Len’s WIP

I spent much of last Saturday re-rigging this thing. I gave him a real basic skeleton with the intention to use IK (non-CGer definition: create control handles that can move multiple joints instead of moving the joints individually). Then I gave him weight maps to assign which bone controls what. Then the frustration came in. The joints work, but for some reason the legs deformed when I moved the joints. This is a robot that doesn’t have organic surfaces so nothing should deform. I took a break, played some relaxing piano, and watched Michael Clayton. After that I decided to start again and rig him using no bones and use only pivot points. Okay maybe some bones. I know this isn’t the best way to rig anything, but dammit I just want to start transforming him already! So after rigging I started making the important keyframes (non-CGer definition: posing the model). Several hours into keyframing, I found this nice little button in LightWave called “Enable Deform”. It was turned on. D’OH!!! And I’ve come this far with pivot points. Oh well. Here’s what it is at this stage. I’ll go back and redo the skeleton again.