Rig, skin, remodel, reskin

Here's an update, short and sweet.

So last week I skinned my character. Generally it was fine, just the usual things to do, such as remove the IK and FK arm bones as influences (I used the rigging101 method of IK/FK arm switching, as it works better than Maya's IK switch on the handles, and is a lot cleaner to work with, as you have designated bones for each function). The Jaw was the biggest issue, as it needs to be placed a lot further back into the head as you may think. Run your fingers along your jaw, and the pivot is more under your ears than where your cheekbones are; a common problem but it does affect that mouth.

After skinning, I decided the shoes weren't really up to much. I've always been a bit lazy with feet, as I end up making the entire body in one mesh, then fashioning some L-shaped stumps with the geometry I had left. Keith was the exception as he actually had to have toes, but shoes seem to be a bit lumpy. This time I remodelled them separately, so edge loops and such aren't bugging me. Then they were imported back into the rig scene, the old feet were chopped off, and new shoes combined to the footless mesh.

Just so my skinning wasn't wasted, I duplicated the body mesh, and used that as the body to attach new feet to. Then when this amended mesh was smooth bound, all I had to do was copy the skin weights over, directly by joint name so all I had to tweak was the new feet weighting.

I shall leave you all like last time with a recent picture of the rig, posed for your pleasure.