Introduction:
Character Rigging and Animation Workshop:
During the first part of the workshop, we learned a bit about manual rigging. This was useful as not all of us animators knew the foundations of how to create a rig. Therefore, we learned how to rig a basic polygon tube.
We began by creating a polygon cylinder and adjusting the height, subdivisions height, and axis. Our guest lecturer mentioned it’s always good to have a multiple of 4 as our subdivision axis as it means we will be able to mirror the object accurately.
Once the polygon tub was set up, we next inserted joints and parented them up together to form a chain. To make sure all joints were facing the same direction, I turned on the “Local Rotation Axes”, allowing me to see what axis the joints were facing at all times.
As we were inserting the joints, we also gave them a specific naming structure. Even though this had no actual effect on the work itself, it’s something we need to practice now as it’ll be essential once we start working within the industry.
We next inserted NURBS circles to act as controls for each joint, positioning them in the exact position of each joint.
It was strongly advised that each control had its own group, keeping the position and rotation of the control itself at 0. If we wanted to move the controls, we would move the group instead.
The next step was to parent the joints with the NURBS circle controls, meaning we would now be able to move the individual joints by moving the NURBS circle instead.
Once the joint chain was correctly parented with the NURBS circle controls, and all objects were properly named. We selected the joints and geometry to bind the skin, meaning the geometry will now move according to the joints’ movements.
To make sure the geometry moved how we wanted it to move, we used the “Paint Skin Weight” tool to edit the amount of influence each joint has on the object. By default, some joints will have an unnecessary influence on a particular section of the object; however, this tool gives us the controls to add and remove influence from any joint.
Our guest lecturer next gave us an example of how a supported joint could help our rigging and animation. As you can see in the screenshot above, I positioned an additional joint on the side of one of my original joints.
We used the “Paint Skin Weight” tool again to manipulate the amount of influence that additional joint has on the object. These aren’t mandatory, but can be very useful if your object looks a little off when moving the rig around.
Lastly, we selected the geometry and mirrored it, creating a copy of the support joint on the other side of the rig. Rigging one side of your object and mirroring it can save you a huge amount of time when creating a full rig, as you’ll only be required to rig one side of the skeleton.