56 - Range of motion while skinning (Cartoon character rigging series)
Its important to understand how the skin looks while the character rig is moving/deforming so while skinning its useful to add in a range of motion animation, so as we edit the skin we can quickly play back the animation and see how it looks.
It important as while skinning areas like the shoulder, it might look good in the t-pose but it also has to look goof while moving into several other poses.
Its ok to use the pint skin weight tool while the character is not in the t-pose but id recommend going back to frame 1 (where the t-pose should be kept) when mirroring the skin weights so it mirrors perfectly across.
Using the range of motion its important to animate poses that would be used in an animation and nothing extreme or unrealistic. for example if I was skinning a human character I wouldn't have a range of motion where the clavicle bent 180 degrees around as that pose would never be needed and is unrealistic so trying to get the skin to work in such a pose would be pointless. However its important to note some such things might happen with a cartoon character (e.g. the sine wave on the arms) so its important to also check that those deformations work well with the skin.
Twitter: / jamesdthompson
Please leave any comments or questions below and ill try help as soon as possible.
Thanks for watching :)
Source files can be downloaded at:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30666061/JDT...