Creating a Super Girl Character: Part 11

Creating a Super Girl Character: Part 11

What You'll Be Creating

1. Rigging and Posing

Step 1

Start Maya and open the file which was saved in the last part of the tutorial. Click on Character Controls icon and then click on Create Skeleton.

Step 2

Resize the skeleton approximately fit with the model. 

Set the value of Character Scale greater than 1.0 to scale bigger, and lower than 1.0 to scale smaller. 

After you press enter, the number turns back to 1.0. Change Spine number to 4.

Step 3

By using Move tool, adjust the left parts joints of hers to the correct position. Hold D to move single joint; Move tool to move joints together with hierarchy joints.

Step 4

Press the icon to mirror from left to right.

Step 5

Press the icon to create control rig.

Step 6

To create eye controller, go to side view and isolate eyeball model, change to Rigging module > Skeleton > Create Joints.

Step 7

Create first joint in the middle of eyeball and second joint in the front of eyeball.

Step 8

Back to perspective view, the joints are in the centre of grid, move them to the middle of eyeball.

Step 9

With the joints selected, go to Skeleton > Mirror Joints option. 

Select YZ then click Mirror.

Step 10

Look for the Head Joint from outliner, select both of the eye joints then the head joint, press P to parent.

Step 11

Go to Create > NURBs Primitives > Circle.

Step 12

Snap the circle to the eye end_joint, rotate 90° at Y-axis.

Step 13

Move the circle forward then freeze transformation.

Step 14

Duplicate the circle, move the pivot to centre of grid. Set the value of Scale X to -1. These are the controllers for the left and right eyes.

Step 15

Duplicate the circle again, move to the centre, then right click and select Control Vertex and change the shape of the circle. 

This is the main controller for both eyes. Select both circles followed by the main controller and then press P to parent.

Step 16

Select the left eye controller and then left eye tip joint. Go to Constrain > Aim option box.

Tick the Maintain offset option and then click on Add. 

Repeat the process for right eye. 

Select the main eye control followed by head joint and then press P to parent.

Step 17

Select the the left eye tip joint and end joint followed by left eyeball model. Go to Skin > Bind Skin option box. 

With Selected Joints option selected, change Max influences to 2 and then click on Bind Skin. 

Move the controller to check if the eyeball rotates correctly or not.

Step 18

Select Hips joint > right click on the viewport > deselect all of the eye joint and eye controller > Select Hierarchy > select suits model and head model > Skin > Bind Skin option > change Max influences to 3 > Bind Skin.

Step 19

With all the accessories and suit model selected, go to Deform > Wrap.

Step 20

Select the head model, right click and select Paint Skin Weight Tool. 

Change the value to 0, select LeftShoulder and click Flood, repeat step for LeftArm, RightShoulder and RightArm. 

Select the head, change the value to 1.0, paint the whole head part to white colour, keeping the neck unchanged.

Step 2

Rotate the controller to check the skin weight. Paint black for no influence and white for influence.

Step 22

Move and rotate the controller for posing, continue to paint skin weight when you find strange skin weight.

Step 23

If you find the vertices with undesirable weight, you can fix it by selecting the vertices that you want to fix and then go to Skin > Smooth Skin Weight.

Step 24

With the head and Xgen head model selected, go to Deform > Blendshape and change the number in blendshape1 to 1.

Step 25

Before the final render, change a little expression of the face instead of default expression.

Step 26

Create a big plane as background.

Step 27

Make the plane’s shape into a curved plane.

Step 28

Right click and select Assign New Material and then select aiStandardSurface.

Step 29

Change the base colour to very light grey colour, increase metalness and reduce the specular roughness.

Step 30

Since wrap deformer was used for suits, it might disappear upon rendering. 

Select the suits model, go to Attribute Editor. You can do this by pressing Ctrl-A in the suitShape tab, tick all in the Render Stats except Hold Out as shown in the following image.

Step 31

Open Render Settings, change the image size as you desire. Go to Arnold Renderer tab, increase the number of Camera(AA), Diffuse, Specular, and SSS to reduce noises. 

Note that the higher the number, the longer the taken time to render.

Step 32

Conduct a test render. Here, the background is reflected the HDRI reflection which doesn’t look good.

Step 33

Now separate the background and character so that color correction and editing can be performed separately. 

With the curved plane selected, go to Attribute Editor and untick Primary Visibility.

Step 34

Render again. The background is now black.

Step 35

Save the rendered image by clicking on File > Save Image > choose Color Managed Image > save as Targa file. 

Note, File in the Render View window.

Step 36

Render the background, turn back the Primary Visibility for curved plane. Hide everything that will not reflected to the curved plane.

Step 37

With all unhidden geometry selected, except the curved plane, go to Windows > General Editors > Attribute Spread Sheet.

Step 38

Go to the Render tab, click on Primary Visibility, type 0 and press Enter.

Step 39

Render again and save the image.

Step 40

Open both rendered image in Photoshop, in background image, press Ctrl-A to select all, press Ctrl-C to copy, go to character image and press Ctrl-V to paste.

Step 41

Select character’s layer, go to Channels tab, hold Ctrl and click on the Alpha 1 thumbnail.

Step 42

Back to Layers tab, press Ctrl-J and move the layer upward.

Step 43

Select rendered background layer, press Ctrl-M to do color correction.

Step 44

Press B for brush tool, hold Alt to pick color, reduce the brush opacity and paint on the background to erase the HDRI reflection to the background.

Step 45

Press Ctrl-M for character layer too. Adjust the curve for color correction. And finally, you see the completed character ready.

Conclusion

That's the end of this tutorial series. I hope you have enjoyed the complete character creation process for production in Maya.