OUT OF PROJECT COLLABORATION
Although I am specialising in character animation I was
worried that due to how far down in the pipeline that skill is
utilized, I could end up in a situation where I am animating
for multiple projects at once when it is coming to the final
deadline. To counter this and still collaborate, I decided to
use my secondary skill as a competent rigger, as my main
collaboration skill I advertised, this process coincided with
the rigging schedule for my own project. To compensate, I
had to push the start of the official animation for my project
2 weeks back, though in the long run this was intended to
allow me to focus on animation solely.
RIGGING FOR VIRTUAL REALITY
I was asked to rig 2 assets for Malachi Duncan and Daniel
Longe that will be taken into Unreal Engine, and used in a
virtual reality scene. From my research into taking rigs and
animation into Unreal the workflow is to create the rig with
its controls, then once the animation is done, you make the
animation from the controls, into the joints themselves , then
remove the controls and take the animation and geometry
into Unreal. The 2 rigs I was asked to do were fairly
straightforward to make compared to character rigs. Rigging
the robotic arm actually allowed me to experiment with the
Ik spline tool in the cabling, and after using it in the rig, I
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decided that this would be a better IK solver to use on jackets and coats like the ones on
the Apollo rig, so when I have time after university has ended, I will modify my rigs to
incorporate this feature for future Ghosted projects. Learning how to create a rig for
Unreal also gave me a wider range of rigging experience, in soft and hard surface, and
across many platforms. . I also managed to get a free asset out of the collaboration in the
form of the robotic arm, which Malachi granted me use of in my project. This really helped
to save time when I had to consider making some small concept changes to my project,
which would require new assets, specifically a robotic arm.