Character Creation: Raccoon Part 4

By Meg Sugden

Binding the Character and Tidying Up

After I had all of the control points in place and the joint chain created I moved onto binding the geometry to the skeleton. This is a simple process that involved selecting what you want to bind and changing a few settings around.

So once my geometry was bound I set about changing the weights and influence, the same way in which I changed them on the alien. I made sure that on each of the end joints there was no influence and that the model was all black, this meant that it wouldn't bend out of shape unless it was moved by the joint higher than it in the joint chain.

I did this for all of the end joints, and then changed around some of the influence on other joints so that random parts of the model didn't move at the same time before testing that the movement on it was good, which it was as in some places I had a few problems (Like in the second picture).

After everything looked good and was moving accordingly the only thing left to do is to UV map and texture the model. This involved a little bit of effort to do, especially with this model as it had a lot of extrusions and areas that were a little bent out of shape, but I hoped that this wouldn't matter in the end as the only area I am worried about it the coat, and you aren't going to see all that much of it as you only ever see the raccoon lying down.

So I was again following the instructions in the video tutorial that our tutor set for us to look at, I began the process of unfolding a lot of edges in order for the UV map to be completely folded out flat and for look good enough for Callum to be able to texture it.

I started off by splitting my work area so that I had two panels, one for my perspective view, one for the UV texture editor panel. This is just so that the workspace is organised and I can effectively and efficiently work around the layout and have everything there without them being in separate windows and taps.

I then used the front perspective mode on the raccoon panel and then used planar mapping to be able to take an almost screen shot of the raccoon from the front so that we had a better shape to work with. Unfortunately I can across an annoying problem at this stage were my planar mapping just appeared as the original cube shape still and I couldn't seem to get the shape of the raccoon on the texture editor. I managed to fix this is a simple way, after a lot of confusion, by importing everything in the scene and then creating a new project folder and importing it back in. This seemed to work fine, and the rest of the rig is still working and I can now continue editing the UV Map.

I then moved onto looking at how I can cut up the shape of the raccoon in order to work on each body part separately, so I looked for areas where I could cut the UV's up. This is a technique that allows you to remove and move around parts of the 2D UV map, but not actually alter the shape of the real model. I selected the edges that first go around the wrist to break the hand off from the arm and then around the top of the arm so that that is separate as well.

I then did the same for the rest of the body until every part was separate and I had them laid out on around the map.

Now that we had all of the UV together I wanted to go about unfolding them out so that you can get to them easier. I first started on the leg, and selected edges that ran down the centre of the back of the leg. This was so that you can again cut them here and then unfold the UV's. We selected both legs at the same time before cutting them.

Now, once they were separate I went up the front of the leg, separately this time, and selected the edges that run up roughly the middle, before changing the selection to UV. Then once they were selected, in the texture editor I moved them across slightly and aligned them properly so that they were straight. This then acts as the middle of the leg so we want to keep it nice and straight. We then used the unfold tool so that we could fold out the UV's around this centre point as we had already cut it down the back.

I actually had a lot of problems with the legs, and I did struggle to be able to do this part of the model so I actually first moved on to a different part so that I could get that done first and then come back to the legs after as I really didn't know what to do with them.

I went up to the arms to ensure that the model wasn't messing around and they worked fine, so I know there is something wrong now with just the legs in particular. So, unfolding the arms was very simple and didn't take very long at all as they worked well. The only part that didn't go straight to plan was the end of the sleeves but this just involved moving a few of the UV outwards so that they weren't overlapping any more.

I then did the same with the rest of it and managed to get it all done apart from the head and legs.

This is were I had a really bad problem, I couldn't actually think of a way in which I could fix this so I had to wait for some help in the process as I really didn't know how to resolve the problem, unfortunately I didn't have time to finished this due to a trip abroad for uni work, so I handed it over to Callum just to finish up.