Rigging - Zombie

After having a quick go with the weight and learning how to use it. I started with the foot and I found fairly easy, I smoothed out the mesh using the range of motion and the weight tools.

The images below are some screenshots of the most extreme poses for the foot.

I tried to make the make the mesh seem realistic as possible, however being my first time skinning anything, I had a shaky start. Using the video tutorials I was about to get a rough idea how it should look and I went on from there.

I had the most problems with the back of the knee. I started to make a massive gap where the back of the knee was, I was later told it shouldn't look like that, it should crease, like clothes do in reality. I started to edit the gap, firstly trying to make it so it was only a tiny gap but still it didn't look real.

So I tried again with more success, the crease looks a lot more realistic and I was happy with it. Some of the mesh does overlap but I think it makes it look more believable. 

I finished the whole leg and there was no tearing or vertices having weights they shouldn't, as this was a problem in the early stages, I later learned that I should block all the vertices to the bones that would have majority of the control, this made it easier to blend between bones later, especially with the fingers. 

Another problem I had was the torso, I had ridges of the mesh and it looked highly unrealistic and had a lot of tearing. However I was able to using the symmetry modifier to get rid of the shirt hanging out his pants, so I could later use the mirror mode on the skin modifier to copy the weighting from one side. 

I had a go at the shoulder, I wanted to create a smooth bend from the neck to the shoulder after looking at myself as I did the motion, I noticed that shoulder keeps its bulge and i wanted to try and keep that as much as possible while keeping the flow.

 Another problem, I came across was the crotch area, I tried several different methods and weighting to get so it looked half decent, but it difficult to get it be affected by both legs and the hips. I couldn't figure out how much weight each vertices. After a few tries, I used some blending and seemed to work. Both is the nearly finished version, the back needed a bit more work.



After working on the muscle and facial rig, I have learnt an easier way to skin a mesh, using the paint tool. Using this tool and the weight tool, I was able to fix the tearing in the muscle rig and create great line-flow.