Going Live - Rigging

After finishing the 3D model of the Tree-Hand, it was onto the rigging. Treated the rigging as a normal human hand, with dual joints for better deformations. Made sure all the joints were orientated the same way:

I did a quick test once some of the joints were in place to check the fingers/branches were moving in the right direction:

Checking the joint orientations as I go:

All the joints in place and in the right hierarchy, next step was to Bind Skin of model to the joints:

Weight painting - came across a problem at first where weights I had just painted were being re-distributed when I moved onto another joint to weight paint, fixed the problem but locking the weights in the paint skin weights tool:

Continued painting skin weights:

Made sure the branches on the back of the hand only moved with the wrist joint so that they would still stand up fairly straight when the hand is first curled up and distorted:

The next step was to add controls for the joints, I colour-coded them for each finger/branch to make selecting them less difficult to see:

 Testing out the finished rig and controls:

Last step was to add a Global Control, which allows the rig and model to be scaled, moved and rotated together when imported/referenced into a scene:

Here are some rendered images of the rig controls:

Creating a Visible Rig in Renders

As we are compiling all of our Going Live work together for next week's presentation, I wondered if there was a better way to present rigs instead of just a screenshot. I searched for a way to make rigs visible in renders and came across a relevant tutorial and article. Link Here. I passed on this tutorial to others in the class to use for their rig renders also.
These are the steps I went through:

• Press F6 to go into Rendering mode.
• Select curve.
• Paint Effects - Curve Utilities - Attach brush to curves.

• Look in attributes, turn on 'Forward Twist'.

• Work way through all Nurbs curves.
• Select all 'strokes' in Outliner.
• Paint Effects - Share one brush.

• Attributes - change Global Scale to one.

• Modify - Convert Paint Effects to Polygons.

• Ungroup brushes in Outliner, delete the strokes.

• Group all the brushes and rename to 'Rig Visualisation'.

• Center Pivot, Freeze Transformations and Delete History.
• Hide Nurbs curves.
• Hypershade.
• Create and apply coloured shaders.

• Select all shapes of same colour and apply shader.
• Select F3, quadrangulate in polygons menu for shapes.

To make the Visible Rig move with the actual rig:

• Group all rig geometry and parent to Global Control.
• Select Nurbs control, turn visible rig back on, select rig geometry, then Parent Constrain.

For rendering, I created an Ambient Occlusion layer:

I rendered out the rig on a layer by itself with some directional lights surrounding it:

I then composited these together with a background in After Effects:

Followed the same process for the view of the back:

Rigging Workshop

Rigging workshop with Sang:

Who is in charge of character rigging?

FK = Forward Kinematics. (if you want to move the arm, start at root shoulder, then move to elbow, then to wrist...)
IK= Inverse Kinematics. (if you want to move the leg, can move the foot which will move/make everything else follow. Good if the character is holding something, if move body, hand will stay where it was)

Squash and Stretch = needs deformers on the joints.

Make a rig as simple as possible! Only do what you need!

Build things real scale to allow lighting to act better with mia X material etc...

Open Maya file.
Set Project.
PAL (25fps)
Incremental save - up to limit 20.

ctrl + shift + rmb on joint to swap axis to world.

MEL: select -hi; (to select all individual joints, by selecting roots first)

Display - Transform Display - Local Rotation Axis

Select root thumb, F8 component, switch on question mark, press a letter Axis, use rotate tool to change thumb rotation axis.

Hold 'v' to snap nurbs circle to joint.
Delete history on Nurbs circle, then freeze transformation.
When constraining nurbs circle to joint, make sure 'Maintain Offset' is ticked on 'Orient'.

Binding the Mesh:
- Make sure the geometry has clean history before binding model to joints!
- Use low poly model for painting skin weights.