Week 7 - Rigging and animating the Fish

After animating the turret in lesson, our task was to take the fish we made in the early part of term and rig and animate it swimming.

First I took my fish model that I made and added the skeleton as per the tutorial. This section was straight forward and quick.

Next I had to paint the weights after I had skinned it. I had technical issues here as I couldn't change the viewport to either the high detail or 2.0 without Maya crashing 100% of the time. I needed one of these viewports to see the black to white areas when doing weigh painting. I had to go back, load up the example fish and add the skeleton to his model instead. I then tried to open the weight painting with this new file. Success! My version is obviously just bugged.

So I painted the areas which I didn't want each joint to effect. I found this idea very cool and intuitive and works well so it is easy to tell which parts effect what.

I painted each of the joints in turn so it would be easier to animate. I then went about setting some positions and starting the animation process. I did separate animations for 5 different sections; the tail, the top fin, the side fins, the main body and finally the entire fish side to side and forward. Here is the result:

I think I could spend more time getting all the details right to get the flow correct so it seems like its swimming through a liquid. I need more force from the tail pushing the whole fish forward each time. The force should run down the body, into a flick in the tail which gives it a little boost forward each time. The side and top fins should be moving slightly as fish use them mainly for turning and staying upright.