Initial spring test 01

Playing around with the spring (- arms are not animated) The first clip is of the spring just sorting out the up and down key frames then i go on to add the 'side to side' variants in the further two clips.

It is the first initial time Ive played around with animating the spring. I have however found a problem with the arms and the way that i rigged them as they are not working how i would like them to. I think it has something to do with the controls that i have used but I'm not sure. The hands are tilting where they shouldn't and when i tried making new elbow and shoulder controls they wouldn't link up... I'm not really sure what is going on at the moment but I'm desperate to get them sorted because as soon as they work i can really get into animating him. Im going in nto see Alan and see if he can work out whats going on - i think it may have something to do with the ncloth i used and all the alterations i may have made in the process to and from ncloth?

Ncloth developments..

Unfortunately after getting it to work it still didnt look right and so i tried just skinning the arm to see what effect this would have, it actually looked pretty good! And Ive since decided to get rid of ncloth for the arms and just skin. Its wasted time using ncloth but I'm glad that i tried it, Ive actually started to grasp the basics of ncloth now... the very basics. I think it one of those methods that you really can see until you've done it. At the moment I'm now starting to do some test springs and basic poses whilst working on my storyboard.

Dancer

Like the Jack in the box, i created blend shapes and a control in the same way for the dancer - she is fully rigged and bound and ready to animate.



(POSE TEST)

Ncloth problem - solved!

After speaking to Alan today Ive been able to finally achieve the final result for my fabric jack in the box arms i was looking for. It was suggested by Alan just skinning the arms to the joints and using a jiggle deformer or soft bodies deformer, but eventually the Ncloth worked. I have had to make some slight alterations, as you can see Ive included extra geometry within the arm itself to give it some definition of an arm shape and stop the cloth from just falling through itself, it also has given me a bit more control over how i want the arm to look. Ive also rigged the hands and fingers now.

I think i will hopefully be able to do the final grouping tomorrow, but i do want to get my character checked by Alan beforehand so that i don't start animating then end up having a problem with something that i could have sorted out earlier.

Below are some images of how the ncloth is working.

• I selected the arm geometry and then chose ndynamics - nmesh - create ncloth
• Then reselected the arm and also the main spring geometry as this is what was previously causing weird problems and chose 'exclude collide pairs' from the ncloth - nconstraint menu. This stopped the arm interferring with the spring.
• I transform constrained the vertices's on either end of the arm from the nconstraint menu - transform.
• After doing this the arm stayed put, sagging in the middle behaving normally.
• I then placed some objects within the arm. A sphere for the elbow and two edited cylinders to keep the arms shape and parented them to the joints.
  
• After they had been modified and fit the arm i selected the arm geometry and then the object and then chose nmesh - create passive collider. This then told the arm geometry not to pass through and treat them as solid objects.
• I did a few tests, moving the arm and watching the nmesh to make sure it was still behaving normally and it all worked perfectly.

I'm so glad the i could use the nmesh as its giving the effect that i wanted :)



I also added a few custom controls to my character. (obviously apart from the obvious controls on the arms and hands and fingers)

My lid only has an 'open_close' control that i linked to the rotate z channel using the connection editor, i also did a similar thing for the winder on the side of the box giving it only a 'turn' control (no transltaes/rotates or scales)

I also created a main body spring control that i gave a 'sqash' attribute and also a 'lean L to R' (left to right) and a 'lean f t b' (fron to back) allowing me to move Jack in all directions allowing me to squash and stretch at the same time.

For the blend shapes i created a 'happy' 'sad' 'angry' 'suprised' 'left EB lift' (eyebrow) and a 'right EB lift'. I created a control shape above Jacks head for this. Emily also suggested that i make a few blank blend shapes that i can link up so that if i need to add another expression i have some spares to edit, so i also have two spare heads.

Update

The characters:


Jack so far:

• Finish blend shapes
• Smooth bind

Dancer so far:

• Finish blend shapes
• Smooth bind

Environment: