Final Evaluation

Today is the deadline for my Advanced Skills project, although I plan on continuing my research and rigging skills far after today.

I must admit when I started this term I was rather ill and this set me back a few weeks with regards to my rigging. I realise now that the initial rigging of the body that took me a while to do could have been done in a few days in I had been better. I hope that I have made up for this of late, although I could have done with exurting myself more at the beginning of term. Possibly confusion and changes with my final film impacted with knowing what I wanted to do for this term.

In overview, I have done the following this term:

Rigged the bones in a human model (without binding- this is my next aim), created blend shapes for two character heads, tested dynamic fire, created water tests using textures and dynamics, render tested my head model using the toon shader, and also carried on creating run cycles and expression tests for my animation.

I feel I have learned so much this term that I cannot list all of the shortcuts etc here. It ranges from the obvious blend shapes to even adding prefixes to names. I really want to push on with my rigging, and will push on further this term to learn how to make the bulges in the arms and painting weights on the body. However, I do want to use the next week or so to concentrate on some animation as I am rather missing it.

My aims from now on are:

• finish learning how to rig the body completely
• apply my facial rigging knowledge to animals or non human characters
• create a walk cycle or test animation with my rigged character

I like rigging because it is a challenge and you need to solve lots of problems as you encounter them. For this reason I want to push myself further and next attempt either cloth or hair. I really hope by having some knowledge of these skills I can create better animation for my final film Snatched, and make myself a desirable candidate for a job as a character Animator upon completion of my degree.