Buttons fixed, posture is better...looking better?

Okay, so I have the buttons fixed now, with a lot of trial and error and attaching the buttons to several different spines. Plus the jacket needed some work too, hence why is was so distorted as he walked.

I think this is the final walk, but more work may be needed...

Buttons

Oh dear.
Look at this mess.

I tried to fix the buttons by attaching them to the body, but this added mroe vertixes and polygons which meant the rigging was reset. So the buttons became morphable. This may take a while...

Happyman Happywalk

Here is an almost completed version of Happymans Happywalk.

few bugs to sort out, his buttons do not stay straight on his chest, and I think his feet may be far to far apart. it looks ok from the side, but the front looks bizarre...

Stressed.

I still cannot work out how to stop my files from becoming corrupted. Whenever I save files, they save as so much bigger than they should be, which slows down the power of my computer. I cannot work out why. So far the only files that remain intact are my Happyman and my Child. I found what I thought was a solution, and it seemed to work at first. Opening a new file but keeping all the objects as they are made the files so much smaller. But although the files were a good size, I could not reopen the files. Ever again. Something went wrong with the bipeds and they couldn't open. Error. Grr.. I made this animationg because I am stressed. I hope I can fix the problem in time, because I am going to need these files uncorrupted.

Although this has no official use, it's still good practise, right? I still need some work on my timing I think. Plus, it doesn't really look like he's holding his head...

Animating!

Yes, I had to rerig those damn hands again. That wasn't a very stress free day.
BUT on a more positive note, I have moved on from the stressful rigging process and have started some tutorials on how to animate. Although I did have to go back to the rigging and modelling stage a couple of times (I noticed the body underneath the shirt was poking through sometimes, and had to delete some unnecessary polygons to stop it from happening again), I am making my way through the stages of the animation tutorial on 3ds Max (it is easter so I cannot go into uni for tutorials, so I have to make do with uninteractive ones on 3ds max).

Here is where I am so far. It is a couple of walk cycles using 'footsteps'. Although I hope to learn how to make a walk cycle without footsteps when I come to do my actual animation, as I find this particular method very wooden and unemotive.

The above is a general purpose walk cycle using footsteps, where I am learning to stop mid walk and start again. I added the posing in the middle because I felt like it. Please ignore the shoes merging at the end, the footsteps were a little too close together.

Here I modified the standard walk a little to give it a bit more character. Even so, I think I'm gonna have to make one using key framing or something.

Error?

Uh oh! You can see his foot poking through certain areas of his leg, which isn't good at all. But I figured out how to fix it. It did, unfortunately, involve going back into the model and playing with the vertexes, making the end of the foot scaled down so it doesn't reach the outside of the leg. I was worried about playing around with the vertexes of the model as I know this sometimes resets the rigging of the hands and face etc.

I appear to have avoided it this time. I'm guessing this is because the feet are NO WHERE near the head and hands, so they have stayed relatively unchanged. Either this, or because I haven't made any actualy changes to the amount of vertexes or polygons on the model. So it's ok.

I would hate to re-rig the hands again. I've had to do this process about 10 times now...