Skinning Alien

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwVdv8JGpIU  Tutorial for eyelid


One of my methods on modelling the eyelid:

Extruding the top faces of a polygon sphere, then separate it from the bottom faces using the extract tool. I changed the pivot point of both the top and bottom faces.Then re-sizing it to fit in the eye socket.

I am still trying to figure out how to sew together the vertices or edges on the sides of the spheres so that when I rotate the eyelid the bottom and top part act well.

For now, in the images below is the point I am now for the creating an eyelid so I can continue the blinking control tutorial.

The eye pupil has been modelled so it is more obvious. So far I think it looks good, the eyeball still sits well in the eye socket.

Here I am applying set driven keys similar to the ones applied in the feet. I was adding a fist control maximum and minimum which most values were set at 10 and -10. The whole process works wells and both right and left fists fold well so I am happy with this stage.

An example of one of the set driven keys set to the feet control. These attributes have been added to give the alien model more movement options when it comes to animating it.

Peel Heel, Toe Tap, Stand Tip, Twist Toe & Twist Heel are the added attributes to the feet control.

 The whole process of adding these attributes and the set driven keys was confusing to understand because there was so many options that needed to be ticked and set that it was hard to understand what was going on as you follow the tutorial.
Honestly, compared to the other stages, I found this the most interesting and fun despite the complications, because I had to make sure I kept a saved version to keep working from if I made a mistake, and I did not want to keep using the Ctrl+Z key to undo the actions as I did not know what actions it was that needed undoing.

This is what I meant by there was a lot to learn from this stage.

Toe Tap

Stand Tip

Twist Toe

Twist Heel

Peel Heel

The stage of the tutorial where I try to add a rotating effect of the forearm was very confusing because I was not sure the reason for using some of these tools, such as the multiply divide in the hypershade menu under utilities. This means that I need to look into these tools to improve my general modelling skills.

I managed to follow the tutorials, but on both sides of the forearms, the wrist as you can see in the image below is looking weird. Some of the vertices have met at a central point so I am going to seek out a solution to solve that. I have not figured out whether I need to re-model that area or adjust the settings in the channel box.

This problem could have been the source of my modelling skills when extruding the wrist, so in the future I need to pay attention when modelling either a high or low polygon character to make sure the vertices and edges are correctly placed.

Painting the weights on the model, this process was not hard to follow in the video tutorial but since the aim was to remove mobility in areas that was not needed, the process may not be the same for another model.

The highlighted white areas you see in the images are where certain influences exist for the model. I had to remove some of these influences so my model would only have influences in areas that were important.