Devlog 3 - Self Study 2

Self Study 2

For this weeks self study, we were tasked with learning blender rigging and animation systems.
To start with this self study I had to make a character to rig and animate. I usually go overboard with this stuff, and I soon regretted it. Below is my first character that I made using a simple box, extruding faces, and then adding a sub-d modifer.

This character turned out great to start with, but once I added an armature and applied the automatic weights, it soon became a problem.
After trying for countless hours to animate and weight paint the character I just gave up and decided to go with a super low-poly model.
I ended up creating this new low-poly model in less than 2 hours after following the fantastic Imphenzia's blender modelling guide.

After following Imphenzia's rigging  tutorial, the above was the result. This armature has IK-Knee bones and IK-Foot bones to constraint the knee to a certain angle and to stop the foot from extending further that is should, but also allowing for easier animation. I then proceded to follow his tutorials for animating a run and idle cycle. I then used this knowledge to create the wave animation on my own.

(Idle animation)


(Run animation)


(Wave animation)

And so thats about it. What did I learn here you ask?
Just stick to the assignment spec to not waste countless hours at night scratching you head wondering why something isn't working, when you know you tried going above and beyond.