Rigging tool experiment 3

Continuing with the rest of the year goal to level up my rigging/modeling skills, with rigging goal to level up both manual and knowledge of using auto rigging tools, I created another 3D model. Still in September, I got to play a bit of a game called: ”Spiritfarer” from Thunder Lotus studio. It was a completely different feel from the previous violent games I played like The Last of Us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima. The pace was much calmer, there wasn’t violent, bloor or gore. I loved the 2D style, ofcourse in particular the main character Stella. Like my previous model I created this year, I started with sculpting in Zbrush and retopo in Maya. The challenge of this time was creating a better facial loop for animation and for the first time ever, sculpting hair. Both were not easy. I tried to use a hair sculpting tool and manual sculpting. When retopo in Maya, I tried to be mindful about the memory cost and kept the mesh as light as I can with my current modeling skill.

This time I experiment rigging with mGear again, I can’t recall what version was it but the main point was to see if there were any updates to the rig system that improved certain features that 2.52 lack (an old version we used at work) One of the tests to see deformation flexibility that I did was to pose out Stella hugging Aang (made by Rigstation) I thought it was perfect since Aang can visit the spirit world. Stella in the game is known for being a hugger. This was a perfect opportunity. I didn’t have time to do more than a couple of simple animations but nothing worth showing.

After this experiment, I started to realized something: It would take a lot more practices and training to get better at modeling/texturing. As much as I really enjoy doing it, I realized the skills are not as essential to my career as an animator. They are nice to have definitely but animation already require a lot of time and training to get good, splitting up the time that I do have began to feel not as beneficial. My animation skills still need to get better, which require more mileage, more time spend into it. I decided to to leave modeling/texture goals in the back log in order to focus on skills that will benefit my future more.

The Yello Mouse experiment

The Yello Mouse is my artist signature; I then decided to create a character out of it. The first version of The Yello Mouse was created in late 2019. The plan was to release a free rig for educational purposes alongside with a Youtube channel but I quickly realized my time was better-spent learning/experimenting and creating instead of managing a channel. The first version of the character was simple box modeling. The rig was manually created from the ground up. Thinking about how to ease someone new to 3D into using a basic biped rig, I made toggle attribute for several sections of controls to have their visibility on and off with the thought that one can just focus on the basic first but have the ability to turn on more controls to work with if needed/when ready.

First version of The Yello Mouse Model/Rig

The second version of the character was created in February of 2020. It was my way of pushing myself to learn Zbrush. I created the character in Zbrush and Retopo him in Maya. That was my first time using Maya Retopogy tool. I loved it. I learned to use Substance Painter to do a basic diffuse map on the character. I then decided to use Mgear to rig up the new version of The Yello Mouse instead of manual rigging as my goal for these kinds of learning exercises were all to rapid prototype. I also modeled/ manually rigged up a small motorcyle for the mouse based on the model of my own motorcycle. The creation of the version 2 model, texturing and rig with simple animation to test the rig was done within two weeks. This achieved my goal of rapid prototype on top of learning new tools along with learning how to sculpt and retopo.

Second version of The Yello Mouse Model/Rig