An Important List Compiled From Past Mistakes

So this post is gonna be short. (EDIT: Lol never mind it ended up being kind of long. Go me!) Today I made some good animation progress. I also finalized the Mean Girl’s hair and she will be rigged tomorrow.

But that’s what brings me to this post. I wanted to put out a list of things to make sure to double-check before binding the joints to one’s character model and weight-painting it. And by “things one must double-check,” I actually  mean “Things I have at least once totally forgotten to do and wanted to hit myself for realizing something was wrong too late and then I had to start the rigging process over again ugh.”

So here’s what I just compiled:

Things to double-check before you bind joints to skin and start weight-painting:

– Finger joints are in correct position for BOTH HANDS (each finger has 3 joints each so it gets tricky)
– Back of hair and Neck don’t intersect weirdly (I can’t believe I actually fucked this one up once)
– Proportion of head-to-body is correct (an easy one to mess up especially when you’re rushing it)
– Everything is freeze-transformed and center-pivoted and history-deleted correctly (once again, easy to fuck up)
– Meshes are correct resolution
– Eye joints are in the center of the eyeballs (Or else your character will be hardcore lazy-eyed)
– Every element is named correctly (no “Polysurface47)
– Imported head is correct/still has blendshapes (You don’t wanna finish the rig and then realize it can’t move its face)
– Knee-to-foot joints are in correct place (Once again, stupid fucking mistake that I have definitely made.)

Aaaaand that’s pretty much why it took me 3 weeks to get the first character rig ready! Maybe 4. I kid though, actually, because the real reason it took so long was because I had NEVER RIGGED A DAMNED THING IN MY LIFE so of course it took me so long to get it right. Whatever. The only person being hard on me is myself so whatever I’m going to sleep now.

Oh and so that you don’t have to be totally bored, here are 2 fun images to keep you satiated, dear reader:

This is the latest Location Standin I made (It’s the part when the main character first enters the mansion and is walking down the long creepy hallway and hasn’t gotten to the party room yet). I’m really actually proud of how good this looks, though. I feel so scared for the main character when I see this — and this is just a basic production shot! Fuckyeahhhh

This is the Mean Girl’s final head, but with all the different polygons separated out. I’ll let you guess what her final hair/head accessory will look like just judging from this image, haha!!

Peace out y’all. There’s certainly more to come!