Rigging

I hate rigging.  It has always been the most difficult part of creating a 3d character, and something I would bend over backwards to avoid doing.  Few things are more soul-destroying than spending weeks on creating a model, UV-mapping that model, texturing that model, and then importing it into Poser's set-up room, only to find that the thing bends all wrong when you try to add bones and movement.  The biggest source of frustration is not knowing why a body part creases, bulges or distorts when you try to make it bend or twist, and not being able to find a single tutorial or forum post online that explains clearly how to remedy the issue.

Over the past week I have had another go at using Poser's setup tools to try and complete all the models that I started rigging years ago but abandoned.  Fortunately, Poser has changed its' tools to add weight-mapping, a process that highlights vertices that are affected by a bone's movement, highlighting the most affected areas in green and the least affected areas in red (or vice-versa, I can't remember which way round it is).  This makes it a lot easier to see what is going wrong when the movement is incorrect.  Also, rather than approaching rigging as a horrible-but-necessary job to be got over and done with as quickly as possible (and letting myself in for a world of exasperation when the job ends up taking much, much longer) I am trying to enjoy the process and take my time over it.  This yielding much more satisfactory results.

The theme here is "finishing", and it is something that has applied to all of my creative endeavours of the past two years.  I read recently that Stephen King had a near-fatal accident, which motivated him to accelerate work on his "Dark Tower" novels and bring them to a conclusion, realising that he didn't have all the time in the world to complete the book at a leisurely pace.  As morbid as it sounds, this awareness of one's own mortality is a strong motivator: you realise that bringing something to the point of perfection is no good if nobody ever gets to see it because you shuffle off this mortal coil before it can be released to the public.