IK Handle issues

When I went to animate Bob running I noticed that when I moved his leg handles his leg moved outwards instead of inwards. This meant he could not run or walk with bent knees which was a huge problem. I asked a tutor for help and learnt how to use both locators and pole vectors. When these were linked in to my ik handles the legs twisted at their hip joints at a ninety degree angle. This was now an even bigger problem. So I spoke to Byron. We looked at the way the bones were sitting and the bones were slightly splayed outwards which was affecting the way that the IK handles moved the legs. We moved the bones to a straight position and then moved the knees slightly forwards and the feet slightly backwards, hinting at the direction we wanted them to move. This was "how nature does it". Then I added new IK handles and the legs began to move in the direction intended. Unfortunately this meant that my weight painting was out and I had to now fix it. 

The middle #241

Neither Bob or Sally had a handle for their middle. I also found that when beginning to animate them it became very difficult to move their whole body. I added a handle for the handles, but unfortunately everytime I touched it it moved the entire model back to its original shape. I decided to get rid of these. Instead I created handles for the middles of the models, their center hips, and then selecting all the handles allows me to move them from position to position.

Fixing Bob #241

As I continued to weight paint Bob I realised that he kept deforming in specific places that were incorrect. I repeatedly tried to remove these before finally deciding that the incorrect deformations were being caused by not enough bones when the body bent and a reason I still couldn't figure out which was deforming the leg.

I then had to make a new skeleton which I did which had more bones in it. The new skeleton deformed a lot better than previously and required minimal weight painting which didn't take too long as I now knew which joints were connected to what skin ect making it very easy.

 After I did this, I finished Sally who I had been working on steadily the same as Bob. I added Curves which I parented to IK handles and their heads to add handles for me to operate when they were animating.

 I tested these and they worked fine.

Leg Weight Painting #241

The following images are a timeline of how I weight painted the right leg of my model. These images are show the process I used for all my weight painting. 

 1. Before weight painting, looking at where the skin is deforming most and at what angles.

 2. After weight painting the right hip/thigh, right knee and right foot I tested the leg again to see if it was deforming correctly. It showed lots of sections of the left leg deforming also, I believed this to be accidental weight painting on that surface while I was doing the right leg. I noticed the stomach, knee and ankle of the model was deforming a lot better than previously.

3. I went and weight painted the same sections of the right leg, including erasing paint marks on the left leg. I noticed that the left leg was a lot better but I had missed some sections of the leg. I also noticed that the knee was very linear and not smooth, i think this might have something to do with the geometry of the mesh. The stomach of the model seems to be bending awkwardly, I used my own body and attempted to put my body in the same position and I could not. I will try to smooth the stomach down but since the position of the leg is not natural and will not be in this position I am not too worried. I will check what it looks like from the side. 

4. I changed the weight of the skin on the hip and also how it went up the body. This changed the deformation of the stomach. I still noticed parts of the left left deforming funny. I think that when I mirror the skin weights from the left to right sides this will be taken care of.

Weight Paint Progress #241

As I weight painted I made sure to track my progress. I found that these images also helped a lot later, especially of the ones where I used the IK handles to deform the model. This was because they meant that when the skin didnt deform as it was supposed to I could use the image as a reference when I was weight painting to fix it. 

Weight Paint Bob #241

 The next stage of completing Bob was to bind his skeleton to the mesh of the model. I did this using smooth bind.

After this was completed I began to weight paint. I knew from having played with my IK handles after attaching Bob to the skeleton that some skin was deforming incorrectly. 

Having labelled my joints I found that selecting the parts I needed to weight paint was easier.

IK Bob #241

 After giving Bob his bones I labelled all the joints for ease of access. I gave them names such as 'center of chest' and 'hip right'.

I then added IK handles to the left and right arms, left and right legs and the spine from the neck to stomach. This was so I could move Bob easily.