14/2/13 - Animation layers, Rig problems

I haven't posted in a while so here's what i've been up to.

Animation Layers
Last time i posted i was animating the fight reaction for the minor physical section of the library while animating i ran into some issues. I'd never used animation layers before and they were causing me grief when trying to write over the walk cycle i'd prepared so i took some time to try and fill that skill gap. I read the help section in maya and watched a few tutorials on youtube and did some simple animating to try and get the hang of it so i could apply the knowledge in my tests. I came up with this

Each movement for each ball is on a separate layer, so for example the one that bounces has a layer which moves it from one side to the other, one that makes it bounce and one that makes it rotate.


Rig troubles.
I finally listened to my inner voice that kept screaming at me that the moom rig, despite being really easy to use and one that i'm used to, is not suitable for the tests i'm producing. As I've mentioned before, I've had to narrow down what character i'm animating for and settled on an average build male. the moom rigs proportions are not of an average male and even when producing the initial base file i had to compensate by making the brush past be into the arm not the shoulder.

So I mourned the animation I've already done and went in search of a new rig with better proportions and found this one.

 Everything was going fine with this rig, it's slightly larger than normal head wasn't an issue as it would display any facial animation better from a distance and it was fairly easy to use. But then i scaled the animation and this happened.

It went from being a perfectly normal walk cycle to this monstrosity. I tried to fix it by only selecting the Ctrl shapes i was using as well as other combinations but every time i tried it did this. So i had to find a new rig...again.

I remembered Robin mentioning that the university was putting together it's own rig for students to use and so i went and asked Lynn about it. She said it wasn't finished yet but it was usable and if i told her of any problems i had she'd try to fix them. And here he is...

So i'm currently trying to get back to the point of animation i was with the moom rig using this one instead.