Retooling
Added 2021-10-28 16:07:23 +0000 UTCToday I'm taking a much-needed break from the comic, to work on my Maya rigging tools for at least the rest of the week. Exciting, I know.
Most of the tools I'd already written, probably haven't been updated in over two years, and they're starting to show their age. In that time I'd started to manually add new features and explore new ideas, and at the very least would like to add these into the scripts so I'll no longer need to do them by hand.
A larger goal for my tools, is to write a UI to make them easier to use. Currently, I have to run each of them from the command line, which is made more difficult by the fact that I didn't properly document all of the commands. That's especially not a good thing, when I need to rig things quickly for work.
An even larger, longer-term goal, is to model a new character to test these tools out on. Preferably a character that would be safe to put on a demo reel. Candice is one of my top candidates, but I'm also looking at characters other than my own. I have a long list of other artists' characters I'd like to model, but the vast majority of their designs are far too horny for demo purposes. Instead, I'm looking at Disney characters, particularly ones from old, defunct theme park attractions.
Realistically, I'm nowhere near ready to model a new character, at the moment. I haven't modeled anything substantial in years, and would prefer not to use the old box-modeling methods I'm familiar with. That means learning (or re-learning) either Zbrush or Blender's sculpting tools, which at the moment would just get in the way updating my rigging tools. But at the very least, I can start drawing model sheets.
