UNIT 10
Rigging
Parent Child Rigging
In this project, we are being introduced Rigging and is fairly a broad topic and I am quite excited to get to learn Rigging. I know that it is a fundamental part of animating a character model. Before we go on to actual rigging we started to get an understanding of Parent-Child Relations.
Parent-Child relation is a simple thing to understand . I started with the sun, earth and the moon. When I started to animate the animation had an ease in and out effect that ruined the continuous loop and seems like it had a start and finish.
Here we started to make a hand out of square boxes and from the basic understanding I had from the parent-child relationship here it is a bit different. The scale did play a big factor in the end and I had to remake the entire arm and hand and reposition the pivot points to the correct joint. When modelling in object mode and then parenting it to one another it does warping when it is rotating and was rather frustrating to me but to overcome that, I would just start all over again. Once I created a new hand and just smoothed it out to get a better look and then took the face and detached it from the arm and its fingers and started to experiment with the animation and wanted to make it do a magic trick. I started to really enjoy it more.
Lighting test in Arnold Renderer
This was just a simple test of lights with the new renderer we use in Maya 2017 called Arnold and is a highly used renderer in the industry although I am still used to Mental Ray, Arnold can give a much greater result in the final render. Both mental ray and Arnold are really good however Mental Ray is much more user-friendly and does lack some features well, on the other hand, Arnold is much more advanced and renders light much more realistically than Mental ray and can have much more impressive results and I will continue to use Arnold.
Reaserch
Concept art
The character wanted to model I had to go with a robot instead of a traditional mech with two feet like the AT-ST from Star Wars or something like the Pacific Rim giant mechs but di have this idea of a skull floating on top of the body. The first design was just a sketch of what I wanted in the end how in the sketch it was harder to model and would look rather big and proportions wouldn't look good in 3D.
Parts of the design was still kept and I wanted to make something like a demon Knight and would have similarities to marvels character, Ghost Rider. I wanted something, in the end, to be rather complex to modelling and each piece being able to move like a robot from transformers. So the end result will just be a mixture between experimental ideas to get the final one I want in the end. It was hard coming up with an idea I was happy with in the end. ​
IK Handle and Mini mech animation
IK handles are a tricky thing to understand but what it is exactly is a connection between the joints in Maya which give a much more natural movement to legs and arms you can make it come in contact with the ground unlike the FK relationship which the joints are, is a lot more fiddly with and requires a lot more to animate. FK chains are fiddly to set up and can have later issues in the end if you tend to animate if it is not done in the correct order. first, you have to create joints, IK works best with legs.
The second step you create an NURBS curve a bit bigger than the model's foot. Thirdly you create the IK chain from the hip of the leg to the ankle and create another one from the ankle to the tip of the toe. next parent the hip IK chain to the NURBS curve and then the foot next. I also made a little animation of my first mech running into a pole and then falling over, It is a bit over the top for a short animation but I wanted to see where and what errors might happen to the legs of the IK chains. The first Problem I was with the legs and would twist in the different direction but only if I rotate the foot more than it should.
Progress Modeling and UV`s
For the design of the robot/Mech, I was not too sure what I wanted to make and took most of my reference from a picture from a Knights armour and build from that and the skull was not really made realistically in mind, I wanted this robotic look to it. I started to learn UV mapping as well because I wanted to add detail in Mudbox as well as some textures.
When I model I intentionally Model so where ever the joint might be it would be easy to rotate or bend in that way.
Key Set Driven
I started to play around with to experiment with Set Driven Key and often it is used quite a lot in rigging for facial rigs and fingers and even transformations. Simple transformations I want to try out. It is rather a tricky and a fiddly thing to set up but what it is you a controller, a controller can be anything but is mostly used is the NURBS curves and everything can be animated by this controller without affecting the main timeline. Each translation or rotation has to be keyed in separately.
Controller Layout
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For the rig, I wanted to do some rather complex so when it comes to animating to you would know what to do and simple to understand. It was a frustrating effort to set up the rig and how I wanted the layout to be but I wanted to make the arms and FK and the legs to an IK Chain
Most tricky part of the rig was creating the controllers to click and then be able to move but whenever I parent the curve to the joint, the joint well disconnect from the main skeleton. what I had to do Was learn a Mel Script and this works with any curve. Mel is very sort but is complex and has to be done in a certain order to be correct. The script is (parent -relative -shape or for short parent -r -s) what it does it makes multiple curves to be selected as one whole object instead of separate ones.
Final Rig
Evaluation
The final outcome was worth the effort and frustration in the end and got a fully working rig but it does still have some issues but only minor there were more that I would want to add as well like cloth and limits to more of the joints so that it can only move a certain way like I did with the arm in the video of the rig. I did find this to be a very enjoyable topic and rigging can be very in depth and over the top complex but it was interesting to know that you can make anything have a rig from objects to characters. I do like to look more in depth in rigging and learn about skin weights and helper joints to blend shapes.
There are not much that I don't enjoy about rigging it makes you think outside the box if you want a character to move in a certain way then you can or have in depth transformations and basic key animations.