Reverse Hand Lock

This isn't something I've done, but more something to ponder for rigging.

The typical way the foot, and reverse foot lock, works is by having a series of single chain IK handles down the foot, then parenting those to a separate set of joints that flows in the opposite direction of the original chain. This allows the character to rotate the heel, toe, and ball of his foot, while keeping the toes locked down onto the floor (or wherever the controller is). Ultimately what you have is an IK leg, with various pivot points about the foot for different poses and points where the weight is going.

So how about this; a reverse hand lock? It's essentially the same idea, but you can put pressure on the fingers, lifting the palm of the hand up, which would prevent any fingers sliding about as, say, a character vaulting over an object where the weight is shifted over different areas of the hand, then lifted off as the feet come back into contact with the ground.

In theory, you'd have the same chain of shoulder>elbow>forearm roll>wrist>hand>fingers>fingertips, and then a reverse chain following through the hand to meet the same attributes in the foot.

However, I'm clueless to why this doesn't work in practice. The extra finger joints most likely cause significant problems as they somehow need to be anchored.

So that's my thought for the week... is a hand lock worth investigating? And how would it best be accomplished?

UV unwrapping

Hey all, thought I'd comment a little on a handy, albeit slightly old, tool in Maya for UV mapping. There's no doubt about it, everybody has to hate UV mapping. Not too bad on simple box-like objects, but with a character it's a chore, to keep the UVs as undeformed as possible, while keeping them somewhat seam-free so it's easier to work with in Photoshop or what have you. I've managed to map the body of my character with a lot of automatic mapping, which is then sewn back together piece by piece (auto mapping ends up supplying you with 10-20+ small chunks of your model, but they're pretty much distortion free which is much nicer than planar mapping). Pretty straightforward for arms and legs, a little more painstaking for hands.

But yeah, the head is a completely different ballpark. Automatic mapping gave me far toooo many small pieces; may as well just split every polygon up for me to sew like a massive jigsaw. The university/textbook method of planar mapping, then cutting the head in half, then Polygon>Unfold method is alright (it's seen me through 3 years, sort of) but it's some sort of trial and error to unfold half a head properly without it turning into an indistinguishable dinosaur head.

This is what I was going to mention earlier comes in handy. 'New' to 2009 (yes, I am behind with the times) is a nice feature called the Smooth UV Tool. Pretty much what it does is gets rid of all those overlapping UVs that play havok with a mesh with a simple mouse click+drag. For example, here is the front of my character's face, planar mapped away from the rest of the head (I'll sew the rest back on later in chunks)

Those purple bits are overlapping faces in the UV map, which we want to get rid of before we can be sure the mesh is spread out flat on the grid. Thanks to the Smooth UV Tool, all that needs to be done for that is to select the surrounding UVs (let's do the eye as an example). A small dialogue box appears underneath; all we do is click and drag on 'relax' and Maya does the rest for us.

All the overlapping UVs are now inside that eye socket, flattened out nicely. I've also gone ahead and done the same to the other eye and the mouth. The level of distortion of the UV arrangement is minimal as well. Now to pull out those cheeks and chin. This works the same way of selecting the group of UVs, then using the 'Unfold' tool instead.

Obviously this still needs tweaking, but in a few short clicks, the face has been unwrapped in some awkward spots, saving a lot of time.

On a side note, I've got a nice new PC. However the only thing that is on it is Maya. With a lack of Photoshop for the time being, I had a quick go on Windows 7 Paint. It's actually pretty good considering it's Paint, that godawful program that used to destroy .jpgs and resizing images. It does it pretty well this time round. Obviously no Photoshop, but a lot more inviting to use than before.

2010

Hello all, apologies for severe lack of updates. I hope everyone had a good Xmas, and an equally good New Year!

2010's resolution is to get more animation work done, preferably the stock rig completed and a few animation exercises to add to my range of work.

Hopefully I'll have more work to show off soon. Stay tuned.