back at it

I have started to work again on the film. Here are a few things that I've learned recently about XSI while working on the tiger character.

The tiger has body parts that I wanted to look like blobs of plasticine stuck onto his body, such as his belly, nose, eyes, eyebrows and stripes. Originally I had created these as separate parts and constrained them to clusters on the tiger's body. However, when I was animating the tiger, the parts started to flip around and weren't controllable. Instead I added polygons to the polymesh body, then selected the edges around the "bulge", used Model > Modify > Component > Set edge/vertex crease value and set it to 2. This worked quite well.




The eyelids are still separate pieces of geometry, but rather than constraining them to a cluster on the polymesh, I've added nulls at the top of the eyes and have made the nulls children of the head bone. I moved the center of the eyelid geometry to the top of the eyelid and am animated the scaling in Y to open and close the eyelids.

The eyeballs are part of the polymesh using the crease value as noted above. These will be animated using Shape Keys, without going through the mixer. A couple of things you need to know about this.

First the clusters need to be point clusters and not polygons.

Second, the first Shape you save should be stored rather than saved (Animate > Deform > Shape > Store Shape Key). This is to create a Reference shape that that the others will be compared against. Then save the subsequent shapes (Animate > Deform > Shape > Save Shape Key).

Third, if you're going to use the Custom Property sliders to animate the shapes, you should rename the parameter names at the time you create the ShapeKeys. First rename the Shape Key when you create it and then open the Custom Parameter Set (called Shape Weights and located under the object, pin it open to keep up open while you create other shapes). To rename the parameter, right click on the animation divot and choose "Edit Parameter Definition", change the name.

Be aware that Skeleton > Create Spine, uses a scripted operator to control the upvector parameters on the vertebrae. If you use this (or Create Tail) do not use Remove Animation > All / any type. If you do the upvector constraints won't work any more and the torso of your character won't rotate correctly any more. I didn't find a way to reconnect the scripted operator, so I saved the envelope weights as a preset, re-created the spine, making sure I used the same names and then applied the envelope preset.