The Apothecary Week 20 - Advanced Skeleton is amazing!

Dated: 15 November 2024

I recently updated to the newest version of Advanced Skeleton and I have been missing out on so much. The tool is getting better and better by the second. There have been so many features added since I last used it and it has made rigging infinitely better.

I think my favorite part that was added to Advanced Skeleton is the additional joints added to the skin cage that allows the user to create better deformations around problematic areas such as the elbows, knees and scapula areas. The best part about the joints is that they are animatable so if the rig isn't behaving how you want it to, you can switch on the partial joints and then you can animate specific parts of the character for better deformations. I am really excited to have learned how to create a follow control for the scapula which gives the shoulders a more accurate looking motion pattern rather than the entire arm moving with the scapula.

One of the changes from last week is the addition of more geometry so that the deformations on the face is more accurate. I really struggled with rigging the eyes and the lips. I had an issue where the eyes were not fully closing when our character blinked. It took me some time but I finally figured out how to adjust the edge loops I choose so that the eye fully closes now.

I also had issues with the lips as the falloff wasn't correct and it seemed like the settings weren't changing or helping at all, but I finally figured out the right setting so that the geometry didn't overlap as much as it was. I also had to have Minh focus on on creating a mouthbag that directly linked to the mouth so that our mouth movements would be fluent and looks smooth.

I think that the rig is in a good spot for our group to do layout, but I still have some changes that I wanted to make to the rig. I think that the scapula controls are using too much of the back and it is moving too much around the areas behind the breasts. I also need to make sure the fingers are rigged and moving correctly as I never really tested. The ended up looking backwards and really bad in the motion capture of the flip, but I am pretty sure it will be an easy fix.

Also, the face motion capture piece is looking pretty cursed without any textures as I can't really tell where our character is looking and it throws off the performance a ton haha.

One of the things I want to add to the rig is adjustable hair pieces so that our animation will look a little bit more polished, but I am not really worried about that yet. My next steps for the project will be creating a test animation movement testing the rig with keyframes rather than Advanced Skeleton's Motion Capture. I will also finish Basil's dress in Marvelous Designer for this test. I have an idea already where she does a walking spin.