Maya: Character Pose Sneak Preview

I haven't posted anything in ages!

Well, over the past few weeks I have been skinning characters for the narrative project. It seems like everyday we have to re schedule because we cant keep up with a days work. Anyway, we are now at a stage where we have seven rigs, and I have just merged some of them with the skinned spaceman. I posed him, sitting down taking a rest while adjusting his battery pack thingy.



As soon as all the characters rigs are combined with the skinned files, I will post some videos on everything working.
Ruben is busy with creating the environments while Shahbir will be doing the characters facial rigging (excluding spaceman), while I will begin preparing and organising stuff for animation, and then animating.

Right now I am combining the rigs with the skin on all the characters. This is getting very monotonous, with all the joints that need parenting.
Here's another character.


A Flock of Pixels

Maya: General's Office Modelled

Firstly taking on blocked out General's Office done by my Studio Colleague Shahbir, I added more objects, such as the lamp, the phone, and the chair. With everything modelled I began UV Map it and now the overall set is in a stage where It can get to the animation.

Today, I have also started to model the interior of the Spacestation, which will be uploaded when finished.

Maya: General Muscles

Deciding that only the male characters will have muscle, I just had to add to the general, being a character with a certain age, i have added less muscle visibility, and no jiggle.

General Muscles Both Arms  

Maya: Soldier Muscles

After getting all the skinning done for my 4 characters I added some smaller tweaks, such as muscle and jiggles, this was used to create a more convincing model where the animation will look more accurate to of a real person.


Soldier Muscles- Wire

Soldier Muscles- Smooth

Soldier Muscles Both Arms

Maya: Generic Female Basic Skinning

Here is the Ruben! with an update on the skinning process of our characters, at this stage skinning is pretty much done in my characters and with Ethan's ones, just needs some tweaking by adding muscle, and maybe jiggles.

The generic female was my last character to skin, and maybe the trickiest one because of the skirt and the hair are complex geometries, other than that everything went all right. As far  Rigging goes, I was informed it was a bit off schedule but Shahbir is catching up with it. when these 2 processes are done, Rigging and Skinning we can start animate, the movements of the characters, however facial rigging still needs to be done in order to make dialogues for the trailer.

Skinning: Generic Female Head and Torso

Skinning: Generic Female Hand

Skinning: Generic Female Legs

 

Maya: Assistant Basic Skinning

Continuing on the Skinning task, the next character to be skinned was the assistant, which happens to be a character I have also modelled. Being the first female character to be skinned it was quite tricky at some points, but nothing some patience wont solve.

Assistant Head Skinning

Assistant Torso Skinning

Assistant Hand Skinning

Also according to Ethan to better pose the character, I have also added a basic binding onto the legs and shoes, just so the character will pose more convincingly even though no rig needs to be done. 

Assistant Legs Skinning (No Rig) 

Maya: General Basic Skinning

here is Ruben in his Skinning quest! ( doesn't it sound wrong, never mind!)

After getting the soldier up for the final touches of skinning I decided to take on the General and add the basic skinning, bind the skin and tweak the weights. 

Although for this character I bound the overall mesh, only the upper body was tweaked, as he will move and be seen from the pelvis upwards.  

Now the only things to add are the muscles and some jiggle (if needed). 

General- Hand Skinning

General- Torso Skinning

General- Head Skinning

EDIT**

Once again for the purpose to pose the character more convincingly, I skinned the legs of the General

General- Legs Skinning

Now onto the next 2 characters !