Once I had all my controls parented, oriented and in the right order, I decided to have a go at binding my skeleton to my mesh. This was the nerve wracking part for me as all the fears whether my model would turn out right came back to me. I didn't know if my skeleton would be too small or if the dress and the legs would end up moving awkwardly or not! But I did it anyway and I was surprised at my result! My model could actually move! There were a few blips however, which I went to fix in painting the weights...
Firstly, as I predicted, because my model was designed to be spindly, I knew certain parts of her body would influence others, I just didn't realise HOW much. For example, her shoulder and clavicle areas of the mesh were heavily influenced by the head. This was quite simple to fix and I enjoyed seeing the results and being able to twist and turn my model with ease. I did have to pose her arms both up, down and sideways to make sure that the shoulder and clavicle would not be affected by the head at each of those points, but other than that this was a quick fix.
I also found that when I bent my model backwards, her chest was also influenced by her head. I think a mix of her head being quite large in comparison to her body, and it being very close to her shoulders, this is why the head was influencing several parts of my model's body.
My next problem was with the legs, which is the main thing I presumed. Initially I began getting rid of ALL influences that weren't a part of a specific joint (for example, like in the picture, I got rid of all the influences on the boot because this was the ankle joint). However this just kept distorting the mesh of my model, and I began to worry that I had missed something out in the previous steps, or I would have to start again. Mat explained to me that, because I was getting rid of all influences, this meant that the software was snapping missing influences to the nearest joint, because you can't have parts of the mesh without influences, and I was deleting them left, right and centre. He helped me with this step, so like in the picture, I would have got rid of all the influences on the left leg because it it's a right joint, however keep the influence on the boot because the next joint from the knee would be the ankle, and it need something in between whereas I would have just gotten rid of it.
I then couldn't wait to get started with the hands. I had such a good experience with the tutorial's hands that because I had made even more of a challenge for myself this time around, I couldn't wait to dig in! My model's hands were definitely messy, a lot of the fingers were influences by the others and it took me a good while to separate them so that they were influenced individually. Halfway through, like the legs of my model, it was as if I had distorted the mesh, but I kept at it and I was able to make each five of my finger move individually and pose them as if she were waving to a friend!
For this stage, I was definitely in for a challenge but I feel like I learnt SO much. Rigging is an extremely smart process, but it takes time and I have found myself that if I try and rush it, something will go wrong. But overall I am very happy with how my model is turning out!
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