Re-rigging Crabs

With the morphers complete for the main character, I needed to re-rig him in the same scene. This also gave me an opportunity to make a better rig.

This time, instead of using envelopes on the skin modifier, I used 'paint weights' instead. This allows individual vertices or elements to be applied to each bone. Since my character was built with separate shapes for each bone this was a good find.

The image below shows how much better the new version is. On the character's right hand side is the new technique which shows almost perfect skinning. The other side is from the envelopes and clearly shows how much it warps the mesh even though the envelopes were carefully sized.

On the skin modifier, I selected 'edit envelopes' and ticked 'select elements'. An appropriate bone was selected, then the element was clicked which lit up all of the required vertices only. I increased 'Abs. Effect' to 1.0 which gave the bone full control over that part of the mesh.

By creating a line and a 'dummy' helper, the crab can follow a path with CAT's pre-made movements. However, I am having problems with this. The body follows fine, but the mesh legs stay rigid to the body while the actual rig's legs are walking properly. Until I get over this problem, I can't work on any scenes that require walking.