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15. Figurine Skelegons |
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 LAYOUT, CREATING SKELEGONS FOR FIGURINE In chapter 13 I showed you how to install skelegons, using the 'Draw Skelegon's requester to automatically create the map names for you. 13.1 Skelegons - Part 1 ('Fill Weight Map')I'll again be covering the rudements of skelegon construction in case you are entering this tutorial without having done that one yet, but I'd suggest that you finish chapter thirteen before you tackle this tutorial. When you create a skelegon structure, you have to decide what is going to move, and how. If you're never going to have him turn his head, that will be a different set of skelegons than if he will be turning his head. In this case, I decide that his head will always follow his body in a stiff manner because I want him to walk like a gingerbread man. So, in my case, I begin the skeleton chain with a skelegon called 'Head'. (If I were going to create a head that turned... since a skelegon's heading is related to it's length (see chapter 13), it is sometimes handy to have a 'face' skelegon and a 'Neck' skelegon. In that case, the face skelegon would have to have it's long end sticking towards the nose, so I would have to create that skelegon separately, then weld it to the top of the neck.) In our case, I'll start the 'Head' polygon by selecting the  button from the 'Elements' section of the 'Create' tab (no keyboard shortcut).In the 'Right' viewport, I aim my mouse toward the top of the head, clicking the left mouse button to place the initial polygon point. I keep mouse button held down, moving the mouse downward. A cyan crosshairs appears with two circles around a center dot. I click the left mouse button to fix the end of the first bone.   The instant that you choose the 'Fill Weight Map' checkmark, two large circles will appear around each center circle of the ends of the skelegons.  I always set weight maps for my figures, so I never use falloff settings. Falloff is a beginner's mode. The initial idea was to keep beginners from having to know about weight maps. In the end, they almost always create problems. They weren't designed to animate intricate limbs, but to animate very simple objects. If you ever do use falloff, ensure that each part of the object is far enough away from other parts. (For more information on falloff, consult the LightWave manual under 'Falloff Type' and 'Limited Range'. If you aren't using falloff, ignore these circles. I look in the 'Back' viewport. The skelegon wasn't created on the zero Y axis as I'd like. I move the top cyan crosshairs until the top of the skelegon is placed correctly in both the 'Back' and 'Right' viewports. MODELER, CREATING A SECOND SKELEGON LightWave is ready for you to place another skelegon now. In the 'Right' viewport, I click where I think the hip bone should be.       MODELER, CENTERING CENTRAL SKELEGONS I'll be mirroring the leg skelegons after I create weight maps for them, so I press CTRL-g to enter 'Select Points' mode and select the three central vertice points on the two center skelegons.      |
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