Rigging Problems

Problem, after problem, after problem. Ever since my laptop broke everything has gone downhill. I know that the rigging was taking far longer than what it should have. Silly little things that Laura kept mentioning that Ryan and I had to fix was not really much of an issue as they did not take long to solve. Laura was going on as if they were a massive problem but i just did not see it that way, but as i have not tried rigging before i guess i do not know how the small things can effect the rig. Anyway, with them solved, i thought okay well they have been solved which will mean our rig will be to a higher quality than what it would have been before. Karl and i shall have to work extra hard for our animation to be completed but i am sure we can do it.

Once Laura had posted up the link for the finished rig of Summer, i was really excited to work on her. Karl said that he would do Pandy and for me to do Summer as i wanted to work more on facial animation. I started to quickly test Summer and tried to get used to the rig but was finding many many problems. Even placing Summer into basic positions was nearly impossible as the mesh was constantly tearing and deforming. As most of the animation on Summer was going to be through her facial expressions i thought that we still might be okay to do our animation. But once I started posing Summers face with the blendshapes I knew we were in trouble. The problem is that the blendshapes for her facial expressions look lumpy and distorted like they are incomplete, part of her fringe was even attached to the facial blendshape controls, meaning everytime we moved the mouth, the fringe would move up or down with it. This is distressing because we are running out of time to get any animation complete, and with the current condition of the Summer rig I feel there is no way we can create any acceptable animation for our film. This has been quite upsetting for me as i have been eagerly waiting all year to get to this stage so that I can see the character that I designed and made come to life, and now that is not going to happen. What makes it worse is that i previously suggested to Laura that we can find someone else to finish the rig and blendshapes for Summer so that Laura can focus on her own work, but she insisted that she would be able to get it done for us, and now I feel incredibly let down as we are not going to be able to get a single shot finished.

As animation was originally going to be my main folder, i am now lost in what i can place in my folder. I do not even want to do test animation on Summer as the animation may be seen as a bad reflection on me. After all the problems that have happened lately i really feel like giving up, i am finding it very hard to have any strength right now to continue with this project. I never saw this happening and i am gutted that we will not have any animation to show. I now need to try and speak to Dan to see what he thinks about the situation. Although i feel like i have no strength right now, i can not left this defeat me as i need to stay strong for my other team members and as i am also team leader i still need to be strong about our animation.