With my script being
finished all I needed to do was model skinning: after watching the live
demonstration the lecture and the labs I
started skinning my model by using the Smooth Binding first and then refining
weights with the Weight Painting Tool.
At first I was
confused and I couldn't exactly wrap my head around the concept of skin weights
as sometimes painting something over some vertices would undo previous work
which I had done, but thanks to the separated meshes and after watching some
tutorials (especially this tutorial from Jason Baskin) I started having some
nice results.
The end result was
quite satisfying, even though some bits of my mesh are not deforming properly
(especially around shoulders) I think the overall model looks quite smooth
which is what I wanted to achieve by the end of the process.
The problem with the
shoulders was probably brought up by the way the model topology was laid out, I
think that having a different starting pose would have made easier but by the
time I realised that it was too late and there was nothing I could have done,
the process of skinning was actually very interesting because it ties up all
the "invisible" work done through the rig in a very tangible way.
Now that I have been
through the full process of rigging and skinning a model I feel more confident
in my ability to judge model topology and predict how the model would deform.
I believe this is a
never ending process that is usually refined over time and the only thing that
can guide towards the decision of the topology of a model is the experience
gained in previous attempts to rig and skin other models.
