Week 5 - A Downturn

This week hasn't been too well for me personally. The exhaustion from last week's shoot was probably a factor of contribution to this slump I'm facing but it is also due to a lot of physical/mental health related issues and personal concerns. This time round, I sought help wherever I found necessary.

I couldn't get to work at all this week. However, I was responding to emails with my collaborators to check on progress. I also found a blessing in a collaborator (Kunjal) who could help me with a facial rig. I was completely dreading to do it on my own.

Salma - Collaborator's work progress

This is Salma's work progress who was tasked to work on the room shot for the third ACT. I have provided feedback as shown below in the screenshot.

Kunjal - Facial Rig Progress

This week, Kunjal was having some issues with my file and was constantly discussing it with me as she was working on the rig. By the end of the week, we realized that the morphers were having some weird issues and figured it would be best to discuss it with Rashed. So I emailed Rashed with the problem and he told us an easy fix for it. However, the fix doesn't seem as easy as in theory so we will need to book a consultation with him for that. Below are some snippets of the issue she was facing.

Hence, we are still trying to find a fix around this.

Solutions?

I carried out some research from my end to better understand the problem and find solutions to it. Kunjal tried these things below with me in the call but it would still not work.

• moved the morpher below the skin, but it would not even pick the target in that case. moved the morpher back up, picked the target and then moved it below skin, but it would not work at all.

• the problem lies with edit poly, if I bring the morpher below edit poly, it doesnt work. and if i keep it above edit poly it slides.

• moved the edit poly and collapsed it with edit mesh, then moved the morpher below the skin, it would still not read the target.

• tried to set the XForm but still would not work.

• saved the skin and collapsed everything(except meshsmooth) and then tried to add morpher, it would still slide.

So, one of our other suspicions was that CAT rig could be causing these issues. Hence, I looked up how to create facial rig from CAT rig. Below is a video I found explaining the basics of it without going into much depth.

(Miloš Černý Animation, 2019)

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In overall, I haven't been able to do much this week and I feel extremely guilty about it. I have even requested for extension because of my mental health conditions worsening drastically. I'm really hoping to get better soon and find a way around these issues as soon as possible.

References

Miloš Černý Animation (2019, Jan 7). How To Do a Facial Rig - 3ds Max CAT Facial Rigging Tutorial [video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOquYIHBGj4