Character Rigging for Production in Maya 2011

Preview Course

Lesson Outline (68 lessons)
In this course, we will cover tools and techniques for setting up character rigs in Maya.

Step by step, we'll construct a control rig that is robust and animator-friendly. We'll learn everything from proper joint placement and techniques for correcting a joint's orientation to learning fun ways we can preserve volume as our mesh deforms and how to make our controls efficient and easy to comprehend. We'll also learn how to build some fun MEL tools that will help speed up our workflow, bringing that time back into constructing our control rigs with the best methods.

1. Introduction and Project Overview

3. Creating a Renaming Tool

5. A Technique for Re-orienting Joints/Finishing the Leg Joints

7. Creating a Tool that Generates a Box Curve

9. Constructing Foot Controls

11. Rigging a Foot Bank

13. Adding Knee Controls

15. Writing a Script to Generate Joints on each Selected Vertex

17. Adding in a Spline IK / Initial Connections of the nSpine

19. Starting to Add Twisting to our nSpine

21. Completing the Setup of the nSpine Locators

23. Finishing the nSpine

25. Building Finger Joints

27. Establishing IK Arm Controls

29. Establishing Elbow Association Curves

31. Setting up IK/FK Switch Controls

33. Finishing the FK Arm Controls

35. Creating a Tool that Parents Shape Nodes

37. Finishing the Finger Controls

39. Establishing Arm/Forearm Twist Controls

41. Rigging the Left Arm with an Auto Clavicle Feature

43. Building the Neck and Head Bones

45. Dynamically Parenting the Head Control

47. Renaming and the Facial Joints

49. Adding Parent Controls to our Facial Rig

51. Blinking the Eyes

53. Dynamically Parenting the Eye Controls

55. Finishing the Left Eye

57. Cleaning up the Scene / Adding a Global Control Curve

59. Binding the Character / The Magic of Dual Quaternion Skinning

61. Refining the Deformations of the Head

63. Wrapping up the Weights on the Left Hand

65. Finalizing the Left Arm's Weights

67. Double-checking Deformations

2. Prepping Our Scene

4. Building the Left Leg Joint

6. Setting-up Foot Roll Joints

8. Scripting a Joint Curve

10. Setting up the Foot Controls/Rigging the Toe Bend

12. Finishing the Foot Bank Rig

14. Establishing Knee Association Curves

16. Building the nSpine Joints

18. Creating Upperbody Control Curves

20. Setting up the Initial Twisting in the nSpine

22. Choosing a Stable Rotate Order for Control Objects

24. Building the Shoulder and Arm Chains

26. Rigging Shoulder Controls

28. Adding Elbow Controls for the IK Arm

30. Dynamically Parenting the Arm Controls

32. Building FK Controls of the Arms

34. Dynamically Orienting the FK Arm Controls

36. Starting on Finger Controls

38. Building Arm/Forearm Twist Joints

40. Wrapping up our Forearm Twist Rig

42. Setting up an AutoClavicle on the Right Arm

44. Establishing a Head Control

46. Creating Facial Joints

48. Building Facial Controls

50. Wrapping up the Facial Controls

52. Constructing Eye Controls

54. Starting to Rig the Eyes

56. Finishing the Right Eye

58. Adding a Character Set

60. Binding the Eyebrows / Blocking in Weights with Dual Quaternion Skinning

62. Finishing the Weights on the Left Leg

64. Adding and Editing Influence Objects

66. Painting Weights on the Neck

68. Mirroring Skin Weights / Finishing the Character Rig



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