In the fourth week, I received the model of another character – a Soldier. My task was to fully rig this character to ensure smooth animation production. The good news was that the Soldier’s face was completely covered by a protective shield, which meant no facial rigging was needed. However, the challenge was the multitude of parts this Soldier had, which made weight painting quite time-consuming.
Here’s how I approached it: Before working on the Soldier, I asked the team member who created the model to keep a basic, unarmored version of the character. This made it easier for me to paint the weights. After ensuring there were no issues with the model, I first positioned the skeleton for the Soldier’s unarmored body. The reason behind this was once I finished painting weights on the bare model, I could copy these weights to the armor parts. Even though this method still required some adjustments for the armor weights, it significantly saved time, as I only needed to fine-tune the armor weights after completing the body.
Below are the results of my final rigging test for the Soldier character.