Referencing With More Rigour- Our Formed Pipeline

Now with a referncing test undergone, I was now ready to take a first draft of the model and begin rigging.

There are a few things that my group considered before we began anything. We had to consider the risks that were involved  in referncing. The most major concer is that the process involves replacing files. If for some reason the reference did not work it could jepordize work in the next stage of the pipeline. e.g if the model was updated, and the rigging ref was no longer compatible then the rigging would need to begin from scratch again. Similarly if the rig is updated to an animators project and was not working with his animation, then all of the animation work coulld amount to nothing.

For this reason it was esssential for us all to have a convension that we all had to stick to. As Ollie would update his modelling, he would have a number of versions of his model. He would name then something like "spitfire_model_REFver###" where ### maybe a number. when he was ready, he would send me a file named "spitfire_model_REF". I would use this as my reference and create a rigging version "spitfire_rig_REFver###" where ### number is my versioning of the rig.

As Ollie would work on his model and wish to send me an update, he would save a versioned copy, and then overwrite the file to "spitfire_model_REF" again. I would use this file and replace my old reference with the new one. Now when I open my latest rigging file, it should be referencing the new spitfire model. However, in the event that the rig did not work with the modelling file, we could always find a previous version for when the model last worked with the rig.

Before passing this on to the animators, it was good for us to test it out at the rigging phase. If al was okay, i would save my latest rigging file as "spitfire_rig_REF". I would then pass on my latest rig and Ollies latest model to the animators whose files should then automatically update. Again, should we run into any errors along the way, we would always be able to come back to a place where a version of the rig and model was working.


We have a similar convension planned for lighting and other aspects.