panda, weights, done!

Sultans rigging lecture proved very useful yesterday, as he showed me how to do a spine in a more professional way, encorporating both FK and Ik by using extra joint chains and grouping/parenting/orient constraints. Its all a bit technical to post I think, but I have a good understanding of it now. The method of grouping an object to itself in order to keep it independant from itself has also helped immensely as it seems to solve many problems that I find commonly occur. He also showed a method of parenting the object group to a joint and then uparenting it to keep the rotational axis of the joint. This helps with orient constraints, as normally I would have to change the local rotaional axis manually to make it fit. I used this technique to create some ear controllers. Basically the rig is now fully updated to encorporate all of this, and skinning was no problem at all. I have included a switch to turn the model from low to high rez, and a similar switch to turn the spine controls off if necissary, as Dan said it looked a bit complex. I also put on pole vector attributes for the elbows and knees in case of preference to use that.

Also, the problem with the knees caving in I solved without Sultan, basically because I'm THAT awesome. It was doing that because they were too bent at the point of skinning, so naturally when they straighten out that has an effect on the geometerey. Straightened the legs out a bit, and its fixed!

This is almost ready to animate now, I just need to sort out blink attributes and the zip control (it doesnt follow the skin). We are currently testing to see if we can apply new textures to the skinned model without it messing things up. If it doesn't then that should save a whole load of time.