Advanced Rigging

Creating Wrap Deformers

Wrap deformers is a way to hook up a high resolution mesh to a low resolution. This is useful because we can save time and resources by not needing to bind and weight paint a high resolution mesh. So the skeleton would control the low poly mesh and in turn the low poly mesh will control the high resolution mesh, letting us work in real time with the low poly while rendering with the high resolution.

1: Take an extra copy of the model that has been provided and seperate the meshes. Mesh > Seperate. Delete history on all the new objects. Be sure to rename all the new objects. The eyes and hat should already be seperate objects. There should be 10 in total named:

l_glove_lowPoly_mesh
r_glove_lowPoly_mesh
l_shoe_lowPoly_mesh
r_shoe_lowPoly_mesh
head_lowPoly_mesh
body_lowPoly_mesh
legs_lowPoly_mesh
l_eye_lowPoly_mesh
r_eye_lowPoly_mesh
hat_lowPoly_mesh

2: Make sure they are all under the same group and name the group mime_lowPoly.

3: Now, duplicate mime_lowPoly, and rename the new group to mime_subD.

4: Convert all the objects in the mime_subD group into subdivision models. Modify > Convert > Polygons to SubD. If you have problems converting to subD, you may have to many polygons, in which case, go to the options box and bump up the maximum base mesh faces.

5: Rename the objects under the mime_subD group accordingly:

l_glove_subD_mesh
r_glove_subD_mesh
l_shoe_subD_mesh
r_shoe_subD_mesh
head_subD_mesh
body_subD_mesh
legs_subD_mesh
l_eye_subD_mesh
r_eye_subD_mesh
hat_subD_mesh

6: Create the wrap deformer by going to Create Deformers > Wrap Options in the Animation sub menu. Use the following settings:

Exclusive Bind: Checked
Use Max Distance: Checked
Max Distance: 1.00
Influence Type: Faces

7: Select the subD mesh first, then the coresponding low poly mesh, and then click apply in the Wrap popup menu. So, if you select l_glove_subD_mesh, then you would have to select l_glove_lowPoly_mesh and then click apply. When you do, the subD mesh will be hooked up to the low poly mesh and a new wrap node called l_glove_lowPoly_meshBase will be created. Do this for every single subD and lowPoly mesh you have.

8: After it's done, group all the meshBase nodes together and rename it to doNotTouch_wraps. Unparent this from the mime_lowPoly group. Now, mime_lowPoly, mime_subD, and doNotTouch_wraps groups should be on the same level. We'll leave it at that until all the skinning is completed.