Year: 2017

After adding a skeleton and parenting my mesh to the armature, I positioned the creature in appropriate ways to match the final images I had chosen. To position them, I simply moved the different bone in my creature to place them where I saw fit.

Image 1 – Snow

[Image Credit: Cristiana Bardeanu – Snow – Link]

For the snowy image, I chose to place my creature in a relaxed pose. There is an empty place in this image where I feel he would fit perfectly, but because there is little to look at in this image, a simple pose seemed appropriate. This pose also gives me the opportunity to explore more when texture painting this model, as his lack of movement would most likely cause a thin layer of snow to cover the top parts of his body.

Pose:

Image 2 – Forest

[Image Credit: Free-Photos – Trees – Link]

For the second image, I chose to place my creature in a pose that suggested wonder. As this scene is set in the middle of a wood, there is not much for him to see apart from a large amount of foliage, therefore there isn’t one specific place for him to be looking. The nature of my creature forces him to evolve depending on where he is, so making him stand tall is a must, as it would better resemble the scenery around him, and help him to blend into the scene. This all lead me to the following simple pose.

Pose:

Image 3- Sea

[Image Credit: Andym5855 – Sunset – Link]

For the final image, I chose to have my creature look out on the horizon. This seemed fitting for this scene as not only is the sunset fading the light, but it is common for people to visit the sea and do such a thing. When looking across a large distance, it can be hard to see, so including a hand gesture that shows viewers that my creature is trying to admire his surroundings seems very fitting. I also wanted to imply movement in order to bring my model to life and present him as something other than a static figure. To imply this, I presented him in mid-walk.

Pose:

The following is a time-lapse of how I created the first pose, the same principles were applied across each different outcome:

I originally tried to create this pose before I chose to simplify the armature and remove the bones from my creature. This is the result, one I was not happy with. It is because of this I decided to stick with the simplified armature as opposed to creating a more complex one to incorporate the finger bones. The final poses I created didn’t need such a complex armature. It was during the posing of my creature that minor armature errors became apparent, causing me to alter specific parts of the mesh and/or bone placement.

Because my character is not human, and his limbs aren’t all attached, I had to alter how and where I placed certain bones in the armature structure.

When I originally parented my mesh to its skeleton, I realised that I needed to move the endpoints in the limbs away from the pelvis and shoulders so the joints didn’t bend the mesh. Once I reloaded and reparented the mesh, I individually altered the weight as follows:

– I didn’t alter the Torso and Pelvis’ weight as when I changed the pose of my creature, it seemed to move reasonably well and I didn’t want to risk losing this.

– I made sure the finger bones were unattached from the hand and only weighted the fingers on the second bone, leaving the weight paint empty on the first finger bone.

– The lower arm bone is weighted to the elbow and the lower arm, the upper arm bone is attached only to the upper arm of the creature. This does effect the way the arm moves, however the stocky nature of my creatures figure justifies the stiffness in his shoulders.

– The Neck bone has no weight as my creature does not have a visible neck, therefore it does not effect how the character’s head moves.

– The head is weighted solely to the head/skull bone. It was hard to be precise when paint selecting the parts of the mesh I wanted to attach to this bone, however I could risk this (again) due to the stiff and stocky nature of my character. I was still as accurate as I could be when using the tool.

– The lower leg bone includes the mesh of my creatures knee, and the upper part just the top part of the leg. I made sure the knee was strongly connected by painting it until it was all red.

After I went through and connected each part of my skeleton appropriately, I made sure to move the bone to ensure everything looked and moved nicely. When moving my model, I would sometimes experience weird deformities that made spikes for on my mesh when it moved. I realised that this was due to a mistake when weight painting certain parts of my mesh. To stop this, I checked the way each bone moved every time I painted, and made any appropriate alterations to ensure specks of weight like in the image below were all gone. This is what lead my final weigh paint to be solely Blue or Red.

In the end,  I removed the bones I attached to the fingers and kept them static as I was unable to get the fingers to be fully functioning in the way I had hoped. This did not limit my possibility too much, however it did disable the ability to create complex poses. If needed, I would return to my model and add these bones in, making sure they were accurate, however for now, I chose to continue without including this armature.

The Final Result:

Here is the skeleton I created after following the detailed instructions in the Character Creation tutorial.