Week 10

Alright so I was doing alright, taking my time painting the skin weights for the centipede when I encountered a problem and I don't even know how I caused it.

The weight map will no longer show up on my models. I click the geometry and then go to paint skin weights, but no map shows up. I select the joints to the left, as you can see, but in the view port they aren't selected. This is a very troublesome problem and I may even have to take some drastic measures to fix it, which I don't wanna have to do. Unfortunately I've been trying to Google my problem all day and I have grown exhausted from searching.

I was able to at least paint enough of the models so I can just copy the weight map of one segment to the next, but I'm not sure how that will affect the map and which joint is affecting what area, so we will see.












I had a problem for awhile where the weight map of one pincer would affect the tip of the opposing one. Even painting the weights was not helping, so I had to do something a bit more precise. I went into the component editor while selecting the affected vertices and readjusted the values of which joints affected which vertices. Now they work beautifully without moving the tip of the other side.

I added a little flaring attribute to the pincer controls which extends the pincer out even further, but only for half of it's length since there is a segment in that region. This will enable the pincers to have a more grasping appearance when animated and can even look like it's "chewing" on prey.








I have been doing more research into how I will be able to rig the leg movements when the creature walks and I have an idea as to how to do it finally. I will have to create an expression that, after keying one leg, will affect all the others in the same row a certain way. I still have to get clarification on certain areas, but one of the codes has something to do with timing and placement. Coming down to the wire here and now it is officially announced that there are 3 weeks left in the project. Guess I had more time than I thought. Next week, I'll fix this weight map problem and do some more texturing along with starting the coding process.