Thinking Outside the Box:
Character Studio (part 2)

By Paul "Villam" Steed

Note that even though we hit the pelvis, a link structure featuring the upper body is there as well with the bent elbow. Very interesting. We’re going to start with the top of the leg structure, making sure there aren’t any verts assigned to the upper body. First, though I’m curious as to what the legs look like given their default vertex assignment.

Not bad, not bad at all. We still need to make sure all the little vertices are claiming the right link as home, though. But, like I said, let’s start with the upper part of the legs first. Select the following vertices of the legs…

The reasoning behind this is again from past experience and a little thought. The very top needs to maintain its rigidity to keep the integrity and illusion of the body being one piece. The top outline of the butt is necessary since it shouldn’t change shape too much even during animation. Now assign the vertices to the pelvis link as rigid verts and lock them down.

Next, assign the line of three vertices lower down on the butt to the pelvis but as deformable verts (red).

Works. Now let’s look at the other verts around the top of the leg again. The burgundy vertices at the top of the thigh are fine since I like the way they animate. However, as we move further down the thigh, those verts need to be assigned to the thigh link. As a matter of fact, since I built the legs with the thought in mind that the upper thigh ends in a stump to simulate a knee as the lower leg rotates, we can assign all the vertices of the lower thigh part to the upper leg link. Am I a genius or WHAT!

Testing the leg I find out that didn’t quite work out like I wanted so I re-assign the very bottom vertices as rigid vertices and came up with…

Now since the boots should be pretty stiff I select all the vertices above the foot and assign them to the lower leg as rigid verts.

On to the foot. As a rule of thumb ALWAYS make the very bottom vertices of the foot rigid unless you have some weird reason not to. Don’t ask, just DO. So starting at the back of the foot select these vertices…

And assign them rigid to the foot link. Then grab the four toe verts and assign them to the toe link. So all the bottom verts are now rigid.

Usually the foot is pretty easy to set up aside from the rigid bottom. Checking it out by rotating it in all the different axes, we see that it’s fine ‘as is’. Now do the other leg and guess what? WE"RE DONE! FINITO! ALLES CLAR, HERR KOMISAR! DASVADANA! SAYONORA!

Really. That’s it. Hope you enjoyed it. It took me 10 hours to make. But YOU’RE worth it! And come to think of it I think I really am talking to myself! Answering me, too!

WHOOOHOOOOO!

Thanks for caring!

- Paul Steed is a 3D artist for id Software. He's currently hard at work on Quake 3: Arena.