Rigology

I thought I would have a go at rigging my character just to see how it all works.  I've been rinsing online lessons from Digital Tutors who specialize in AutoDesk software.  There are learning paths, which involve  hours of lessons and are aimed to give the learner a quick start and broad knowledge of the subject.

So why rig?  "Why not"? is the real question - it's totally boring and technical (not very arty).  There is a site called Mixamo where you can rig a biped in moments with a click, but that way I learn nothing.  I have quite an interest in animation, I remember trying it on deluxe paint on the old Amiga.. but is a little different now.  I have Marvelous Designer, which is a clothing program - This works best with character rigs to dress the mesh up, which is another reason to do this.


 Another way around rigging is posing instead - Zbrush is great for this and should probably be used when in a rush or for concepting.  My hope is it will get quicker and easier each time.  For my project I might use the UDK default player rig - which will mean no animating is needed for the character.

Creating bones

For this project I have created a custom rig, bone by bone - This will be handy for my FMP, and may also open new paths in my workflow.  I learned a lot about hierachies and linking items - There is a parent bone and a child, which effects how they handle.  The root is just below the centre mass at the pelvis.  I found with this method I was tweaking the bones, putting twists in them as I went along.

The most exciting thing about creating bones is naming them!  Every bloody one of them... Which is unfortunately vital.

Skinning

Nothing new here we did skinning in year one, but I feel more confident now & treating rigging with a bit more seriousness.  One thing I have learned about rigging... Hard surfaces = Super easy, Organic surfaces = Easy, draping fabrics and intricate separate objects = well hard.  I think in some engines there are systems for draping and flowing hair & cloth which emulates the natural animation flow.

Animation Controls

It's not Ripley in a power loader - These are the animation controls - move them around to animate the model

This is where the fun starts to happen - We link the bones to "control items" to move each part of the model.  This gives you controllers to simply move around the body in a natural fashion.

This requires correct hierachy and a lot of "constraints" to prevent the character from warping out of shape.  These are getting pretty complicated, creating HI IK (Like IKs but with joint information to include roll) and point chains to create controls is a little confusing - I'm using helpers and the motion tab more than ever.

Even though this leasson I'm going through is "Level 1" it also covers what are called "morph targets" in Zbrush.  These are controllers to store different points and let you slide the value.... err an example is tip-toeing or Footroll - at zero value is relaxed, at maximum is full tip toe, at minimum is weight on heel.  This is really useful and stupidly fiddly to understand in 3DS Max, but what it will mean is control over fingers and the ability to create different grips, and even facial expressions.