Ball rig notes

With the ball rig, I encountered some trouble at the start. I didn't really know where to begin. So from this I acted it out myself by making the motion myself. By doing that I knew what would move first, what would follow, and so on.

I had done the same with the run cycle, but obviously couldn't replicate it entirely as I was only posing, not making the full action. I learned to animate the rig and felt I overcame my problem with it also by acting out the animation I wanted to create.

I also felt more confident about using the timeline as sometimes mistakes can really cost you if you aren't observant with what you are doing with it: by adding/removing frames thus, sometimes, slightly ruining the animation. That could be either objects moving before they are told, or moving to quick, or not even quick enough.

Animating the ball rig

I downloaded the ball rig from moodle and began animating with this before animating with my own model. I made three walk cycles and a run cycle, which looks like it's running on the moon almost, which fits in well with my E4 project work. The first few steps were a little tricky, but after that the rest was easy as it was just following the past movements of the feet. I first made the body bob up and down the moved the feet accordingly.

With the run, I had to make sure that both feet were off the ground at the same time, otherwise it's just be another walk. I have learnt how to animate a model using controller and a rig instead of the actual model itself. It is something I'd like to know more of and learn.

New character

I created a character made of wood, like Mokujin from the Tekken series. It was very simple and nothing would be too distorted as each joint would be partnered with its own object. I had trouble with the rig though. I couldn't make it bend the correct way, it would only bend from the side. So I improvised and quickly made a short animation.

Modelling and Rigging

A while ago I had began modelling my character with reference material in the Maya file. I began with a box, then added lines of vertecies where I needed as I modelled. I had merged the head and hands together, though the hands were just very simple. I had also smoothed the objects, but only using the hotkey, so I could alter the shape of the object in it's simpler form.

The shoes here are from the one I created before.

The rig proved difficult with this image, it would distort the entire object for me. So I later went for something a little more simpler for animating a rigged model of my own creation.

Shoe modelling

This was the progression with my shoe modelling. After I had competed the shoe, I duplicated it and the altered each one to look like the right and left feet by bringing in the sides by the inside of the foot.