking at the model with them it looks a lot better and more professional.

Animation Tests
Before animating I first took some video references of the kind of movements he would be doing in the test animations, so I recorded Stuart Brown doing the movements for me, the same way he had done for Keith. For Menes I wanted four basic movements that could be carried into the final game; walk, talk/interaction with Keith, idle and wave.

I then moved onto creating some test animations and cycles that I could recreate for the final outcome for the interactions and dialog. Menes' character is very upbeat and jolly and he has a happy personality so I wanted to try and portray this in the character's movements.

Animation Frame List:
With a one second pause in between all movements.

1 - 48 = wave

72 - 120 = Talk (laughing)
144 - 192 = Talk (yeah, go on, etc.)
216 - 288 = Talk (mumbling)

312 - 408 = Walk (4 Seconds that can be looped)

432 - 528 = Idle (changed from rubbing belly to scratching back/bottom)