Ok so it's been a while since the last post but it's not because i have been forgetting to post stuff, but rather that, I've been getting stuff ready to be posted as well as animating.
Animation is well into full swing and 10 seconds of the 25 second routine is just about done (Not exactly half the routine but it's better for moral...!) The 10 seconds i have done will still need a few tweaks at the end, and animating any final details to it such as blinking and the finger placement. But for now it's practically done so i can move onto the next section of the routine.
Breaking in New Slippers
Issues i have had so far when i first started animating to do with the axis of rotation on some of my constraints. ON some of the constraints especially the ones on the shoulders were slightly off. So the start of the routine where Savanna Montanna raises her arm in the air and back down become a much bigger/ awkward task that what i expected it to be. You see when i first started animating i was rotating the wrong axis and what happened was the mesh would start deforming incorrectly as i went from pose to pose. The shoulders would start twisting and it just looked a mesh. I thought it could be of 3 things:
1) The weight painting is off.
2) Not enough geometry around the shoulders
3) Animating it wrong...doh!
Anyway i spent a while thinking it was the paints and trying to tweak them before thinking it was to do how i was animating and if i was rotating the arm correctly. I new it could go into poses. But i was struggling to get from pose A to pose B. What i ended up doing in the end for that section was to work backwards and go from pose B (which was the more important pose). To pose A which was just basically her arm straight down beside her. This way i could monitor the axis of rotation a lot better.
Animating that first little section was like breaking in new slippers. Once i knew how my model actually animates and worked out a few things when it came to animating the actual jive section of the routine things did start to run more smoothly.
Looking and animating now i still think more geometry is needed on the character and is something i will make sure off in the future. When i was modelling her it was like a seesaw and i was too busy worrying about having too much geometry that in the end i probably don't have enough in certain areas. So that something I've learnt along the way.
