Dhar

I'm using squetchy Sam as a guide. You can DL him here

Beautiful work! What type of rig are you putting in there?

Yeah, don't move the INSTALL bones by clicking and dragging on them. I made that mistake too. Only use the Pose Sliders.

Lifting the cane off the floor seemed a little odd. Other than that, looking really good

I think that'd be a very useful feature. Not to change the subject, but what about a breathing feature ?

What? You mean no "make human" button???

Thanks for the tip on the webbing Rusty. This process has taught me that next time I will look at the rig first, or at least keep it open while modeling a new character. That way I can custom model to the rig in a fashion that will make it easier to assign CPs to. That way, I can have multiple iterations of the same CPs which will make it easier to copy/paste the weighting for another model. All in all, I'm grateful for all your input guys. Please keep'em coming. Next is the hip weighting

It's either Apply or Done. If I hit Apply, the CP will move according to the numbers I put in, but if I don't like what I see and try to input different numbers, that is when it crashes. If I hit Done it will close the box and I'll have to choose the CP again, right-click and CP weight all over again.

Interesting how unstable the program gets when CP weighting. Many Exception 001 crashes that seem to only happen when you change weight values on a CP (or multiple CPs) and you hit Apply and if you don't like what you see you have to click Done, save, and then open that CP again to change the value. Does anyone else experience this, before I send a report? Here is a quick update, I think I'm pretty happy with the leg so far (up to the thigh bone). I'm not going for realistic, but I'm pretty happy with it Gumbo_Rig_test.mov

I really don't know. But if Sam has it, Gumbo has to have it too

Thanks Mark. I am doing that as well. It is rare that I find an entire ring of CPs weighted the same way, especially on Gumbo who has more CPs than Sam. Trial & error is still a big part of this process.

That's what I thought too, Rusty. But if you look at Squetchy Sam, hardly a CP is assigned to a bone at 100%. The toe point, which you'd expect it to be 100% toes_geom, is actually weighted to the foot_geom as well. And then there is that "foot_shadow_geom" which came out of nowehere I'm starting at the feet and working my way up.

This has been by far the most challenging step in the modeling process (just as Robert warned me about). So, after numerous trials and errors trying to follow tutes or doing everything on my own, I decided to simply see what the CP weights are for Sam and do the same (or close to it) on Gumbo. It is going to be a very tedious work because I will have to look at each and every CP and copy its percentages over, but I don't see how else to do it.

I simply follow the tutorial in here

CP weighting is more detail oriented than the CP assignment and bone compensate combined. Wheeeeew! If it weren't for Mark Strohbehn's tutorials I'd given up by now. Dave, Mark, Rusty, do you have a preference which weighting method you use, or do you blend between CP Weight editting and freehand CP placement?

Incredible!

Thanks a million David. I could've sworn I did that step.

Haha God bless you Lee, thanks man. As frustrating as this process may seem, I'm actually having loads of fun

Right there

OK, I give up on the right knee issue. here is the model file - please tell me where I went wrong. Thanks Gumbo_Export.ZIP

OK, I'm stuck with this right knee problem. The CPs are assigned the same as the left leg bones. David, Mark, Rusty, anybody; do you know what I should recomp to make it work like the left knee?? Gumbo_knee_trouble.mov

I just realized something else while I was exploring Squetchy Sam's rig, facial controls are not working on Gumbo. Shouldn't they be working at this stage?

I didn't touch the controller. That's the foot causing it. I'm pretty sure I missed a step - I just don't know where. <sigh> Gotta redo the whole leg constraints No matter - more practice for me

I think I need to figure out the right knee problem before I do any weighting Gumbo_Wire_whole.mov

I haven't done any weighting yet. I think I may have just solved the eyelids thing by redoing the steps for the eyes. But the right knee is stuck. Once I'm done with the eyes I'll dive into the weighting. Any words of wisdom on CP weighting?