Creating a Jurassic World Dinosaur Character in Maya: Part 14

Final product image — What You'll Be Creating

1. Setting Up Skin Weight

Step 1

Start Maya and open the file which was saved in the last part of the tutorial.

Step 2

Go to the Rigging mode. Go to Skin > Paint Skin Weights and click on the option box.

Step 3

It opens the skin Tool Settings window. You'll notice the skin weight in white shade on the body mesh. Now adjust and set weight values for proper anatomical form as per need.

Step 4

Select Root01_Jnt01 and you can see values around the pelvis area. Remove unwanted values which are not important.

Step 5

Select Root01_Jnt01, turn on Replace paint operation radio button, select soft Profile brush with Value as 0.00.

Step 6

Brush on unwanted surface’s vertices to reduce the weight values as shown in the following image.

Step 7

If you want all zero value surface mesh, keep 0 value in Value slider box and click on the Flood button.

Step 8

Now you can see all mesh become black indicating 0 weight value as shown in the following image.

Step 9

Select Left_Pelvis_Jnt01 joint, turn on Replace paint operation radio button, select soft Profile brush with Value as 0.00.

Step 10

Now you can paint the weight values as per requirement for mesh deformation as shown in the following image.

Step 11

Select Left_Pelvis_Jnt01 joint, turn on Smooth radio button, click on the Flood button two to three times to continue weight smoothing.

Step 12

In this way, you can see smooth result indicated by blurred and smudged skin weight as shown in the following image.

Step 13

Select Left_Tibia_Jnt01 joint, turn on Replace paint operation radio button, select soft Profile brush with Value as 0.00.

Step 14

Set skin weight for proper leg deformation as per need.

Step 15

With same Left_Pelvis_Jnt01 joint selected, turn on Smooth radio button, click on Flood button two three times to continue smoothing weight.

Step 16

Select foot IK handle and shift it up a little bit. You will see some improper mesh deformation around the stomach area. You need to fix it.

2. Creating Global Control

Step 1

Create a circle and place it at the centre of both feet as shown in the following image.

Step 2

Rename this curve as Global_Control.

3. Creating Tail Control

Step 1

Go to Create > Curve Tools > CV Curve Tool and click on its option box.

Step 2

In the Tool Settings window, turn on Curve Degree 1 Linear radio button as shown in the following image.

Step 3

With the help of CV Curve Tool, draw the indicated shape as shown in the following image.

Step 4

With the shape selected, go to Modify > Center Pivot as shown in the following image.

Step 5

Align and place the curve with Tail02_Jnt01 joint by holding down V key for point snapping as shown in the following image.

Step 6

Rename the curve as Tail_Control.

4. Creating Pelvis Control

Step 1

Create a poly cube on the perspective grid.

Step 2

Go to Create > Curve Tools > CV Curve Tool and click on Curve snapping tool icon in the status button bar.

Step 3

Click on each corner vertex of the cube and press Enter key to finish.

Step 4

Delete the polygon cube and you are left with the curve cube.

Step 5

Duplicate the curve cube. In the component selection mode, scale it up as shown in the following image.

Step 6

Before placing curve cube, you need to turn on the template button on Layer option button to display mesh template mode as shown in the following image.