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Chapter List
Page Two
Spine Placement
Page Three
Neck and Head
Page Four
Attaching Neck/Spine
Page Five
Begin Orient Constraints
Page Six
Orients Continued
Page Seven
Pelvis, Leg, and Foot
Page Eight
Clavicle, Arm, and Hand
Page Nine
Arm, and Hand continued
Page Eleven
Character Skinning, Part One
Page Twelve
Character Skinning, Part Two
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This chapter is to help you a little bit with workflow issues.
You may notice things when you try to export a skinned character
(or import) and you have to scale it up or down to make it fit the scene.
I was taught a very important way to organize everything in your
scene to get rid of those problems.
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This will become very quick for you, the idea behind it is pretty easy.
Once again, we use the outliner. You won't need to even see anything
happening in your scene, so it's okay to maximize this screen. I recommend it
because then will be able to see as much of your outliner as possible.
I start by making a bunch of empty groups
(make sure nothing is selected and hit "Ctrl+g").
I make about 5 or six for starters.
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I have a jointTutTopNode_1, everything will end up under this group.
Start by selecting all the top nodes of the joints. It is nicer to
Crtl select things one by one, so you can put them into some kind
of order. I usually go in order of top to bottom and then left to right
with my selecting.
Example Pic to the Right:
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Now you have all the joints inside of a single group.
Make sure they all stay unparented from each other.
Now move on to locating some of the other groups under each
other. It is a good idea to keep things as easy to read as
possible and working the way Maya works.
This means Translate node at the top, then Rotate, then Scale.
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All of the surfaces I will skin are grouped and labeled as well.
Put them under the top node only. And also the configN_1 just
under the top node. I have a group called "extras", this will be for
things I'll make later, like IK handles and clusters.
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Drop the skeleton group under the character's Rotate group.
Also put the extras group and the orientGrp under the all
Scale node.
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Now everything should be loaded under one node. It makes it
extremely easy to export your character into another
scene now.
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Then just use your top nodes (as they are labeled) to place
the character, rotate it into a starting position, and
scale it accordingly.
Next chapter I'll begin skinning.
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