Rigging The Demon Guy

# 1 25-06-2011 , 09:56 PM

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Gonna start a new thread for this. Im going to try and rig the demon character Ive been making in my Meryl Felstorm thread.

I reposed him as suggested by Leon (pic1), and have started putting his joints in place following a rig set up from the 'Learning Autodesk Maya 2008, The Modeling and Animation Handbook'. The specifics of this rig compared to other rigs that Ive seen/tried before, is that,

1.) It has a reverse foot setup.
2.) It has a second hip joint at exactly the same place as the main hip joint, called a 'hips override' joint, which is supposed to allow for seperate rotation of the hips.
3.) It has a 'forearm roll' joint, which allows for rotation of the forearm along with the hand to make movement around that area more believeable.

I have tried putting this rig into a character before, and successfully too - up to the painting weights section....cant remember why I went away from the project now...had custom attributes set up on the fingers and everything.

But yeah, gonna dip into this when the modeling/sculpting gets too much.

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# 2 25-06-2011 , 10:07 PM

The thin red line
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Glad you put the info on the rig in, I think I told you before this is the next thing I want to try so am watching this...........dave

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# 3 25-06-2011 , 11:00 PM

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Glad you said that dave, I do remember. Was thinking if I can get something up and rigged it would be a good headstart. You wanted to rig your character with clothes aswell didnt you? If I get a rig to work then id like to add parts to it too. Dont even know if thats a plausible appoach at the moment but thats what ive got in mind.

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# 4 26-06-2011 , 03:30 PM

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So far so good I think. Still my stumbling block is the local rotation axes. Always feel like Im not quite understanding exactly what Im doing when Im rotating them into position and end up just feeling like it's a 'fingers crossed and be lucky' moment. They always look like a bit of a mess, but Ive tried to manually align them as the book suggests. In other rigging tutorials Ive seen, use is made of the orient, or reorient, joint tool...so I wonder why some suggest to do it the automatic way and others, manually. Does it make a difference? Are there times when it's best to do it one way over the other, or is one just better than the other full stop? Is the orientation of the joints massively crucial....or does it just make things easier/smoother?

The Ik handles are in. 3 of them on each leg, one an IKRP, and the other two IKSC. Everything named, parented, Pole vectored, with custom attributes set up on the overall foot manipulator.

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# 5 26-06-2011 , 03:38 PM

The thin red line
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Your far more avanced than me Ben with rigging, think Im going to have to read up on this....looking good ........dave

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# 6 26-06-2011 , 03:42 PM

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Its alot of fancy words and terms at the minute Dave. Im just following instructions from a book and hoping the understanding of the whats, whys, hows, will become clearer as I progress, and repeat e.t.c. Whats the difference between an IKRP and an IKSC IK handle? I dont know, ones about rotation (IKRP), the other one....? Cant get more specific than that. As for all the parenting, again. Just following orders. Brains feeling a bit worse for wear for it too!

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# 7 26-06-2011 , 03:44 PM

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p.s...have you got any specific tutorials in mind for what you are going to do?

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# 8 26-06-2011 , 03:54 PM

The thin red line
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Not a clue as of yet, going to have a look round to see whats on offer..........dave

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# 9 26-06-2011 , 03:57 PM

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look forward to seeing what you choose.

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# 10 26-06-2011 , 07:50 PM

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I would suggest looking at a couple of books called the art of rigging they are excellent

My website;
https://www.eyellem.com

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/martin-van-stein/42/a81/b82

Yoda post;
https://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...highlight=yoda

Indiana Jones Post;
https://srv01.simply3dworld.com/showt...threadid=29188

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# 11 26-06-2011 , 09:23 PM

Acid44

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Definitely don't see enough rigging WIPs, will be watching this one

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# 12 26-06-2011 , 09:44 PM

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Cheers Mastone and Acid.

Mastone: a quick search of the 'art of rigging' on Amazon leads me to a whole swarm of books about sailing... and little to do with cgi. Stick 'Maya' at the end of the search and then brings a few possibilities up but none of them are actually called, 'The art of Rigging'.? Theres a couple there with DVDs that look quite useful...

Realising now, how, for all the Maya and Zbrush and related books I have and tutorials Ive watched and bought, I have very little on rigging.

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# 13 27-06-2011 , 12:18 AM

yes...you dont sound not non double negative
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Ill add one quick note, the spine is favouring the wrong direction. This minght not give good results. You should make it arch at the upper half and sink in at the lower half. Like a sine curve.

level 3 luchador!

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# 14 27-06-2011 , 02:25 AM

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Looking good Ben, just to check you don't run into any problems later on have you got this character fully uvd. Is ok if not, you can uv him later as there is a little trick to get the uvs onto the o rig which will allow you to delete all the history. I will be using it a lot myself as I can create a new character and use a blend shape on the o rig of the rigged character to create a new one. I can then delete the history on the o rig and I have a new character with clean history which is pretty useful. There are other methods such as transferring the weights to a new uvd one, this is provided the mesh matches but I don't think you are able to keep any influence objects.

Keep up the great work and look forward to seeing your progress,

Leon

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