Day 156

Next I made a skeleton for the dog. It's similar to ones I made in the past, however there are some extra things like the tail, ears, jaw and eyes. After that was done, I had to bind the skin to the skeleton. The book went over a brief lesson on what happens when models bend and how to fix problem areas.

At this point, I had to redistribute how much weight each joint holds over the nearby geometry. The book said this was an advanced topic though and would not be covering it but feel free to give it a try anyway. Thanks book. Luckily, I've gone over this stuff before. It basically consists of bending every joint and fixing problems that come up. The tedious part is that I'm adjusting weights so lowering one joint will increase another. So I have I have repeatedly go back and check joints to see if fixing one ends up ruining another.

The collar isn't a part of the main geometry and is just constrained to a position relative to one of the neck joints so it doesn't deform with the skeleton. This was causing some big problems but I was able to work the neck joints so that the collar doesn't penetrate the skin during bending. While making the model, I wasn't aware I'd be making a joint to control mouth movement. Luckily I put in enough detail in the mouth to work with and it was just a quick fix to the model to get it to open and close. 

 All done.