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          <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">- <a href="../index.html">Contents</a><br>
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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 30</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

<P><font color="#000000" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-1">New!!</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> The Archives have been cleaned up, fead links fixed, and printable versions restored! Also, don't miss the new comments <a href="../../../index.html">on the front page</a>!</font></p>
              
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        <p align="LEFT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0022A8"><b><a target="" href="../../corner/index.html"><font size="-1">Thinking 
          Outside the Box</font></a><font size="-1">:</font></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8"><br>
          Character Studio <font size="+2">(part 2)</font></font></p>
        <p align="right"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Paul &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:paul@loonygames.com">Villam</a>&quot; 
          Steed</font></b></font></p>
        <p align="right">&nbsp; </p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now let’s look at where we 
          are so far with the mesh and test out the motion of the attached geometry 
          thus far. First freeze the head objects (not the bip head) and the torso. 
          Normally I just hit ‘h’ and bring up a hit list of things to select 
          and pick from the list.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Moving the head around I 
          decide that I want to make the upper vertices of the torso rigid as 
          well since as flexible as they are now, it takes away from the upper 
          body’s look of rigidity. </font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom221.jpg" width="400" height="128"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">So unfreeze the torso. Select 
          it. Go back into the vertex sub-object menu of Physique. Select the 
          vertices at the top of the mesh (doesn’t matter if the locked vertices 
          are selected, too) and go through the same steps as above, assigning 
          and locking these verts into a rigid state linking them to the first 
          spine segment.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom222.jpg" width="304" height="400"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now turning the bip head 

          does nothing to the torso since you’ve removed the influence of anything 
          but the spine on the vertices of the torso. Let’s move on to the arms. 
          But, first I have to address the fact I don’t have him with his arms 
          in a jumping jack pose that you normally see with meshes prior to bones 
          or biped attachment. This is basically through experience with shoulder 
          pads and the foreknowledge that I’ll be assigning vertices manually 
          anyway. Shoulder pads are sort of problematic just because of the cantankerous 
          shoulder assembly. I learned that in our project, the characters are 
          going to have their arms down holding a weapon 95% of the time so doing 
          the arms like this is no big deal. Another reason is that Kenneth Scott, 
          our skinner prefers it that way since he can more easily line up the 
          UV’s in his texture program so that the arms are mirrored. So onward…</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Select the left arm.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom223.jpg" width="240" height="474"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Go into the vertex sub-object 
          menu of Physique and select all the vertices. </font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom224.jpg" width="188" height="300"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Cool. We have red and burgundy 
          and blue…BLUE? What the hell does blue mean? Blue means BAD, boys and 
          girls. Bad, bad, bad. Here’s what blue vertices mean…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom225.jpg" width="307" height="294"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Means those particular vertices 
          aren’t attached to anything because I made the doom guy have a permanent 
          middle finger for a skeleton digit. This means that when I initialized 
          the mesh with Physique the volume of the finger bone wasn’t great enough 
          to include those blue vertices – nor was any other bone of the biped. 
          But that’s easy enough to fix. Let’s manually assign the vertices of 
          the arm starting with the fingers and work our way up (personally, I 
          like to start at the toes and work my way up – mmm, Bath &amp; Body, 
          Bath &amp; Body…Raspberry? No, Peach…) uh…I digress.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Select the vertices of the 
          end of the fingers, make them rigid, link and lock them to the finger 
          (c’mon, you remember…)</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom226.jpg" width="189" height="400"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Then go up the hand but leave 
          the wrist, do the same, amigo…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom227.jpg" width="161" height="400"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now select the wrist and 
          assign it to the hand but give them a red ‘deformable’ vertex assignment.</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom228.jpg" width="187" height="481"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Now, do what we probably 
          should’ve done from the beginning of messing with the arm and <i>hide 
          everything but the damn arm and biped counterpart</i>. That done let’s 
          just be a little risky and see how the arm is shaping up by bending 
          it at the elbow…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom229.jpg" width="297" height="248"></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not bad, but it just goes 
          to show the benefits of individual vertex assignment. Specifically here, 
          here, here and here…</font></p>
        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><img src="images/doom229a.jpg" width="281" height="236"></font></p>
        <p>&nbsp; </p>
        <p align="right"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">(<a href="index5.php">Continued 
          on next page</a>)</font></p>
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      <p><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"> </font></i><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
        Thinking Outside the Box logo illustrated and is &copy; 1999 Dan Zalkus. 
        Thinking Outside the Box is &copy; 1999 Paul Steed. All other content 
        is &copy; 1999 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
        productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, so 
        don't even try it. We've got really big guns, and we're ripped, baby.</font></i></p>
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