Not everything went as planned when I started working on things this week. Which really isn’t surprising. This week there was annoying and there was good stuff. I think I can be happy with that. Sure beats there being bad stuff.
Since I didn’t get back to working on rigging Sticks the previous week, that was the first thing I started working on. I was going to finish the spine rig. At least I thought. But when I got the file open and started trying to follow along, things weren’t behaving correctly, or at least, not as they looked like they should behave in the tutorial. I spent at least one evening trying to figure out what was messed up and couldn’t. Something must have got set wrong and I couldn’t back track well enough to determine what it was. And though I tried deleting and recreating some of the last bits, it didn’t seem to do any good. So I decided that the next day I would just start the spine rig over. I saved the file as a new name before I started, just in case. And then I got started deleting the spine rig and starting it over.
The good news is that whatever I did wrong the first time through, I didn’t do it again this time. I was also careful to check settings and such frequently in case it was something I did inadvertently. I got all the way through it with everything acting and functioning as it should. And I even got to the next step which was the head/neck rig. Next up are the eyes, which I will watch through in case there is something I need to do, but Sticks doesn’t have eyes so there shouldn’t be much work there. I think I’m really waiting to get to the arms next and then skinning. So I might be getting close. At least I hope so. Here are some of the screen shots of the rigging now.
I will admit, working on Sticks really took up the bulk of the week so I didn’t get back to the Snowman, though it’s on this week’s list of things I want to get worked on. I did get a little time to work on my painting of the guitar head stock. It’s coming along. I’ve been trying to do all the light stuff first as it lets me be able to follow the reference lines better than if I started with the dark stuff, though I may need to move into some of the darker bits soon, perhaps after a little more chrome work.
I also got back to working on the alien, Greezbly. I was reading a lesson in a magazine and as part of that, they were going to extrude, or more accurately, extract a part of the surface to make the clothing or something. When I read that I realized that the function or tool I was looking for to get the clothing off of Greezbly was the Extract tool in ZBrush. It’s actually under the Sub-Tool pallet. So I first masked off just the shirt area to extract, but I tried to do it at a higher resolution and after it took forever to do, and then crashed the program, I figured out to use a lower subdivision level. I had to adjust the thickness a couple of times but then I was able to get the shirt as a separate sub-tool like I wanted. I then inverted the mask to do the pants, though I first had to adjust the mask to not include the boots or the rest of the body. Then I inverted again and adjusted the mask so that it was only the boots. In the end I got all the right sub-tools for the clothes. Next up, I duplicated the original body, so I didn’t lose anything in the detail in case things don’t work out. Then I used one copy of the body to smooth out the details. They aren’t really needed since all that detail will be in the clothing. Here are some shots to show that it worked. I have one of Greezbly with no clothes on and the body detail all smoothed out and then I have them as I add one piece of clothing at a time. And finally one with some of the detail starting to stand out on the shirt and pants. I’m not done with either so they are works in progress.
I’ll be getting back to Sticks and Greezbly this week. I am going to try to get back to the Snowman too since I have more parts to work on to get that Holiday Card put together. I’m hoping to have it ready for the store by December 1 and while I do have the month, there will no doubt be packs of squirrels to chase between now and then as well as all sorts of other stuff. Including the reception at FuManchu Cupcakes. Yes, there will be a reception for the art for this round at FuManchu Cupcakes on November 6th from
7pm to 10pm. If you are in the Charlotte area and can make it by to see all the art, that would be great. I will be there. For now, here is a picture of the art pieces that I have there.
And aside from that, and Halloween, who knows what else I will manage to get up to this week. You will just have to check back to find out.