IntroductionWelcome| 00:01 | Hi, my name is George Maestri, and
this is Character Rigging in Maya 8.5.
| | 00:05 | A little bit about me: I have been
working with Character Animation for almost 20
| | 00:09 | years, and I have been doing
3D for probably 15 of that.
| | 00:14 | I have used Maya pretty much ever since it
was released, and I used Alias before that.
| | 00:18 | I currently teach Character Animation
at Otis College of Art in Los Angeles.
| | 00:23 | And this course is going to be about
Character Rigging, and what that means is
| | 00:27 | that we're going to take a model of a
character, and we're going to rig it with
| | 00:32 | a skeleton, and then we're going to
bind that geometry to the skeleton using
| | 00:35 | skinning, and then we're going to
create some controls that will make it very
| | 00:39 | easy for you, or for an
animator, to manipulate that character.
| | 00:42 | So with that in mind, let's get started.
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| Exploring the Maya interface| 00:00 | This video will give you some of the basics
of how to navigate and move things around in Maya.
| | 00:07 | If you really want to get a good
overview of the interface it's probably best to
| | 00:11 | go through the Learning Maya 8.0 title,
which gives you all the foundation of
| | 00:17 | Maya and gets you really through it.
| | 00:18 | But let's just use this as a quick
reference to the interface and how to use Maya.
| | 00:23 | Now I'm using a Windows machine.
Maya also works on Mac and Linux.
| | 00:29 | For me to start up Maya I just
double-click on my icon on the Desktop.
| | 00:34 | Now you may have to fish through some
menus on a Linux or a Mac machine to get
| | 00:39 | to Maya, but pretty much the same thing.
| | 00:41 | Now once I get into Maya I'm going to
show a little bit about how to navigate,
| | 00:45 | but before I do that, I need to stress something,
and that is get a three-button mouse.
| | 00:51 | Now most Windows and Linux users already
have three-button mouses, but if you're
| | 00:56 | on the Mac you may have a
one or two-button mouse.
| | 01:00 | Go to the store spend $10 to $20
and get a three-button mouse.
| | 01:05 | Maya just works so much better
when you have the proper mouse.
| | 01:09 | I'm sure there are some sorts of
shortcuts for two-button mice but I'm not going
| | 01:14 | to teach them because
they are kind of workarounds.
| | 01:16 | It's going to be a much better
if you have a three-button mouse.
| | 01:20 | So let's go through some of the interface here,
and I'm using a three-button mouse.
| | 01:24 | Now when Maya starts up it comes up
with what's called the Perspective view
| | 01:28 | which is a 3D--or rather 2D--
representation of your 3D world.
| | 01:34 | If I want I can hit the spacebar very quickly.
| | 01:38 | Now if I hit the spacebar and hold it a
menu comes up, I'll get to that a little
| | 01:42 | bit, but if you just tap the spacebar
you can switch between Perspective and
| | 01:47 | what's called the Four-View,
which has a top, front, and Side view.
| | 01:52 | And if your mouse is over any of these
views, let's say it's over the Front view,
| | 01:55 | and you hit the spacebar then
it comes up into Front view.
| | 01:59 | Now front is basically what's
called an Orthographic Viewport.
| | 02:02 | It's kind of like a drafting view, you
can't spin around but you can pan and
| | 02:06 | zoom in this Viewport, and it's great
for when you build things, building them
| | 02:11 | on a plane essentially.
| | 02:13 | But I'm going to go ahead and position
my mouse over the Perspective Viewport
| | 02:16 | and hit Space again.
And let's go through some of the navigations.
| | 02:20 | Now again, with the three-button mouse
all you have to do is hold down the Alt
| | 02:24 | key and left-click, and
you can rotate your view.
| | 02:28 | If you middle-click, you pan the view,
and again holding down the Alt key.
| | 02:34 | If you right-click with Alt
held down, you zoom. Very simple.
| | 02:40 | Now for those who have a mouse with a
middle wheel, you can also just spin that
| | 02:47 | wheel to zoom so that's
another option that you can do.
| | 02:51 | So again, Alt, left-click,
middle-click, right-click.
| | 02:58 | Now some other things is how to move,
rotate, and scale objects within Maya.
| | 03:03 | If you want, you can create objects.
| | 03:07 | We have some tabs here which have some
standard objects, or if you want we have
| | 03:12 | a menu system here we can also
create things through the menu system.
| | 03:15 | So if I wanted to create a sphere I'll
go Create > NURBS Primitives > Sphere and
| | 03:19 | then left-click and drag,
and it creates that sphere.
| | 03:23 | Now initially what it does is it
creates it in what's called Wireframe.
| | 03:27 | Wireframe is just kind of a transparent
view of just the wires that create the object.
| | 03:33 | If you want to see how that object
look shaded all I have to do is in any
| | 03:37 | Viewport there is going to be this window
here, and you go Shading > Smooth Shade All.
| | 03:41 | Okay, Shading > Wireframe.
| | 03:43 | There are also some other modes
which most people don't even use.
| | 03:47 | Flat Shade, which doesn't smooth shade,
it gives you the testellation of that,
| | 03:50 | you can also do Bounding Box,
you can also show Points.
| | 03:54 | But most people just use
Wireframe or Smooth Shade.
| | 03:58 | Now there's some options here.
| | 03:59 | You can also use some keyboard
shortcuts, the 5 key shades it.
| | 04:04 | And then the 2 and 3 key gives you
various levels of resolution--actually
| | 04:09 | it's the 1, 2, 3 key.
4 is Wireframe, 5 is Shaded.
| | 04:16 | So if I hit 4, and I can hit 1, 2, 3,
you can see that it actually is giving you
| | 04:22 | more detail and a smoother view.
| | 04:24 | Now if I want to move
things I can select the object.
| | 04:27 | I can select objects by just
clicking on them or if I want to you can
| | 04:32 | hold down Shift and drag.
| | 04:33 | There is also a Lasso tool here,
if you want to you can lasso objects
| | 04:38 | or whatever you want.
| | 04:41 | And we also have, if we want to move
objects around, we can Move, Rotate, and Scale.
| | 04:46 | Now there's also keyboard shortcuts.
| | 04:48 | The Q key is Select, the W key--these
are actually called the QWERTY Tools--
| | 04:55 | so Q-E-R, these are kind of like the top
left-hand corner of the keyboard, so Q-W-E-R.
| | 05:00 | So Q is Select, W is Move,
E is Rotate, R is Scale.
| | 05:09 | So if I want to move I hit W, or I
can just hit this, or I can do--there's
| | 05:15 | actually a Move tool somewhere in here--
but actually it's always easiest just to
| | 05:20 | go here, so I can just select that
object, hit Move, and then I can move it.
| | 05:25 | Now there's actually three arrows here, and
each arrow moves it along a specific axis.
| | 05:31 | So if I click this one, it moves
it along the Z axis, and these are
| | 05:36 | color-coated, X, Y, and Z. So if I hit
that, that's the X one, and if I select in
| | 05:42 | the middle I can move it anywhere I want.
| | 05:45 | So if I select any one of these I can
move in a specific direction, if I select
| | 05:50 | the middle I can just move it wherever.
| | 05:52 | The same for rotate, when I hit E for
Rotate, and if I want I can do blue to
| | 05:57 | rotate around Z, red to rotate
around Y. If I click in the middle here,
| | 06:02 | left-click and drag, I can spin it
however I want, and the same for Scale, if I
| | 06:09 | want I can hit R, and I
can scale it however I want.
| | 06:13 | So those are some of the basics of
navigation and moving objects around in Maya.
| | 06:17 | So hopefully that will help you as
we go through some of these lessons.
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| Working with the exercise files| 00:00 | Now there's one more thing before we
get into the lessons, and that is how
| | 00:04 | Maya deals with files.
| | 00:07 | And Maya likes to work with what are
called Projects, and what a project is
| | 00:12 | simply a collection of directories
that Maya knows where everything is.
| | 00:17 | Now Maya can just take files from
anywhere, I mean, you can put a Maya--what's
| | 00:22 | called a Maya Binary or Maya ASCII
file--which is essentially your Maya scene.
| | 00:27 | You can put that anywhere.
| | 00:28 | But typically, Maya likes to have it in
a very rigid hierarchy, and that makes
| | 00:33 | sure that it knows where all the
textures are and all the animation and where to
| | 00:37 | render and all that sort of stuff.
So what we can do is we can create a project.
| | 00:43 | Do Project > New, and now we're
already going to have our project set up for
| | 00:48 | these lessons, but I'm just
going to show you this New.
| | 00:51 | And what it does is it just kind
of shows you where the location is.
| | 00:55 | So I'm going to go ahead and use
defaults, left-click on Use Defaults, it'll
| | 00:59 | tell you that we have Scenes, Images,
Source Images, Clips, where the Sound
| | 01:04 | files are, where the Particles are,
where the Shaders are, really where
| | 01:07 | everything is that Maya needs.
| | 01:09 | It's going to be in these standardized
directories, and what we can do is we can
| | 01:15 | set the location up to be whatever
location on the disk or on a server or
| | 01:19 | wherever you want it to be.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to actually cancel that because
we're not going to set up a project at this point.
| | 01:25 | But what we usually do before we start a
lesson is we're going to go ahead and set a project.
| | 01:30 | So I'll go Project > Set, and what we
are going to do is we're going to scroll
| | 01:34 | to our Exercise Files directory, or
folder, and that's going to be on the
| | 01:40 | exercise files from lynda.com if you have paid
your full tuition and all that sort of stuff.
| | 01:45 | You'll get the exercise files, and
you'll install them on your hard disk, and
| | 01:49 | then once you do that,
you go find that directory.
| | 01:51 | Now I have it on my Desktop, but
you can put it wherever you want.
| | 01:56 | And it'll have all the directories
for each of the lessons or each of the
| | 02:01 | chapters that we have.
| | 02:03 | So, for example, if I go into 01_Tools, it
will have all those directories that we created.
| | 02:10 | It's actually what's called the
Project Directories, but if I want I'll just
| | 02:14 | select 01_Tools and hit OK.
| | 02:15 | So now, when I go to open a file, when
I go Open Scene it actually goes to my
| | 02:23 | Desktop, and it goes to 01_Tools/scenes.
| | 02:26 | If I go Up Arrow you'll see that I have 01_Tools,
go Up Arrow again, this is my Exercise Files.
| | 02:32 | So what it does is it just kind of sets
your default directory so when you go to
| | 02:37 | open something it just instantly
goes there, it makes a lot easier.
| | 02:41 | Also, that means that everything is
pathed so if we're using textures or anything
| | 02:45 | else Maya will already
know where all that stuff is.
| | 02:48 | So if we go into our scenes files, then
we can open up whatever scene we want.
| | 02:54 | So that's the basic of projects, and we're going
to be using projects throughout these lessons.
| | 02:59 | So, let's go ahead and get
started with the learning.
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|
|
1. OverviewOverview of rigging| 00:00 | Let's go through a Rig and show you
what it looks like and what we're going to
| | 00:04 | be creating here in this course.
| | 00:05 | It's always a good idea to kind of see
what the final product is so that way as
| | 00:10 | we build things you'll kind of have
an idea as to why we're building them.
| | 00:14 | So I'm going to go ahead and set things up here.
We're going to first of all set our Project.
| | 00:19 | Okay, if you have loaded your exercise
files it should have a bunch of directories
| | 00:22 | in there with each chapter.
| | 00:23 | So we're going to go ahead and set
our Project, and in our exercise files
| | 00:27 | directory here we have 01_Intro,
which is the chapter we're on now.
| | 00:31 | So let's select that, hit OK, and that will
set our paths so we can see our character.
| | 00:37 | And then we're going to
ahead and open the scene.
| | 00:39 | Now in that scene, actually in
that project, 01_Intro, we have a
| | 00:44 | subdirectory called Scenes.
| | 00:45 | And we'll click on there and 01_01
is the finished character.
| | 00:51 | So that's what he looks like, and this is
what we're going to be creating in this course.
| | 00:55 | Now let me explain a few things about this Rig.
| | 00:58 | Let me just show you how it works,
I think that's the best thing to do.
| | 01:02 | You'll notice it has a lot of these
curves that are set around the character.
| | 01:06 | Now these basically are our control points.
These are what we use to control the character.
| | 01:13 | So all you have to do is select those,
move them, rotate them, you can even
| | 01:17 | scale them, and they'll
manipulate the character.
| | 01:21 | So if we have this large one here
called Character Master, and that just moves
| | 01:25 | the character around this kind of our Master Node
where we can place the character in the scene.
| | 01:30 | We have C-O-G, which is Center of Gravity,
and that just moves the character up and down.
| | 01:36 | If you notice his arms are kind of sticking
in place that's because we have IK on the arms.
| | 01:40 | These little boxes are IK,
and we can turn those off.
| | 01:45 | If we go over to our Channel Box here we
have this IK_FK control, which turns that off.
| | 01:51 | So now we can rotate the
joints using forward kinematics.
| | 01:56 | One of the things I did was when we
built this skeleton we built all of the
| | 02:04 | controls out of curves.
| | 02:06 | So that makes it very easy to select off
just the curves by using our Selection Mask.
| | 02:11 | So if I turn off surface objects,
skeleton, so on and so forth, I will only select
| | 02:19 | the things that we're using to control
this character, it makes it a lot easier.
| | 02:22 | So again going back, we can rotate the
arms, and we also have hand controls, we
| | 02:28 | have custom controls for the hands.
| | 02:31 | So if we select this ring around the
wrist that's obviously what we can use to
| | 02:35 | rotate the wrist, but if you scroll
down here in the Channel Box you'll see
| | 02:39 | that we have all of these additional
attributes for the index finger so I can
| | 02:43 | move all the fingers.
| | 02:44 | So that way I'll only have to select one
object in order to animate the entire hand.
| | 02:50 | And if I want to I can select a bunch of
these, animate a bunch of fingers at once, okay.
| | 02:55 | If I select one of these I can middle-click
and drag left or right, and that
| | 02:59 | will increase the value of any
one of these parameters, okay.
| | 03:04 | So we also have controls for the legs.
Let's go down to the legs here.
| | 03:10 | We have what's called the Foot Control,
which looks kind of like the heel of that shoe.
| | 03:15 | All the controls are named in
uppercase which makes it easy.
| | 03:19 | And then we also have controls for the toe, so
if I want to I can rotate the toe up or down.
| | 03:25 | Also I have another control behind here
called the Heel Control, which it lifts
| | 03:30 | the heel above the ground, okay.
| | 03:32 | So these are very handy for use in like
walking the character, that sort of thing.
| | 03:36 | We also have Knee Controls so I can
actually control the direction of the
| | 03:41 | character's knee, but of
course I need to bend the knee.
| | 03:44 | So I'm going to bend the knees there.
| | 03:48 | And if I select one of those knee
controls you can see that the knee is always
| | 03:51 | pointing at those little boxes, okay.
Same for the elbow, okay.
| | 03:57 | If I have Inverse Kinematics turned on I
have a little box back here, and that's
| | 04:01 | the target that the elbow points to.
The remaining controls are for the Face.
| | 04:06 | We select this big box it's called Head Control.
| | 04:09 | And if we want we can rotate the head,
and that just moves the head around.
| | 04:15 | Inside of this box are two controls, one
is for the mouth and one is for the eyes.
| | 04:20 | So if I select this little teardrop
shape that will open and close the mouth, so
| | 04:26 | if I move it up and down it opens the mouth.
| | 04:29 | If I move it left and right it
moves that jaw left and right.
| | 04:32 | So basically, it's a Jaw Control.
| | 04:34 | Now the reason I have it as a teardrop
shape is because we can also rotate that,
| | 04:38 | so if I want to I can rotate
the jaw left and right, okay.
| | 04:41 | It gives you a lot of control
over what the character can do.
| | 04:45 | And then we have these controls here,
and this basically just blink, so they'll
| | 04:49 | blink each one of the eyes.
| | 04:50 | Now for actual facial animation
we're using what are called Blend Shapes.
| | 04:55 | So we can find those under Window >
Animation Editors > Blend Shape.
| | 05:02 | And what that does is it brings up
all of these targets that we can use to
| | 05:06 | control the shape of the face.
| | 05:08 | For example, if we want brow up left,
brow up right, mouth frown, okay.
| | 05:16 | Let's see that a little bit better here.
Mouth smile left and right, okay.
| | 05:24 | So when you combine that with the Jaw
Control, you can create a lot of different
| | 05:28 | mouth shapes and eye shapes as well.
| | 05:31 | So we also have E is for Eye, B is for
Brow, M is for Mouth, and P is for Phonemes.
| | 05:37 | So if you want to like Ooh, if you want
to have your character saying Oh or Ooh,
| | 05:42 | you can do that and so on and so forth, okay.
So that's our mouth shapes.
| | 05:53 | And then also we have Eye
Controls, so this little gizmo here.
| | 05:58 | If you select the outside oval
you can move it to direct the eyes.
| | 06:04 | Inside the oval are two circles and
they just control the left and right eye.
| | 06:08 | So that's basically the Rig that we are
going to use, and this is very similar.
| | 06:13 | It may not be exactly like Rigs that
you'll encounter, but it uses most of the
| | 06:16 | same techniques and
technologies for creating a Rig.
| | 06:21 | And if you understand how to build
this Rig you'll be pretty far along for
| | 06:24 | understanding how most Maya Rigs are built.
| | 06:27 | Now some Rigs will be a lot more complex,
some will be simpler, but we'll give
| | 06:31 | you a good toolkit to use
when creating your own Rigs.
| | 06:35 | Okay, now let's move on, I am going to
show you a little bit about what needs
| | 06:39 | to happen with the model before we start in
on the rigging process and a few more things.
| | 06:44 | So onto the next lesson.
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| Overview of character geometry| 00:00 | Now that we understand a little bit what
a Rig is going to look like, let's take
| | 00:05 | a closer look at the model and how the
geometry of the character needs to be
| | 00:09 | before we start rigging it.
So we're going to go ahead and open a file.
| | 00:14 | We're going to Open Scene, Ch01_02, and this
is the basic model that we're going to use.
| | 00:21 | Now the first thing you'll
notice is that it is in segments.
| | 00:25 | Now you can model your character in one
big piece, and a lot of people do it that
| | 00:31 | way, and there's plenty of
reasons to do it like that.
| | 00:34 | I segmented this out just so that
we could have the head separate because
| | 00:38 | sometimes it's easier conceptually
just to see how the head works separate
| | 00:43 | from the body just makes it a little
bit easier to take a look at things by
| | 00:47 | having a separate head.
| | 00:48 | And in some ways it's also just easier
to rig a separate head because then you
| | 00:52 | don't have to worry about all the
body geometry when you get to what are
| | 00:56 | called the Blend Shapes which means you have
to model entire bodies when you do Blend Shape.
| | 01:01 | It makes it easier to have separate
heads because the modeling tasks are a
| | 01:04 | little bit easier, and it's a
little bit easier to manage.
| | 01:07 | But again, it works both ways.
So let's take a look at this.
| | 01:10 | We have got a separate head, and in fact,
if I move that head away you'll see I
| | 01:16 | also have separate eyes and teeth, okay.
| | 01:20 | So these eyes are spheres--they're
basically spheres--and what I did was I
| | 01:25 | textured the front couple of polygons
to look like a pupil. And of course, you
| | 01:30 | could do a texture map or
whatever for that if you wanted to.
| | 01:33 | I'll also have separate teeth, and
the reason I have separate teeth is just
| | 01:37 | easier when it gets to facial animation
to have separate teeth because you can
| | 01:41 | actually animate them out of the way if
you need to, if you need to kind of do
| | 01:46 | some little tricks with the teeth.
| | 01:48 | And then the body, we
actually have the hands as part.
| | 01:51 | Now some people will segment out the
hands as well, so in addition to having a
| | 01:56 | segment at head they'll have segments in hands.
| | 01:59 | But we're going to go ahead and leave
our hands as part of the main geometry.
| | 02:03 | And then down on the feet here we have
got--feet are also part of the body.
| | 02:08 | Again, you can segment the shoes if you want to.
So that's the basic topology of the character.
| | 02:13 | And also, I have bowtie.
| | 02:14 | I left the bowtie separate because
there may be times where we want to animate
| | 02:19 | the bowtie coming off, to keep that
bowtie separate, so we're just going to go
| | 02:23 | ahead and make it a separate object.
| | 02:25 | So that's the basics of how
the character is put together.
| | 02:29 | Now in the next one we're going to show
you a little bit about the topology of
| | 02:33 | the character and how the
character is actually built.
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| Overview of character topology| 00:00 | Okay, so now we know a little bit
about how the character is put together.
| | 00:04 | Now let's talk a little bit more about
the topology of the character or actually
| | 00:07 | how the character is modeled or built.
| | 00:09 | So we're going to open up that same file,
and let's just take a look at it further.
| | 00:16 | So one of the things about this
character that you can notice is that it's
| | 00:19 | actually fairly low resolution.
| | 00:21 | There is not a ton of detail. In fact,
with most character models you want just
| | 00:27 | enough detail to convey what you need to
convey without adding any extra because
| | 00:33 | every additional vertex, piece of
geometry, something you have to deal with when
| | 00:38 | you're rigging, when you're skinning,
and the more vertices the more hassle.
| | 00:43 | And so if you can keep it as simple as
possible then your rigging is going to go a
| | 00:47 | lot more simply as well.
| | 00:49 | Okay, if you look at the arm of this
character, really there is not a lot of
| | 00:53 | detail, there's maybe only
eight radial sections or so.
| | 00:56 | So when you're dealing with like a
very critical area such as under the arm,
| | 01:00 | you have got one, maybe two, or three rows
of vertices that you need to deal with
| | 01:04 | rather than six or eight, and it makes
it much easier to keep things going in
| | 01:10 | the right direction and in the right place.
| | 01:12 | If you look at the hands there's
just enough detail for the hands.
| | 01:16 | So, for example, each joint only has
three, one, two, three edge loops and then
| | 01:22 | maybe one other at the end to create
kind of like a shape for fingernail.
| | 01:26 | Same with the legs.
| | 01:28 | There's really not a lot of detail in
the thigh area but there's a little bit
| | 01:32 | around the knee just so that the
character's knee will bend properly, and a
| | 01:36 | little bit of detail around the legs
because it kind of has these little
| | 01:40 | bell-bottom flared cut so we need
some detail to create that, okay.
| | 01:44 | Same with the arms just enough detail
around the joint and then enough detail to
| | 01:48 | make a cuff for his shirt.
| | 01:51 | And again, we just have a
couple of rows of vertices here.
| | 01:54 | Now the thing is is that, when this
character is actually animated we're going
| | 01:58 | to be using something called Smooth Proxy.
Now let me just show you that very briefly.
| | 02:02 | We make sure we go into the Polygons
Menu, we go into Proxy > Subdiv Proxy.
| | 02:08 | What that does is it creates a smooth version
of our character--okay--that is smoothed down.
| | 02:17 | In fact, you probably see a
little bit better on the head here.
| | 02:21 | Select that head, Proxy > Subdiv Proxy.
| | 02:24 | Now you can see how, especially up
here, how it smooths out the head.
| | 02:28 | And so what it does it actually creates
a piece of geometry that has a lot more
| | 02:33 | detail than our original piece of geometry.
| | 02:36 | We can actually dial up the
amount of geometry that we have to get
| | 02:40 | whatever resolution we want.
So let's take one look at the head.
| | 02:45 | Now the head again is low-res modeled.
| | 02:48 | It's modeled with just enough resolution
to give you the detail you need so that
| | 02:52 | when it's smoothed it looks fine.
| | 02:54 | And again, the reason we do this is we
don't want anymore detail than we need to
| | 02:59 | animate the character.
| | 03:00 | We can get very good
animation with just as much detail.
| | 03:04 | So with the face one of the things
you need to look at is how the detail is
| | 03:09 | constructed that's surrounding the eyes
and the mouth, and the mouth is probably
| | 03:15 | a little bit easier to look at.
| | 03:16 | You can see that we have got these
rings of edges, or edge loops, right there,
| | 03:20 | another one right here, and another
one right here. And that's because the
| | 03:27 | muscles around the mouth surround the
mouth radially, and the mouth can also be
| | 03:32 | pulled out basically almost like
puppet strings, there is a muscle that goes
| | 03:37 | from here all the way up to just
about the ear that pulls that way, there is
| | 03:41 | one that goes up along the nose to
make it sneer, another one along the lower
| | 03:46 | lip to pull it out this way.
| | 03:49 | And so what you want is you want enough
detail along the sides of the lip to be
| | 03:53 | able to pull it up in all these
different directions, and so that kind of
| | 03:57 | indicates that you need
this kind of radial structure.
| | 04:01 | The same with the eyes, we have rings
around the eyes to make sure that they can
| | 04:07 | blink, open, and go wide.
| | 04:09 | Okay, now in this character we have
eyebrows that are essentially separate
| | 04:15 | objects that we put into the Mesh
using the combined function, so Mesh >
| | 04:19 | Combine, so essentially these are just
boxes that were reshaped, and then we
| | 04:25 | combine it in with the main Mesh.
| | 04:27 | Now some people may actually separate
out the eyebrows, and for a more realistic
| | 04:31 | character you would properly have the
eyebrows kind of built into the surface of
| | 04:36 | the face rather than these
separate cartoony eyebrows.
| | 04:39 | It's just a matter of style and
how you want to build the character.
| | 04:43 | But even the most realistic character
will still have the same structure around
| | 04:48 | its mouth and around its eyes, okay.
| | 04:49 | So that's essentially what you need in
terms of character and character model.
| | 04:55 | You want to model that looks good,
that's easy to deform, and that's as
| | 05:00 | simple as possible, okay.
| | 05:03 | Now this is not to say that you want
to make a thing that's so simple that
| | 05:07 | doesn't look like anything.
| | 05:08 | Just enough detail to make it look exactly
the way you want it when it's smoothed out.
| | 05:12 | Okay, so let's move on to a few other things.
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| Staying organized| 00:00 | Now there's one more thing I want to
talk about before we actually get into
| | 00:04 | rigging, and that's staying organized.
| | 00:06 | When we create one of these character
rigs, we're going to have a lot of pieces.
| | 00:11 | It's kind of almost like a virtual
machine, and we have a lot of parts that
| | 00:15 | make up this machine.
| | 00:16 | We have got joints, we have got geometry,
we have got control objects, and all of
| | 00:22 | these need to stay organized for us to
be able to work on the character and be
| | 00:27 | able to fix things or to even to be
able to go on to somebody else's character
| | 00:32 | and understand what they are doing.
| | 00:34 | It's almost kind of like documenting a
computer program or writing a manual for
| | 00:38 | a thing that you have built.
| | 00:40 | Let's take a look at our character,
and I will show you a little a bit about
| | 00:44 | how it's organized.
| | 00:45 | There are a couple of things that we
need to do in order to stay organized.
| | 00:50 | One of the first things is Layers.
| | 00:52 | Maya has a very good layering system, and
we can use that to create some organization.
| | 00:58 | In this particular character, I have my
layers over here, they're in the Channel
| | 01:02 | Box, and I have got a bunch of layers,
I have got one here for Geometry, one for
| | 01:07 | the Skeleton--I'm turning all these off--
and the Controls that operate the character.
| | 01:12 | But then I have to two ones that are
normally hidden and those are the heads
| | 01:16 | that we use to create the Blend
Shapes, in fact that could be deleted.
| | 01:19 | And we also have one for the Proxy
which is the character before it's smoothed.
| | 01:23 | Okay, so I have kind of segmented all of
those out into their individual layers.
| | 01:27 | Now typically when you animate the
character, you are just going to keep on the
| | 01:31 | Controls and the Geometry layer.
| | 01:32 | Now the other way to keep the
character organized is the Outliner, and what
| | 01:37 | we have done here is we have segmented
out the different types of parts of the
| | 01:42 | character into their own little hierarchies.
| | 01:45 | So, for example, the Geometry of
the character is in this group here.
| | 01:49 | The actual Skeleton of the character--
and now we have turned down that
| | 01:54 | Skeleton layer--is here, okay.
| | 01:58 | So we are actually are taking the
Skeleton and making it separate from the
| | 02:02 | actual control of the character, okay.
| | 02:04 | So there's the Skeleton of the character,
and then we also have the Controls, okay.
| | 02:11 | And the controls here are really
where we're going to be animating.
| | 02:14 | So what we have tried to do is make all of
these objects as easily accessible as we can.
| | 02:19 | Now the other thing that we have
for organization is a naming scheme.
| | 02:24 | If you notice here all of these control
objects are upper case, all caps, lettering.
| | 02:31 | Now the reason I do that
SPINE 1, and so on and so forth.
| | 02:36 | When you're looking at a whole list of
things you'll notice that all the things
| | 02:40 | that are in all caps, you
know are Control objects.
| | 02:43 | Skeletons I have a very
specific Skeleton naming scheme, so
| | 02:48 | Skel_Abd_01, Skel_Thigh, Skel_Shin,
Skel_Ankle, all the Skel_Spine,
| | 02:56 | then you go into clavicle, okay.
| | 02:59 | So every Skeleton part
has the word Skel before it.
| | 03:05 | Geometry, Body, okay, and then also I
have another group here for all the Heads
| | 03:11 | and in that I have actually named--
here let me show you what the heads are.
| | 03:16 | The heads are all of the targets that we
use for Blend Shapes, for example, a smile.
| | 03:24 | So M for Mouth, M_Smile.
M for M_smileR right, smile Left, M_smileL.
| | 03:30 | Frown, so on and so forth.
| | 03:33 | Okay, so by having layers, by
organizing everything within hierarchies, and by
| | 03:40 | having a proper naming scheme, we'll be
able to keep everything very organized
| | 03:45 | when it comes to building this character.
| | 03:48 | The other thing is is that when
you're in a studio situation or in your
| | 03:52 | production situation, every studio is
going to have its own type of naming schemes.
| | 03:56 | So again, you need to probably spend
some time understanding how your particular
| | 04:02 | production names the parts of its characters.
| | 04:04 | Now I'm just going to use my own
naming scheme, which may not be exactly the
| | 04:08 | same as you encounter somewhere else,
but it's going to be fairly similar and
| | 04:12 | everybody kind of follows similar rules of
thumb, conventions, those sorts of things, okay.
| | 04:18 | So now that we understand how the
character is put together, how it's built and
| | 04:22 | some stuff about naming schemes, let's get on to
actually building our character and rigging him.
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|
|
2. Creating SkeletonsUsing the Joint tool| 00:00 | So as we start to rig characters one of
the first things we need to do is draw a
| | 00:05 | skeleton for the character.
| | 00:06 | Now we're going to get to that in
just a moment, but first let's go through
| | 00:10 | some of the tools that we'll need to draw our
skeletons and create joints for our characters.
| | 00:15 | Now the first tool that you need to
learn is called the Joint tool, and that
| | 00:19 | just creates the bones, or skeletons, for your
characters, and let me show you where that is.
| | 00:25 | Most of these Animation Tools we're
going to be using throughout are lessons we
| | 00:29 | are going to be in our Animation Menu Set.
| | 00:32 | And so if we go into that, and we go into
Skeleton, we'll see we have a Joint tool.
| | 00:38 | So let's go ahead and look at
some of the options for that.
| | 00:41 | Okay, so that brings up the attribute,
kind of an attribute editor box here.
| | 00:46 | And we have Degrees of freedom so
that's how the joints will rotate.
| | 00:49 | We have Orientation, which is the
default orientation of the bones, Automatic
| | 00:55 | joint limits, create IK Handle,
we'll get into IK a little bit later.
| | 00:59 | And the other one is Bone Radius Settings.
| | 01:01 | Now what this does is it creates
the bones at a very specific size.
| | 01:05 | So, sometimes bones are too big for the
character and they kind of stick out of
| | 01:10 | the skin, and you want the bones
to kind of be inside of the skin.
| | 01:13 | And so this allows you to change the
radius of the bone so it kind of matches
| | 01:18 | the scale of the character.
| | 01:19 | Let me go back to my Channel Box here
so we have a bigger screen and go ahead
| | 01:23 | and create some joints.
| | 01:24 | So again we can use a Joint tool, or
if we go over to our shelves, we have
| | 01:30 | the Animation Shelf.
And here is the Joint tool.
| | 01:34 | So joints should be drawn in
Orthographic Viewports because they do need to be
| | 01:39 | drawn kind of flat, almost on a 2D
plane, you can always bring them out of
| | 01:43 | that once you create them, but they're
best created kind of like a curve, you
| | 01:47 | want to create it in a 2D
space rather than a 3D space.
| | 01:52 | So let's go ahead and select our
Joint tool, and it's really easy to draw
| | 01:55 | joints, you just left click
anywhere in the window. There you go.
| | 02:00 | And what left-click does is it
creates this little kind of spherical object
| | 02:05 | here, and that's our Joint.
| | 02:06 | Now if we left-click again, it
creates another joint, you see?
| | 02:11 | Joint 2, right there.
| | 02:13 | And also it creates kind of this tetrahedral
bone object, which connects these two joints.
| | 02:19 | Now remember, the joints are the spheres
and in between that is what most people
| | 02:25 | call a Bone, and what that is is really
just kind of a display helper that shows
| | 02:31 | you where the joints are.
| | 02:33 | So, if we click again, we can create
another joint, and if you want to, you
| | 02:38 | can just hit Enter in Creation or you can
selection set or whatever, to end creation.
| | 02:43 | Now that we have the joints, let's
show you how they look in the Outliner.
| | 02:48 | So we have joint1, joint2, joint3.
| | 02:52 | So again, it draws them and each
successive joint goes one down in the
| | 02:57 | hierarchy, so it
automatically creates a hierarchy.
| | 02:59 | I can also select them here obviously.
| | 03:02 | Now when you select bones you can
either select them by the top sphere or you
| | 03:06 | can also select anywhere along this bone.
We'll select that whole bone.
| | 03:12 | So if I select the one
there, that will select that.
| | 03:15 | If we select just the tip that
will select that end joint there.
| | 03:18 | You can also add on to joints,
so let me show you how that works.
| | 03:22 | If I have this particular joint chain,
let's say I wanted to add onto it.
| | 03:27 | Let's say I was creating the branching chain.
| | 03:32 | What I can do is I can take the
Joint tool, and if I start anywhere near
| | 03:37 | another joint, like right there, it will go
ahead and just start drawing from that point.
| | 03:43 | So now I have created a series of joints.
| | 03:46 | These two chains are
coincident on this one joint here.
| | 03:50 | So when you draw these, if you're
anywhere close to another joint, and you're
| | 03:55 | drawing a joint, it will kind of
snap to that, so you got to be careful.
| | 03:59 | So if you want to draw a separate chain,
you kind of have to draw outside of it
| | 04:04 | and then maybe move it in,
again, something like that.
| | 04:06 | But if I draw fairly close, then it's
going to go ahead and snap to that and
| | 04:13 | start extending the chain of joints.
The joints are very easy.
| | 04:17 | If you do something like that you just
select and delete the joints and they'll
| | 04:22 | go away very easily.
| | 04:23 | Now once I have this joint chain,
I can start to manipulate it.
| | 04:27 | If I want to fit it, I can always grab
a joint and hit the Move key, and that
| | 04:33 | will actually stretch that bone.
| | 04:35 | So this is a great way to
kind of fit a joint to a Mesh.
| | 04:39 | If you really need to fine tune it, you
can certainly just kind of sketch it in
| | 04:43 | and then tweak it by fine
tuning these joints here.
| | 04:46 | Now when you actually animate those
using rotations, 9 times out of 10, if you
| | 04:51 | think of the bones in your body, your
elbow, the bones have the same length and
| | 04:57 | the elbow just kind of rotates around the joint.
So most joints operate off of rotation.
| | 05:05 | So there are ways to limit the rotation here.
| | 05:09 | If I go into my Attribute Editor,
select the bone, hit Ctrl+A or Apple+A, if
| | 05:14 | you're on the Mac, you can
affect the Degrees of freedom.
| | 05:17 | Let's say, for example, this was kind
of like an elbow joint here, and I only
| | 05:22 | wanted it to move along
this axis. That axis is blue.
| | 05:25 | RGB/XYZ, blue is Z. So if I click off Y
and X, then it will only rotate along Z.
| | 05:36 | So that's a great way to limit
rotation so that animators don't accidentally
| | 05:41 | rotate your elbows totally akimbo so that
your characters actually look real.
| | 05:45 | Now there are a lot of other tools that
you can use to manipulate joints, and so
| | 05:51 | we're going to go through
those in the next lesson.
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| Manipulating joints| 00:00 | Now that we understand the basics of
how to create joints, let me show you some
| | 00:04 | tools that allow you to refine
and modify joints and skeletons.
| | 00:08 | Some of these tools will be handy
as we start to work with characters.
| | 00:11 | We may not use all of them, so I kind of
want to cover them all up front here so
| | 00:16 | that you have them in mind, if you
need them for your own characters.
| | 00:19 | All of the Joint Tools that we're
going to be covering are under Skeleton, so
| | 00:23 | we're going to insert joint through Orient
Joint, all of these are tools that we can use.
| | 00:28 | So let's go ahead and start off by
creating some joints so I'm going to go into
| | 00:33 | my side window, select my Joint tool
from my Animation Shelf, or I can select it
| | 00:40 | from here, and let's just draw out some joints.
| | 00:42 | It really doesn't matter how big
are the size or shape of the joints.
| | 00:46 | So let's go ahead and
look at some of these tools.
| | 00:49 | So I'm going to go ahead and tear off this menu.
| | 00:52 | So I'm just going to go
here and just tear it off.
| | 00:57 | Let's go ahead and play with some of these.
The first one is called the Insert Joint tool.
| | 01:01 | What that does is it actually kind of
splits the joint in half, it allows you to
| | 01:05 | make one joint into two.
| | 01:06 | So what we can do here is just go
Insert Joint and what you do is you click on
| | 01:11 | the root of the joint and just drag, left-click
and drag and then what that does
| | 01:15 | is it creates another joint that we
can use to split a joint essentially.
| | 01:20 | The next one is called Reroot Skeleton.
| | 01:23 | What that does is it changes
the hierarchy of the skeleton.
| | 01:26 | Before I do that let's go ahead
and take a look at what we have.
| | 01:30 | Go into the Outliner, under Window,
we'll take a look at our joints.
| | 01:35 | So we have all of these joints are
basically in a straight up hierarchy, from
| | 01:40 | one to five, because we
inserted one, three and four.
| | 01:46 | So if I want to Reroot Skeleton, I can
select one of these joints, and if I hit
| | 01:52 | Reroot, it reverses the direction of
those, and if we look in the Outliner now,
| | 01:57 | you'll notice that now joint5
is the parent rather than joint1.
| | 02:00 | And now we have got a kind of a branching
thing here, where we have got actually
| | 02:06 | two joints below it.
| | 02:08 | So what this does is it
basically just rearranges the hierarchy.
| | 02:11 | We could have done the same thing just
by middle clicking and dragging the
| | 02:15 | joints around in the hierarchy, but this
particular tool is probably a little bit faster.
| | 02:20 | Now the next one is called Remove Joint,
and that is basically what it does.
| | 02:24 | It takes a joint, and it removes it.
| | 02:27 | So basically it's almost the opposite
of Insert Joint, it removes a joint.
| | 02:31 | So, for example, here, if I do a Remove
Joint, it'll make this into one big bone, okay.
| | 02:37 | Now another one is called Disconnect Joint.
| | 02:40 | Now what Disconnect Joint does is it
actually breaks the hierarchy and actually
| | 02:44 | makes a new bone chain.
| | 02:46 | So if I was here, and I hit Disconnect
Joint, what that does--notice how that made
| | 02:53 | a new end joint for that chain, and it
disconnected that joint--it allowed me to
| | 02:59 | have a separate chain.
| | 03:00 | So this is, if you have a character,
and you want to break the hierarchy or
| | 03:03 | something like that just do disconnect.
Now the opposite of that is called Connect.
| | 03:08 | So what you do is you select the top of
one hierarchy and the bottom of another
| | 03:14 | using the Shift key, and
you just do connect joint.
| | 03:17 | And what that does is it takes that one
joint and then snaps it to the other and
| | 03:21 | connects the two together.
| | 03:22 | Now we also have one called Mirror, and what
mirror does is it's really good for like arms.
| | 03:31 | So let's say you have a right arm, and
you wanted to make an identical left arm,
| | 03:35 | you can just mirror that joint and what
that will do is it will just take that
| | 03:39 | little, flip it across,
whatever axis you want.
| | 03:42 | In fact, if you want you can just go
here to the options, and you can see that
| | 03:47 | Mirror across X, Y, or Z, so
that's pretty straightforward.
| | 03:51 | Now the last one is called Orient Joint.
| | 03:53 | Now that's a little bit more complex,
because what happens when you draw joints
| | 03:57 | is they always have an
orientation to the world, okay.
| | 04:03 | So, for example, if I draw these joints
here, the joints may be at an angle, but
| | 04:08 | if you notice, there's no
rotation on any of these.
| | 04:11 | So that has 0 rotations here, so does
this, even though this is a kind of a
| | 04:17 | slight angle, and this orientation is
fixed to the world however you draw the joint.
| | 04:23 | Now what Orient Joint can do is it can
reorient the joint so that they match up
| | 04:29 | with the default orientation.
| | 04:30 | So if you're like mirroring joints or
you're moving joints around, and you want
| | 04:35 | all of your joints to come up the
same in terms of zeroing them out and all
| | 04:40 | that, then you can just hit Orient Joint.
| | 04:42 | We'll probably do a little bit
of that as we build our Skeleton.
| | 04:46 | So those are some of the other tools
that we can use for joints and so the next
| | 04:50 | thing we want to do is actually fit
joints to a mesh, and let's start putting a
| | 04:55 | skeleton into our character.
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| Creating a skeleton pt. 1: Legs and feet| 00:00 | Now that we know how to create
joints and how to manipulate and modify
| | 00:05 | joints, let's go ahead and use all that
knowledge to create a skeleton for our character.
| | 00:09 | So we're going to go ahead and load up the
geometry of our character that's in the file.
| | 00:14 | We're going to go ahead
and set our project first.
| | 00:17 | Exercise Files > Skeletons, OK, and now
we're going to go ahead and open a file.
| | 00:24 | When we set our Project it sets up the
pathing so it makes it easier to find files.
| | 00:29 | So let's just go ahead and just do
Open Scene, and we'll go under Scenes/
| | 00:33 | Chapter 2_01, Open, and there's our character.
| | 00:36 | We can start by drawing either, usually
I start with the legs, that's the way I
| | 00:44 | personally do it, and that's
what we're going to do here.
| | 00:47 | But some people start with the spine.
| | 00:49 | Typically, you want to start around the
center of gravity of the character, which
| | 00:52 | is around the hip, so either the spine
or the legs are a great place to start
| | 00:55 | when building a skeleton.
| | 00:58 | Now, when we build the skeleton, we do
want to try and keep things organized.
| | 01:01 | So I already have a layer set up for
this particular character, which is all the
| | 01:05 | geometry, it's called GEO.
So go ahead and set up a new layer.
| | 01:09 | We're going to create an empty layer,
double-click on that, and let's give it a Name:
| | 01:13 | SKEL for Skeleton.
| | 01:17 | So now as we start drawing these joints
and skeletons, we can put them into this
| | 01:22 | layer so we can keep things organized.
So let's go ahead and start with the legs.
| | 01:25 | Typically we draw from the hips down.
| | 01:27 | So we really need to understand where
the hips actually are in this character.
| | 01:31 | When we draw joints we really want
to try and keep the joints as close to
| | 01:37 | anatomically correct as possible,
because that's going to really help with the
| | 01:40 | deformations, and it's also going to
help with the realism of the character.
| | 01:43 | If your hip is too high, then your
character is going to be bending around the belt.
| | 01:48 | If it's too low, it's going to
bending around the top of the leg.
| | 01:51 | So we want to try and keep that in a
good place so we try and look where the
| | 01:56 | crease of this character is.
So it's going to crease right around there.
| | 01:59 | So I want to put the hip
joints somewhere around here.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to probably use this as
kind of my guide, this point here.
| | 02:05 | So let's go into the Side view,
because we do want to draw these joints
| | 02:10 | orthographically, and I'm going to
go ahead and select my Joint tool.
| | 02:15 | So I can either do that off my
Animation Shelf here, or I can go under my
| | 02:20 | Animation Menu Set, Skeleton > Joint tool.
| | 02:23 | Okay, there is always two
ways around everything in Maya.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to go ahead and start my
joint right here, and I'm going to put it
| | 02:31 | slightly behind this central line, and
I am going to put it right about there.
| | 02:35 | And now I'm going to go ahead and do
my next joint, which will be the knee.
| | 02:40 | So this is kind of the hip, this is the knee.
| | 02:42 | And the knee I'm actually going to draw
in front of this center line, and that's
| | 02:46 | to give the joint a slight bend, and that's going
to be really critical when we do Inverse Kinematics.
| | 02:52 | So, for leg joints and anything that
you want to animate with kinematics, you
| | 02:56 | want to give it a slight bend.
| | 02:57 | Okay, and we'll see why that is in the
next chapter, for right now you just kind
| | 03:02 | of have to trust me.
| | 03:03 | So I'm going to go ahead and draw that
joint, and then I'm going to go ahead and
| | 03:07 | draw an ankle joint somewhere around
here, kind of on the center line here, and
| | 03:11 | then I'm just going to hit Enter.
So you can see this joint has a slight bend.
| | 03:15 | It didn't have to have a big bend just
enough to guide the kinematic system, okay.
| | 03:19 | If we look at this from the Front
View Port, we can see that it's actually
| | 03:23 | just draw down the center line of the
character, because that's where zero is in Maya.
| | 03:27 | And we're going to go ahead and move
that over into the center of the leg, but
| | 03:31 | first we want to do the feet.
| | 03:34 | So we zoom in here and thankfully this
character has shoes on, because if he was
| | 03:39 | barefoot, then he would have five toes
and we'd have to rig all of that, and
| | 03:44 | that's going to be a real pain,
so thankfully he has shoes on.
| | 03:48 | So let's go ahead and continue to draw joints.
| | 03:50 | So I'm going to go ahead over to my
Animation Shelf and select the Joint tool from there.
| | 03:55 | And let's go ahead and just click over
that last joint that we drew, and that
| | 04:00 | will highlight it and then
click, left-click and drag.
| | 04:03 | And right about here is where the
ball of the foot is going to be.
| | 04:07 | And then we click again to create the toe,
which has just passed the edge of the shoe.
| | 04:16 | Hit Enter and so now we
have all of these joints.
| | 04:19 | And now I am going to add one more joint.
| | 04:22 | Now this isn't an absolute necessary
thing to do, but I like doing it, because
| | 04:26 | it actually makes my job a lot easier when I go
to skin the character, and let's create a heel joint.
| | 04:31 | So if you have a bone back here, it's
going to go ahead and capture all these
| | 04:35 | vertices when we go to skin it, and
it's just going to make life a lot easier,
| | 04:39 | so you wouldn't have to manually assign
all of these bones to some other joints.
| | 04:43 | So, let's go ahead and create a heel.
| | 04:45 | And so I'm going to go ahead and hit
the Joint tool, again, click over that
| | 04:49 | ankle and just drag down somewhere
around there, it's not that critical.
| | 04:53 | This joint is just going to go
along for the right where we're really not
| | 04:57 | going to animate it, so
positioning isn't all that critical.
| | 05:01 | Okay, so now that we have this joint
chain, you can see it's actually in the
| | 05:06 | middle of the character so what we need to
do is center that along one leg or the other.
| | 05:12 | For some reason I always like to
work on the left side, it's not critical
| | 05:16 | which side you work on.
| | 05:18 | Just go ahead and hit W to move that, and I'm
going to go ahead and center that in the leg.
| | 05:25 | And thankfully when we modeled this
character, we have kind of a center line
| | 05:30 | right around there so that will
give you a little bit of a guide.
| | 05:33 | So I'm going to go ahead and center
that right about there, and so that's one
| | 05:37 | leg, but obviously this character has
two legs, so we can just duplicate that by
| | 05:41 | hitting Edit, Duplicate, or we can
just do Ctrl+D, and that will go ahead and
| | 05:46 | duplicate the joint chain.
| | 05:47 | Hit Ctrl+D that creates
another set of joints, and off we go.
| | 05:54 | Now one thing thankfully I didn't do,
which was accidentally select this Mesh.
| | 06:00 | Now hat you can do is when you start
working with bones in a character, one of
| | 06:05 | the things I like to do is to click
off Select Surface Object so that way you
| | 06:10 | don't accidentally--you only select
the joints, and you don't select the
| | 06:14 | surfaces or the geometry of the character.
| | 06:16 | It makes it a lot easier to place
the joints within the character without
| | 06:19 | accidentally selecting the Mesh.
| | 06:21 | So that's basically how you do the legs, and
now let's go ahead and keep things organized.
| | 06:26 | So I'm going to go ahead into my Outliner.
And let's go ahead and look at the hierarchy.
| | 06:32 | So we have got two joint chains, one for
the right leg and one for the left leg,
| | 06:36 | so go ahead and start naming these.
| | 06:38 | I'm going to let you name--I'm going to
name the first one, and then we're going
| | 06:42 | to go ahead and take a break and
come back for the rest of them.
| | 06:46 | So let's go ahead and name the first one.
| | 06:48 | I usually give them some sort of prefix,
in this case let's just use the word
| | 06:52 | Skel, and then I'm going to use
Left T-H-I-G-H for Thigh, Skel_LThigh.
| | 06:55 | Now in Maya you got to be sure to hit
the Return key when you type something in
| | 07:00 | or else it will go away.
| | 07:01 | And then let's just go through and
name the rest of the joints and all that
| | 07:05 | you do that on your own time, and let's come
back in a few minutes to work on the Spine.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a skeleton pt. 2: Spine| 00:00 | Okay, so now hopefully you have named
all of your leg bones, and let's go ahead
| | 00:05 | and move on to the spine.
| | 00:07 | So we're going to go ahead and open the scene.
We're going to open Chap02_02. No, Don't Save.
| | 00:14 | And in fact, I have already named this,
so you actually could have been lazy and
| | 00:18 | just used my file, but
hopefully you did some of the work.
| | 00:22 | And we're going to go ahead and
draw the spine of this character.
| | 00:26 | Now the spine is the backbone of the
character, and if you think about it, the
| | 00:31 | backbone actually moves
along the back of the character.
| | 00:36 | So we want to draw it
towards this side of the character.
| | 00:39 | I notice a lot, sometimes a lot of
novices will draw their spine right, smack
| | 00:44 | that through the center of the
character. And that can work, but when you get
| | 00:47 | your character arching its back or
bending forward, it's going to create that
| | 00:51 | rotation from the wrong place, and it's
not going to look as natural, it's not
| | 00:56 | going to animate well.
| | 00:57 | So we kind of put it towards
the back of the character, okay.
| | 01:00 | So let's go ahead and start drawing the spine.
| | 01:02 | One other thing before we draw the
spine is let's just go ahead and notice how
| | 01:06 | this character is built.
| | 01:07 | I'm going to go ahead and select this
character, so we can see all of the edge loops.
| | 01:12 | And if you notice, he's got these
buttons here and he's got some very
| | 01:15 | clear, clearly delineated edge loops
here along the belt and along each of
| | 01:20 | those button lines.
Now those particular lines are great places.
| | 01:25 | That's exactly where the
character is going to deform.
| | 01:27 | You can't deform in the middle of an
edge loop, you have to deform at the vertex
| | 01:32 | and at the edge loop.
So that's where we really need to put the bones.
| | 01:35 | We need to put the bones where the
geometry is and kind of match them up.
| | 01:39 | It's going to make your
deformations so much easier.
| | 01:42 | So let's go ahead, and with that in mind,
select my Joint tool. And I'm going to
| | 01:47 | go ahead and put my first spine bone
right about there--or actually my hips--
| | 01:52 | will be right around there at the base
of my spine, two, three, four, and then
| | 02:01 | one more right around where, you
can see right here, that's kind of the
| | 02:07 | centerline of the arm.
| | 02:08 | So maybe right there or maybe slightly
above it is going to be the top of my spine.
| | 02:14 | Actually, if I want, I can actually
start working towards the neck here, so I
| | 02:20 | can actually put another
spine bone there if I want.
| | 02:23 | Okay, so that's going to be my spine.
| | 02:27 | And in fact, if I want to, I can
probably readjust this just a little bit,
| | 02:33 | because again, the spine does
go through the back of the neck.
| | 02:36 | It doesn't go through the front of
the neck, because your esophagus is in
| | 02:39 | the front of the neck.
| | 02:40 | So let's go ahead and
readjust that just a little bit.
| | 02:42 | Okay, so that's a pretty
good spine, there, okay.
| | 02:46 | We can play with this all day.
So I'm just showing you the theory here.
| | 02:50 | So let's turn on X-Ray here, and
we can kind of see how that works.
| | 02:55 | So we have got the spine,
and we have got the two legs.
| | 02:59 | But we need to connect those.
| | 03:00 | Well, one of the ways of doing that is
actually by just drawing some bones here,
| | 03:04 | but actually I'm kind of lazy,
so let's do this the easy way.
| | 03:07 | So let's go into our Outliner.
| | 03:10 | And you notice we have Skel_LThigh
and Skel_RThigh, okay, so I'm going to go
| | 03:15 | ahead and zoom in so you
can see these pretty closely.
| | 03:17 | So we have got a left thigh and right
thigh chain, which are the legs, leg chains.
| | 03:21 | And we have joint1.
Actually, let's go ahead and rename that.
| | 03:24 | Let's go ahead, Skel_Hips,
so we know what that is.
| | 03:28 | Okay, so that's really the center of our--
it's going to be the center of our character.
| | 03:32 | It's going to be our hips, okay.
| | 03:33 | So if we want to connect these two, all we
have to do is just rearrange the hierarchy.
| | 03:38 | So I go ahead and Shift-select the
left and right thigh chains, middle
| | 03:41 | click drag over the hips.
Now watch--before I do that--watch over here.
| | 03:47 | Watch what happens when I do this.
| | 03:50 | When I let go, bam, it
creates the bones, instant.
| | 03:54 | So really, we can actually
create these joint connectors here.
| | 03:58 | And remember these are the joints
that the bones themselves are kind of the
| | 04:01 | things that connect the joints.
| | 04:03 | So if you rearrange the hierarchy,
you're going to rearrange how the bones
| | 04:06 | look in the viewports.
| | 04:07 | So that's a really easy
way of connecting those two.
| | 04:11 | Now we have got a little bit more work to do.
| | 04:14 | One of the things is that when the
character bends, we want to create some extra
| | 04:18 | bones here that help with the
deformation of the front of the character.
| | 04:21 | Remember how when we did this heel bone
down here, and we did that not because
| | 04:26 | it's actually going to animate, it's
more because it's going to help with the
| | 04:30 | deformation of the back of the foot.
So we're going to do the same thing here.
| | 04:34 | We're going to create the kind of
belly bones or rib cages or something like
| | 04:38 | that, but just another set of bones that help
define how the character is going to deform.
| | 04:44 | Let's go ahead, and I'll go into our side
viewport, and let's create some of these bones.
| | 04:49 | So essentially for each of these
spine bones I'm going to create one, and
| | 04:54 | just out to the front of the character kind
of like how we did the toe bone, hit Enter.
| | 04:59 | Do that again. Center it pretty much
on that button. Hit Enter and so on.
| | 05:05 | So we're just going to go ahead and
do that for all of the spine bones here
| | 05:10 | so that way when it goes to deform,
the geometry will have a lot more
| | 05:14 | information and the skinning too will
have a lot more information from the
| | 05:17 | skeleton, as to how to bend.
| | 05:19 | Now you can actually see how this is going
to work when we just rotate these joints.
| | 05:23 | So let's say we take this joint here,
and we rotate, you can see how it kind of
| | 05:27 | does the accordion thing where
it kind of collapses and expands.
| | 05:30 | And that's really what you
want the character to do.
| | 05:33 | So when it actually turns, it's
actually going to go ahead and pull that button
| | 05:38 | over when it turns, okay.
| | 05:41 | So these little helper bones will
really make your deformations go a lot easier
| | 05:46 | when you go to skin the character, okay.
So that's the basics of the spine.
| | 05:51 | Let's go ahead and now move on
to the shoulders and the arms.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a skeleton pt. 3: Arms| 00:00 | And we're back, and one thing I
forgot to tell you is to name everything.
| | 00:04 | But of course, I did that for you again.
I'm such a nice guy.
| | 00:08 | So let's go ahead and open up Chap02_03.
And that's our Skeleton.
| | 00:14 | And yes, I have named it.
Now let's go ahead and look at the names here.
| | 00:18 | I named this--bottom one is
called Hips skeleton.
| | 00:22 | This one is called Spine01,
Spine02, and so on.
| | 00:26 | And this tip ones here, if you can see
here, it's called Abdomen02, Abdomen01.
| | 00:31 | In fact, we can look at those in the
Outliner if you want, Spine01, Spine_Abd01.
| | 00:39 | Okay, so again, it's just something
you can decide your own naming scheme.
| | 00:43 | But just go ahead and make it consistent.
| | 00:45 | That's all we ask is that so
somebody else can figure it out.
| | 00:49 | So let's go ahead and
reveal our character again.
| | 00:51 | Turn off Select Surface Objects here so
that we don't accidentally select them.
| | 00:56 | We're going to go ahead
and put this in a Wireframe.
| | 00:58 | Now let's go ahead and create the
shoulders and the arms, and we'll do the hands
| | 01:02 | in one more exercise here.
| | 01:05 | So the shoulders actually, I'm going
to go ahead and start this right about
| | 01:08 | here, actually at the spine joint right
here, and for these we actually do have
| | 01:15 | to draw these in the Front Viewport.
| | 01:17 | Now what I'm going to do here is
because I have this bone in front of it, I'm
| | 01:22 | going to go ahead, and just for now, I'm
going to go ahead and hit the W key and move it.
| | 01:27 | And actually just move that joint up out
of the way so that when we view it from
| | 01:32 | the front, we're not going to
accidentally connect at this joint, rather than
| | 01:35 | this joint, because this is the one
we really want to connect to, okay.
| | 01:40 | So if we look at that from the front,
here let's go ahead and turn on Wireframe
| | 01:44 | here, you can see we have--oops.
We can always move that back.
| | 01:48 | So we have this one was normally
right there at the button, but let's go
| | 01:52 | ahead and move that up.
Okay, so let's go ahead and draw the shoulder.
| | 01:57 | Now what we want here is we want a clavicle,
and then we want a shoulder and then arm.
| | 02:03 | Now we can draw more than one bone
for the shoulder, because if you think
| | 02:07 | about it, the shoulder can move up and down so
you may want to give one extra joint for that.
| | 02:12 | The real critical thing here is to
get the start of that shoulder where the
| | 02:16 | shoulder hits the top of
the bicep right about here.
| | 02:20 | Now this is really critical.
It needs to be out over the edge of the body.
| | 02:24 | It actually needs to be somewhere around
here, because when this arm is going to
| | 02:29 | twist over and turn, you want this
mass to be set alongside the body.
| | 02:35 | It can't be too far out or else you're
going to get a U shape here, and if it's
| | 02:39 | too far in, it's going to collapse
inside the surface of the rib cage here.
| | 02:43 | So you really need to kind of
gauge how thick this arm is.
| | 02:47 | If half of it is this much, I
need to put it halfway out, okay?
| | 02:51 | Okay, let's give this a try.
| | 02:55 | So I am going to go ahead and do our Joint tool,
and I'm going to go ahead and connect to this.
| | 03:00 | I'm going to go ahead
and just do one joint here.
| | 03:03 | Now this is the critical joint here.
| | 03:07 | It's where this particular
joint connects up with the bicep.
| | 03:12 | So I'm going to put it right about here.
| | 03:14 | We can always readjust it, but let's
try and get it right and then one for the
| | 03:18 | middle of the forearm.
| | 03:22 | And now I'm going to do one more thing
here, and this is a little trick that
| | 03:26 | I have always, that I tend to do, and that
is from the elbow to the wrist, instead
| | 03:30 | of one solid bone, I'm
actually going to do two bones.
| | 03:33 | Now if you think about it, in a real
arm there are actually two bones in the
| | 03:37 | wrist that counter rotate around
each other, the radius and the ulna.
| | 03:40 | Now we could create that sort of
structure, but for this kind of cartoony
| | 03:45 | character we don't need to
get into that level of detail.
| | 03:47 | But it's nice to have a point in the
middle of this arm where we can kind of
| | 03:52 | rotate the forearm towards the hand.
| | 03:55 | Otherwise, the hand will rotate, but the forearm
won't, and so you might get weird rotation.
| | 03:59 | So I'm going to go ahead and put one,
two bones right there, and that's going to
| | 04:05 | be your forearm and your elbow.
| | 04:07 | Okay, now one thing about this arm here is we
have to go ahead and modify it from the top.
| | 04:14 | Now if you notice, it's not centered,
and also another thing is that we are
| | 04:19 | going to use IK on this arm, so we want
to have again a little bit of a bend in it.
| | 04:23 | So I'm going to go ahead and select that bicep.
I'm going to go ahead and move it.
| | 04:28 | And I'm actually going to move it
slightly in front of that center line, and I'm
| | 04:32 | going to go ahead and move this one
behind the center line, and now the real
| | 04:37 | trick here is getting these two even.
| | 04:39 | In fact, if we can just go ahead and
move this one forward, and this one
| | 04:45 | forward just a little bit.
| | 04:46 | Now I want to try and get these
into pretty much a straight line.
| | 04:50 | If I wanted to, I could probably rotate this.
Let's just go ahead and do it like this.
| | 04:54 | Okay, that is your basic arm.
| | 04:56 | Okay, we can tweak this a little bit
more if we want, but it's pretty close.
| | 05:03 | So now that we have got this arm built,
let's go ahead and go on to the hand.
| | 05:08 | I don't really want to build this symmetrically.
| | 05:09 | Typically, how we build these
characters is we build them once at a time, and
| | 05:14 | then we just mirror it over to the other side.
Makes it a lot faster.
| | 05:18 | So at this point I'm going to go ahead and stop.
| | 05:20 | Let's go ahead and name our joints, and
we will come back and work on the hands.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a skeleton pt. 4: Hands| 00:00 | Okay, so now we have got the basic arm
built, let's go ahead and work on the hands.
| | 00:05 | So I'm going to go ahead
and open the file Chap02_04.
| | 00:11 | And I have gone ahead and named everything.
Let's go ahead and look at it in Wireframe.
| | 00:16 | Let's go ahead and zoom in
and take a look at that wrist.
| | 00:19 | Okay, so the hand has a lot
of stuff going on with it.
| | 00:25 | The hand is probably the most complex
part of the rigging process, because
| | 00:30 | you have got a ton of bones in here.
| | 00:31 | You probably have more bones in
the hand than you do in the body.
| | 00:35 | We start with the wrist.
| | 00:36 | You can draw bones from here to each of
the knuckles so that's four bones plus
| | 00:40 | the thumb knuckle and then each
finger has one, two, three joints.
| | 00:48 | One, two, three times so that's 12,
15 almost 20 joints in the hand.
| | 00:53 | Okay, so basically, the strategy is
draw bone from the wrist to each of the
| | 00:57 | knuckles and then continue on to the
end of the finger and do that times
| | 01:01 | five, well, four plus the thumb.
So let's start in the top viewport.
| | 01:11 | And let's go ahead and
start with this and adjust that.
| | 01:18 | I don't need to adjust it actually,
it's at the right place, so let's go ahead
| | 01:23 | and do the Joint tool.
| | 01:24 | So I click here, and I go to the middle here,
notice how they got big. That's interesting.
| | 01:32 | Anyway, so I try and put
these right in the middle.
| | 01:36 | Notice those three rings
here, one, two, three rings.
| | 01:39 | I'm just trying to put those in the middle
of each ring and then one pass the tip there.
| | 01:44 | And you hit Enter and
then let's just keep going.
| | 02:01 | We'll go ahead and fix these
big joints a little bit later.
| | 02:06 | It's just an aberration.
| | 02:11 | See that joint is extra big, but we can
certainly scale it down in the Attribute Editor.
| | 02:15 | It's not an issue. Just keep going. Okay,
now the thumb. Where is that knuckle?
| | 02:25 | It's right where, right around here,
right where the thumb hits the actual
| | 02:31 | fleshy part of the palm.
| | 02:32 | You can actually feel your knuckle,
and I would suggest you do that.
| | 02:36 | So it's kind of on the outside.
| | 02:37 | It's actually more on this
side of the thumb than this side.
| | 02:43 | So it's actually, if we look at this
line here, it's somewhere around there.
| | 02:46 | Okay, again, we're trying to make this
anatomically correct, so I'm going to
| | 02:50 | probably put that right about there,
one for the middle and one on the end.
| | 02:55 | Now, what we have done is we have
sketched out these bones, but I don't think
| | 02:59 | we have got them to the point where they are
actually going through the center of the finger.
| | 03:05 | Let's go ahead and see what we have got here.
| | 03:07 | You can see how the thumb is a little
bit out and these are actually kind of
| | 03:12 | low, so what we need to do is just tweak it.
| | 03:16 | And so you can either put it in X-Ray mode,
Smooth Shade with X-Ray, I don't know.
| | 03:24 | Turn off Wireframe on Shaded,
that might be the best way.
| | 03:27 | Everybody works differently.
| | 03:29 | I think actually I'm going to work better in
Wireframe here, so you can actually see it.
| | 03:34 | Now one thing also, I'm
using a camera with an aim.
| | 03:37 | So I'm using a camera with aim, and
that makes it so that it will always
| | 03:41 | rotate around that center point, it makes it a
lot easier to navigate these sorts of things.
| | 03:45 | So it looks like these bones
are actually in the right place.
| | 03:48 | It just came in a little low.
| | 03:50 | So I think each one should just be
able to be lifted up and so what I'm
| | 03:54 | trying to do is to get those so that
that one bone kind of crosses over the
| | 03:57 | middle of that finger there.
| | 03:59 | But actually this one is a little bit off.
Let's try that. Yeah, that's good.
| | 04:05 | Okay, so again, move it up and over.
Just make sure that that's centered.
| | 04:12 | And again, we're just tweaking here.
| | 04:13 | It just depends on how well
you drew them to begin with.
| | 04:17 | I'm not going to fully tweak these, but
you can kind of see, like this one here,
| | 04:21 | I'm going to turn on Shading here so we
can kind of see how this actually goes
| | 04:28 | through the thumb there. There we go. Let's see
how that is. Yeah, that looks pretty good.
| | 04:33 | So you can tweak these as much as you want.
One bone here got really big.
| | 04:37 | I'm not sure why that happened, but
I'm going to go ahead and fix that.
| | 04:40 | I'm going to hit Ctrl+A, go into my
Attribute Editor, and your bone Radius is right there.
| | 04:46 | And I think my default bone Radius is 0.75
so that's set to 2 for some reason.
| | 04:51 | And so that's basically the hand skeleton.
| | 04:54 | Now some of these are actually still a
little out, so go ahead and tweak these.
| | 04:59 | I'm going to do that myself, but we
don't need to spend screen time doing that.
| | 05:03 | So go ahead and tweak these, make sure
that each--like this one here, it's not
| | 05:07 | through the center of the finger.
| | 05:09 | So you need to make sure that each set of bones
is pretty much through the center of the finger.
| | 05:14 | And once you do that, go
ahead and name all the bones.
| | 05:17 | Yes, you have to name all 20 bones in the hand, or 18
or however many there are, and we'll come back.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finalizing the skeleton| 00:00 | Well, now we're in the home stretch.
| | 00:02 | We have got just a little bit to do,
and we'll have most of our skeleton done.
| | 00:06 | We're not going to do the head part of
the skeleton because we'll kind of catch
| | 00:10 | up with that when we do facial animation.
| | 00:12 | There's some special things for
the head skeleton that we need to do.
| | 00:15 | So let's just go ahead and
work with the body for now.
| | 00:18 | Let's go ahead and open the last
Scene that we saved which is Chap02_05.
| | 00:23 | And as you can see, we have got the
hand all pretty much organized there.
| | 00:27 | You can actually see how
it works with our character.
| | 00:30 | Yeah, it looks pretty good.
| | 00:32 | What we need to do now is just duplicate
the arm, and there is a function called
| | 00:36 | Mirror Joint, under
Skeleton called Mirror Joint.
| | 00:40 | Now the first thing we need to
do is we need to know two things.
| | 00:44 | We need to select the joint we want,
and we need to know across which axis
| | 00:48 | we're going to mirror it.
| | 00:49 | Okay, now these are just our standard X,
Y, and Z axes, and we just need to know
| | 00:53 | which ones we're going to be working with.
| | 00:55 | So the easiest thing for me is just to
click on the Move tool, and that will
| | 01:00 | bring up this little gizmo
here where we can see our axes.
| | 01:04 | Now remember XYZ equals RGB so this will
be X, Y and Z. So obviously, we have to
| | 01:10 | mirror this across the YZ plane.
Okay, so let's go ahead and do that.
| | 01:18 | Skeleton, Mirror Joint.
| | 01:21 | Now there are some options here
that we need to take a look at.
| | 01:24 | First of all is what axes are
we're going to mirror across?
| | 01:27 | YZ is the one we have decided we're going to do
and Mirror function is Behavior or Orientation.
| | 01:33 | For this type of joint where you're
mirroring across the spine you want to use Behavior.
| | 01:39 | Now the other thing we have
is we can also replace names.
| | 01:42 | We can search for--now this would
normally be blank, I have already tried this
| | 01:46 | once before--so we can actually search
for names such as skeleton left
| | 01:51 | because this is the left arm, and I
have a naming scheme in place, right?
| | 01:55 | And hopefully you do too.
| | 01:57 | And we can place right with left,
or actually left with right.
| | 02:01 | So now all of our left bones
are going to be named right.
| | 02:06 | So let's just go ahead and hit Mirror,
and there we go, pretty much there.
| | 02:11 | So right shoulder, yeah, that
rename actually did work. There it is.
| | 02:16 | So that's our basic
skeleton for the character's body.
| | 02:22 | So now that we have this, let's go ahead,
and we're going to go into Kinematics,
| | 02:26 | and we're also going to start rigging
the character in the subsequent chapters.
| | 02:31 | Go ahead and just go through your
skeleton make sure everything is named properly.
| | 02:35 | Now once you have finalized your skeleton,
one thing you want to do is go ahead
| | 02:40 | and add it to your Skeleton layer.
| | 02:42 | So I'm going to go ahead and select my
Skeleton, right-click here, Add Selected Objects.
| | 02:46 | And now I have all of those in that
layer, so I can toggle that on and off
| | 02:51 | and toggle the geometry on and off so that
makes it a lot easier and a lot more organized.
| | 02:56 | And we'll pick you up in Chapter 3.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Inverse Kinematics (IK) and ConstraintsCreating IK chains| 00:00 | Now that we understand the basics of
joints and how to create a skeleton, let
| | 00:04 | me show you a collection of tools that allow you
to manipulate those skeletons a lot more easily.
| | 00:11 | We're going to go over Inverse
Kinematics as well as Constraints.
| | 00:16 | And then once we get through those,
we're going to go into actually rigging the
| | 00:21 | skeleton of the character.
| | 00:23 | Let's start with Inverse Kinematics, and
I'm sure some of you have heard about that.
| | 00:27 | There's actually two ways basically
to manipulate a joint chain in Maya.
| | 00:32 | One is called Forward Kinematics, and
the other is called Inverse Kinematics.
| | 00:36 | And the difference is that Forward
Kinematics uses rotation and Inverse
| | 00:40 | Kinematics uses translation or position.
| | 00:43 | So--and let me just show you, it's
probably easiest just to show you the
| | 00:47 | differences between those.
| | 00:48 | First thing we're going to do is we're
going to go ahead and set up our Project.
| | 00:50 | We're actually going to Chapter 3 here,
so let's go into our Exercise Files/
| | 00:54 | 03_Kinematics and set our project.
| | 00:57 | And let's just go File > Open Scene, and
we're going to be in the 03_Kinematics,
| | 01:03 | scenes file, Open, and just 03_01.
| | 01:07 | Okay, basically this just has two joint chains.
| | 01:10 | The first is the type of joint chain
that you have been working with up until
| | 01:15 | this point which is essentially a naked or
bare joint chain with no Inverse Kinematics on it.
| | 01:20 | And that's the type of chain that
you would manipulate using rotations.
| | 01:25 | In order to actually move the
joints, I would typically rotate them.
| | 01:30 | Now if you think about the joints in
your body, all of the joints in your body
| | 01:35 | essentially rotate around other bones.
| | 01:37 | So every motion that your body
makes is essentially a rotation.
| | 01:42 | Let's say I wanted this joint--
let's go into our Side view here.
| | 01:46 | This will be a little bit
more of a simple case here.
| | 01:49 | Let's say I wanted this joint--I want
the end effector of this joint, this last
| | 01:53 | joint here--to be on the origin of this grid.
| | 01:56 | In order to do that, I have to start rotating
each of the joints, so I have to rotate this one.
| | 02:01 | Well, let's see I need to rotate this up.
I need to rotate this around.
| | 02:05 | And again, you kind of have to work your
way in, in order to get kind of an even
| | 02:10 | rotation and get it on to that origin.
| | 02:13 | So in other words, you kind of have to
rotate a bunch of joints, and there's
| | 02:18 | really no way that perfectly aim that.
Now this chain has this extra little thing here.
| | 02:22 | If you notice there's a little line
here that ends with a little plus here.
| | 02:26 | That's called an IK Handle, and I'll
show you how to do that in just a second.
| | 02:30 | But let me just show you how it
works so we understand the concept here.
| | 02:34 | So instead of rotating
this joint, I can move it.
| | 02:38 | So I go to my Move tool hitting the W key
and basically just move it to the origin, okay.
| | 02:45 | It's as simple as that.
| | 02:47 | What Maya does is it automatically
calculates these rotations so that it always
| | 02:53 | winds up at that end
where that handle is placed.
| | 02:57 | So in order to move this joint chain or
to position the end of this joint chain,
| | 03:01 | all I have to do is position
the handle. This is great.
| | 03:04 | Now if you think about this like, for example,
as a leg, makes it really easy to do footsteps.
| | 03:09 | You know, you want to move from one
place to another, and you want to keep your
| | 03:13 | feet on the ground, it's a great way to do that.
| | 03:16 | For things like the spine, arms, the head,
other types of joints, you still want
| | 03:21 | to use Forward Kinematics
and here's one reason why.
| | 03:24 | Forward Kinematics is more of a natural,
it's fundamentally more of a natural motion.
| | 03:29 | If you think about it, in order to get
something moving in Forward Kinematics,
| | 03:35 | you have to rotate it.
| | 03:36 | And when things rotate, they naturally
move along arcs, and that's the natural
| | 03:40 | motion of things in nature.
| | 03:41 | When you go into animation, and you
start studying character animation, one
| | 03:46 | of the big things they'll tell you
is everything has to move along an arc
| | 03:49 | because it's more natural.
| | 03:50 | If you're using Inverse Kinematics,
then the end effectors of the joints
| | 03:54 | are essentially moving from place to
place and the natural motion of that
| | 03:58 | is a straight line.
| | 03:59 | So in a lot of ways this is
easier, but it's less natural.
| | 04:05 | So you kind of have to mix and match,
and as you get into character animation
| | 04:08 | you'll know what you want to do in
terms of whether you want to use Forward
| | 04:12 | or Inverse Kinematics.
| | 04:13 | Now there is one other thing you can
do in Maya, and that is you can switch
| | 04:17 | between the two, and I'll
show you how to do that as well.
| | 04:21 | So let me show you how to set up an IK
Handle and set up Inverse Kinematics on
| | 04:26 | a series of joints.
| | 04:27 | So I'm just going to go ahead and go
New Scene, and let's go back into our side
| | 04:32 | viewport because we need to draw some joints.
So I'm going to go into my Skeleton shelf.
| | 04:36 | Again, you can use the Joint tool here.
| | 04:38 | It doesn't really matter where you get it,
and I'm just going to sketch out a joint.
| | 04:43 | Now one thing I'm going to do is I'm
just going to do two joints here at this
| | 04:48 | point, and let's say this is like
the thigh and the shin of a leg.
| | 04:51 | Now, remember when we drew those
for our character we drew those with a
| | 04:55 | little bit of a bend.
Let me show you why we did that.
| | 04:58 | We're going to go ahead and
create an IK Handle for this.
| | 05:01 | So we can go into Skeleton, IK Handle tool,
or if on the shelf it's this button here.
| | 05:06 | Okay, so either one will activate the
tool and then what we do here is we click
| | 05:11 | at the very beginning of the chain, the
top of the chain, and then we click on
| | 05:16 | the bone we want to be at the end of the chain.
| | 05:18 | When it does, it creates this IK Handle--
in fact, we can look at it in 3D--and
| | 05:24 | so what that does, again, once we click
off of that we can select the handle
| | 05:29 | itself, select translate, and
we can move it wherever we want.
| | 05:32 | Okay, as simple as that.
| | 05:38 | Now the IK Handle itself has a couple
of parameters that we can play with.
| | 05:43 | So there are a lot of great tools to
help you deal with kinematic chains, and so
| | 05:47 | let's take a look at those in the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating IK chains| 00:00 | Now that you know how to create an IK
chain, let's go ahead and show you some
| | 00:05 | tools to use in manipulating some of
the settings and some of the other tools
| | 00:09 | that we can use to manipulate an IK chain.
| | 00:12 | I'm going to go ahead and open a file,
it is called 03_02, and it's basically
| | 00:17 | the chain I just drew in the previous chapter.
| | 00:21 | In order to manipulate this chain,
obviously, we can move this lower effector.
| | 00:27 | And there are a couple of settings that
we can set to help manipulate this chain.
| | 00:32 | One of the ones is called the Attribute Editor.
| | 00:34 | I am going to hit Ctrl+A, or Apple+A,
and I'm going to set my IK Handle.
| | 00:38 | And when I do that, my IK
handle attributes come up.
| | 00:43 | There's a couple of them here.
| | 00:44 | First of all, it's just the
physical position of this.
| | 00:47 | So as I move this, you can see my
translation moves. Okay, that's fine.
| | 00:51 | This roll out here is just
information on the skeleton.
| | 00:55 | This one here is actually kind of
handy called IK Handle Attributes.
| | 00:59 | Now, when I select this handle, I can
move it wherever I want, but if I select
| | 01:06 | the joint itself, it moves the entire chain.
| | 01:10 | Now, let's say this was a leg on
the ground or something like that.
| | 01:13 | Typically, I want to move the hips up
and down and have the foot stay in place.
| | 01:18 | In order to do that, I have to select
my IK Handle, go over here to IK Handle
| | 01:23 | Attributes and turn on sticky.
| | 01:25 | So when you turn on sticky, if I grab that
joint, now the IK Handle sticks in place.
| | 01:33 | Now, there's another way to do that, to
create sticky, and that is to link the IK
| | 01:38 | handle to an external object such as a
control object or something like that.
| | 01:41 | And we'll be doing that in the next chapter.
| | 01:44 | There's also some other IK Handle
Attributes, and one is called IK Blend.
| | 01:49 | Now, IK Blend allows you to turn IK
on and off, and switch between Forward
| | 01:56 | and Inverse Kinematics.
| | 01:58 | In fact, this parameter is so important,
they also put it in the channel box.
| | 02:02 | I'm going to go back hit Apple+A, or
Ctrl+A, and go back to this, and we see
| | 02:07 | we have an IK Blend here.
So when IK Blend is on, IK works.
| | 02:14 | I take this, and I set it to zero and
just type that in, and if I move this now,
| | 02:20 | it doesn't work, but I can rotate this joint.
| | 02:24 | Okay, so when I turn IK Blend back on, let
me see how it snaps from one to the other.
| | 02:33 | This is great for switching between IK and FK.
| | 02:36 | Let's see how the character and he is
swimming in the pool, and you need just to
| | 02:42 | rotate the arms in order to make the
swimming motion and then at the very end,
| | 02:45 | he grabs on to the edge of the pool.
| | 02:47 | And in that case, you want his hands
to be fixed to the end of the pool.
| | 02:52 | So you want to put IK on there.
| | 02:54 | So when the character is swimming,
we have no IK on, we're using Forward
| | 02:57 | Kinematics, and then as the character
reaches and grabs that edge of the pool, we
| | 03:02 | turn on IK Blend, and we lock
the hands to the end of the pool.
| | 03:06 | Same thing with the feet, if a
character was jumping or parachuting or
| | 03:11 | something, you may want to turn off IK
for a little bit and then turn it back on
| | 03:16 | when you want to lock that
limb to a specific object.
| | 03:19 | Now, there's one more parameter
here that I want to show you.
| | 03:22 | It's a real simple parameter, and
that's called the Pole Vector, okay?
| | 03:26 | Now, if you look here when I
selected the IK Handle, you have this little
| | 03:31 | circle that comes up here.
| | 03:33 | And what this circle does is it tells
you what direction the joint is facing.
| | 03:38 | So if you notice this joint is
kind of aligned along a plane.
| | 03:43 | In this case, I believe it's the Z axis here.
| | 03:46 | It doesn't have to be
aligned along a specific axis.
| | 03:50 | We can change this by
changing the Pole Vector, okay?
| | 03:53 | If you want you can type in
these numbers and change the vector.
| | 03:56 | I think the easiest way to do it is to
actually go into this manipulator here,
| | 04:00 | click right here on Show Manipulator
tool, and we have the IK Handle selected.
| | 04:05 | You can just move that, and you see how the
Pole Vector here just automatically changes.
| | 04:10 | Okay, so this is great for let's say
you have a character's knees and they need
| | 04:14 | to bring the knees together or bring the
knees apart, that's a real handy way to do that.
| | 04:21 | Now, there's one more thing that I want to talk
about with IK, and that's how IK is constructed.
| | 04:26 | This is very important here.
| | 04:28 | Let's go into our Outliner, and
we'll see here we have our joints.
| | 04:32 | Okay, so we have joint one, two, and three.
| | 04:34 | So these are our joints that we're playing
with, and we have two additional objects.
| | 04:40 | One is called an effector, and
then we also have an IK Handle.
| | 04:44 | Now, this IK Handle is what you use,
actually use to manipulate the IK chain.
| | 04:52 | One thing to note is that this IK Handle
is actually outside of the joint hierarchy.
| | 04:58 | So, it's actually its own separate object,
and that is really important when you
| | 05:02 | go to animate because then you'll have
this handle is actually not attached to
| | 05:07 | the joint chains, so it
won't move with the joint chain.
| | 05:10 | And because it's outside of the
hierarchy, it makes it very easy to position
| | 05:13 | it within the world.
| | 05:14 | Okay, so I just wanted
to point that out as well.
| | 05:20 | So those are some of the basic
parameters of manipulating IK chains, and we'll
| | 05:24 | be using some of this as we rig our characters.
So let's keep this in mind.
| | 05:28 | I'm going to go next to another form
of IK that's called Spline IK, and that
| | 05:33 | will be in the next chapter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Spline IK| 00:00 | Now, in addition to just regular old
Inverse Kinematics, Maya has another type
| | 00:05 | of kinematics called Spline IK.
| | 00:09 | And what Spline IK does is pretty much
like the name says it does is it uses a
| | 00:14 | spline, or a curve, to
determine the shape of a joint chain.
| | 00:18 | So instead of having one IK Handle
which you determines position, we have a
| | 00:23 | curve which determines shape, okay.
| | 00:25 | Let's go into our Top view port, and
we're going ahead and draw some drawings.
| | 00:32 | I'm going to go to Skeleton, Joint tool.
| | 00:34 | And let's draw a windy chain okay,
instead of just a real straight chain.
| | 00:38 | Let's just draw something that's a
little bit more sinuous or sinuo-ey.
| | 00:41 | Let's say it's like a snake or the
tail of a creature or something like that.
| | 00:46 | Okay, so I'm going to go ahead
and hit Enter to lock that in.
| | 00:50 | And now, we're going to go ahead and
create IK Spline Handle tool, okay.
| | 00:55 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and
show you some of the options here.
| | 00:59 | And the options are how do we create a curve?
Do we want to root this on a curve?
| | 01:04 | Do we want to parent it to the curve?
We'll show you how that works.
| | 01:07 | The one thing I want to look
at here is number of spans.
| | 01:11 | How detailed do we want that curve to be?
I'm going to go ahead and make it three, okay.
| | 01:15 | Now, once we have selected that,
creating the IK chain, the Spline IK chain is
| | 01:21 | just the same as creating it for standard IK.
| | 01:24 | So we click on the root of the chain, and we
click on the end of the chain, and there it is.
| | 01:30 | I'm going to go back to my Channel Box here.
| | 01:33 | And you'll see--in fact,
let's go into our Outliner.
| | 01:36 | You'll see a couple of things happened.
| | 01:38 | We still have an IK Handle, just like
in the old one, but we have a curve, and
| | 01:43 | that curve determines the
shape of this joint chain.
| | 01:47 | Now, this is really handy for
animating things like snakes or things like
| | 01:53 | tails of a character.
| | 01:55 | And what we can do is we can actually
go into Component mode here and select
| | 02:01 | the CVs of this curve.
| | 02:03 | And by selecting the CVs of the curve--
these little dots here are the CVs that
| | 02:09 | determine the shape of the curve--
we can reshape the joint chain.
| | 02:14 | So this is great, because what you can
do is you can have these joints
| | 02:18 | actually manipulate the shape, or
actually deform, the mesh of your character or
| | 02:24 | whatever it is you want.
| | 02:25 | I mean, you can use this with like a
vacuum cleaner hose or really any sort of
| | 02:29 | object that you need to move in this manner.
| | 02:32 | But the curve itself is what
actually animates the shape.
| | 02:38 | So you can actually just add, and
you can put the clusters on these.
| | 02:41 | You can just animate the CVs by themselves.
| | 02:44 | You can animate these or you can
shape animate it using Blend Shape.
| | 02:47 | There's a number of ways you can
animate this curve, and all of those
| | 02:51 | are available to you.
| | 02:53 | And the real trick is that this joint
will follow the curve and so it makes it
| | 02:57 | very easy way to deform and animate
these types of objects, very simple.
| | 03:02 | So let's move on to the next section.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Point constraints| 00:00 | Now that we understand some of the basics of
kinematics, let's go ahead and go to constraints.
| | 00:06 | Now, what a constraint is, is it's a way
to connect two objects together so that
| | 00:11 | one object will follow the object in
terms of position, rotation, scale, and a
| | 00:16 | couple of other things.
| | 00:17 | Why we use constraints is it's a
good way to create essentially a super
| | 00:22 | structure, or the rig around the character that
we saw when we first looked at this character.
| | 00:28 | We saw all of these controls that
helped us to manipulate the character.
| | 00:32 | Those controls are usually attached
into the skeleton using constraints.
| | 00:36 | Now, the reason we use constraints is
because constraints exist outside of the hierarchy.
| | 00:40 | So that way you can build kind of a
super structure hierarchy of controls for
| | 00:45 | your character, that's a little bit
simpler than the actual joints in the
| | 00:48 | character itself, and you can add
additional controls onto those manipulating
| | 00:53 | objects, and it just makes it a lot easier.
| | 00:56 | So let me show you the
basics of some constraints.
| | 00:59 | Constraints are located in the
Animation menu under Constrain.
| | 01:02 | Now we have a couple. We have Point,
which constraints position; Aim, which
| | 01:06 | aims one object to another; Orient,
which constraints rotation; Scale, which
| | 01:13 | obviously does scale; Parenting, which
allows you to parent and un-parent;
| | 01:17 | a couple of others: a Pole Vector, which is
another one that we're going to take a look at.
| | 01:20 | So they're all right here, and let's go
ahead and just start and take a look at
| | 01:25 | how some of these work.
| | 01:26 | The first thing we're going to do is
take a look at the Point Constraint.
| | 01:30 | So I'm going to create a
really simple joint chain.
| | 01:33 | So I'm going to go to my Top view port,
and I'm going to go Skeleton > Joint
| | 01:38 | tool, and I'm just going to go ahead
go one, two, let's make three joints,
| | 01:43 | just a couple here, okay.
| | 01:45 | So if you notice here in my perspective
window just a very straight chain of joints.
| | 01:50 | Now, what I want to do is create an
object outside of this hierarchy, that can
| | 01:55 | be used to control things within the hierarchy.
Okay, so let me show you how that works.
| | 02:00 | I'm going to go ahead and create a curve.
Actually, I'm going to create a circle.
| | 02:04 | Let's go into our Side view and
just create a real simple circle, okay.
| | 02:08 | So now we go into our Perspective
view, and we see we have the circle.
| | 02:12 | Now the circle can be used to
control--or actually any object--
| | 02:15 | it doesn't have to be a circle,
it can be anything you want.
| | 02:18 | It can be geometry, or whatever.
| | 02:20 | But typically, we use--in terms of
rigging--we use curves because what we can do
| | 02:25 | is we can turn off joints, we can
turn off surface objects in our selection
| | 02:29 | masks, and that way we don't
accidentally select things that we don't want to
| | 02:34 | animate, okay? So curves are
actually a separate selection here.
| | 02:38 | And they make for really good control
objects because they also don't render.
| | 02:42 | You don't have to do anything
special to render the character.
| | 02:45 | You don't have to turn anything off.
| | 02:47 | Okay, so now we have gone
through that, it should be all.
| | 02:50 | Let's go, and let's snap this to our
topmost joint, so we can do a constraint.
| | 02:54 | So I'm going to turn on Snap, and we'll
snap the point which means it will snap
| | 02:58 | to the centers of these joints, okay.
| | 03:00 | So let's go up and snap it to the top
joint so that way they're coincident and
| | 03:04 | they share exactly the same center point.
| | 03:07 | And now, I want to go ahead, and let's
just do a real simple Point Constraint.
| | 03:12 | So when you constrain an object, you select
the object that is constrained last, okay.
| | 03:17 | So I select my circle first, and I'm going
to constrain my joint to that circle, okay.
| | 03:24 | Now, we go Constrain > Point Constraint.
There are two options here.
| | 03:28 | The one you really want to
look at is called Maintain offset.
| | 03:32 | So if they're not exactly at the same point,
we snap them so that they are at the same point.
| | 03:37 | But if they're not, this Maintain offset
will go ahead and maintain that distance.
| | 03:42 | So if it's off by a little bit
it's not going to change the skeleton.
| | 03:45 | This is really important
on the Orient Constraint.
| | 03:47 | And then if we want, we can give it an
offset, and we can tell it what to constrain.
| | 03:52 | We don't have to constrain it for
motion in all directions, we can limit at X, Y,
| | 03:57 | or Z. And there's also a weight, and that
weight is very similar to the IK Handle weight.
| | 04:03 | You can actually turn the constraint
on and off by just animating this
| | 04:08 | weight constraint, okay?
| | 04:09 | I'm going to leave this at the defaults,
and I'm going to go ahead and hit Add.
| | 04:13 | Okay, now, what happens is this
joint is constrained to the circle.
| | 04:18 | So when I select the circle, the
joint moves with it, very simple.
| | 04:24 | And let's take a look at that in the Outliner.
So I have got my joint chain, okay, which is here.
| | 04:31 | And again, that's--it's almost like a
hierarchy without the hierarchy, okay?
| | 04:36 | So if you think about it, in the
hierarchy, you can move something underneath it
| | 04:39 | or if you move the master, you
can, it will move everything.
| | 04:43 | So what this does is it creates
essentially--a constraint creates essentially
| | 04:48 | the same sort of behavior as a hierarchy
without having to have things inside of a hierarchy.
| | 04:53 | This is great for rigs because you can
put things outside of the hierarchy and
| | 04:57 | build your own sub-hierarchy of
control objects, and it can go inside the
| | 05:03 | hierarchy of the joints
and manipulate them, okay.
| | 05:06 | So that's it for Point Constraint.
| | 05:07 | Let's take a look at Orient
Constraints in the next chapter.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Aim constraints| 00:00 | The next constraint, we are going to
look at is called an Aim Constraint.
| | 00:04 | If you have used other packages, it
might be known as a Look-at Constraint.
| | 00:07 | Basically, what it does is
it aims one object at another.
| | 00:10 | In other words, it controls the
rotation of an object so that it's always
| | 00:14 | pointed at another object.
We use this all the time.
| | 00:18 | If you have used Maya, you will
probably know a little bit about cameras.
| | 00:22 | In fact, if we go over to our
Rendering tab and just create a camera, go into
| | 00:26 | our Attribute Editor, Ctrl+A, we can
create the controls let's say Camera and Aim.
| | 00:32 | Okay, and now that we have an aim you
can see that camera is always pointing at
| | 00:40 | this particular target, right?
| | 00:43 | Okay, well, we can do the same thing
with objects using the Aim Constraint.
| | 00:47 | So let's go ahead and create a New Scene.
| | 00:49 | In fact, let's go ahead
and open the scene 03_03.
| | 00:54 | And in this scene, we have an eyeball.
Okay, and this is actually an application
| | 00:59 | we'll use this particular constraint
for a lot, as we use it to control eye
| | 01:03 | position in our character animation.
| | 01:06 | So what we want to do is constrain this
eye, so it always looks at this circle.
| | 01:12 | So how do we do that?
| | 01:14 | Well, we need to select our objects
and apply the constraint just like we did
| | 01:17 | with the Orient and the Aim Constraint.
What order do we select them in?
| | 01:21 | We select them in the constraining object first,
and the constrained object second, okay.
| | 01:29 | So this is going to be constrained to
this, so this is gets selected last.
| | 01:33 | So we select the circle.
| | 01:34 | Shift+Select the
eyeball, Constrain, Aim, okay?
| | 01:40 | Now again, I forgot to go in
here, but let's go into this.
| | 01:45 | We want to make sure we check Maintain offset.
Make sure that's checked.
| | 01:48 | I had that checked by default.
| | 01:49 | But it may not have been
checked in your particular package.
| | 01:53 | So make sure that Maintain offset is
checked because otherwise just like with
| | 01:57 | the Orient Constraint, this may flip around
to other directions if that happened to you.
| | 02:01 | That's why--why that happened, okay?
| | 02:02 | So now, once we have Maintained offset
selected, we can go ahead and select this
| | 02:06 | particular circle, and now the
eyeball always looks at the circle.
| | 02:11 | Okay, so that's our target.
| | 02:13 | So if we want our character looking in a
very specific place, we just place this
| | 02:17 | object where we want our character to look and the
character will look that way. Okay, very simple.
| | 02:23 | Now, this can be used for
other types of animation as well.
| | 02:27 | Again, the camera is a really good example.
| | 02:29 | But really, anything where you want
something pointed at another object, let's
| | 02:33 | say you're doing a war video game, and
you want the gun always pointed at the
| | 02:37 | target. Well, you can certainly
constrain that using an Aim Constraint, okay.
| | 02:43 | So that's the basics of that particular
constraint, and let's move on to the next one.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Orient constraints| 00:00 | The next constraint we're going to
look at is called an Orient Constraint.
| | 00:04 | And that actually constrains the
orientation of a joint, or actually, the
| | 00:09 | rotation of a joint.
| | 00:10 | So let's go ahead and create
that same thing that we did before.
| | 00:13 | Very simple to create.
| | 00:14 | So let's go ahead and just go into our
animation menus, go Skeleton > Joint tool,
| | 00:18 | and let's create a very simple
three-joint chain. Hit Enter.
| | 00:21 | And let's go ahead and create, into
our Side view, and create a NURBS circle.
| | 00:29 | And again, we're going to
use this as our control object.
| | 00:32 | Now, this time instead of going to
the top most joint, I'm going to go to
| | 00:36 | this middle joint here.
| | 00:37 | So I'm going to select this,
turn on Snap, and move it.
| | 00:48 | Okay, so now this is snapped to the
top of that joint, so they're coincident.
| | 00:53 | Now, what I want to do is constrain
the orientation of this joint to this.
| | 00:58 | So let's say this was an elbow joint in
a character so that way you could select
| | 01:03 | this to control the
rotation of the character's elbow.
| | 01:06 | So, again, with constraints, you
want to select the constraining object
| | 01:12 | first and then hold down Shift and
select the constrained object second,
| | 01:17 | Constrain > Orient, okay.
And again, let me look at the options here.
| | 01:23 | We have Maintain offset,
exactly the same as point constraints.
| | 01:26 | Okay, let's go ahead and just do Add.
You notice that flips around.
| | 01:31 | And let's take a look at this.
I'm going to hit Z and undo that.
| | 01:36 | Okay, so now we have taken
the constraint off of this.
| | 01:38 | So what we have here is we
actually have opposite rotations.
| | 01:43 | So the circle is actually rotated
opposite to what the joint is rotated to.
| | 01:49 | While we can go ahead and kind of
manipulate all the pivots and stuff, but
| | 01:52 | that's probably going to take a lot of time.
| | 01:55 | So the easiest way to do it is
to just put in a Maintain offsets.
| | 01:59 | So I'm going to go ahead and select.
Let's go ahead and do this again.
| | 02:02 | We're going to select the circle, Shift-select
the joint, Constrain > Orient,
| | 02:07 | Maintain offset, okay.
| | 02:09 | So that will go ahead and keep that rotation
the way it was and just make this an offset.
| | 02:15 | So now when I rotate this joint, or
this circle, the joint rotates, okay.
| | 02:23 | Now, the one thing we haven't done is we
don't have a point constraint on this, okay?
| | 02:27 | So if I wanted to, I could
add a second constraint to it.
| | 02:30 | So I can hold down Shift, and select
the circle, Shift-select the joint, go
| | 02:36 | Constrain > Point Constraint, and
again I'm going to click Maintain offset.
| | 02:41 | And now, I have got a constraint that
actually moves the joint and rotates it, just
| | 02:47 | like in a hierarchy, right?
| | 02:49 | So if I go into my Outliner, you'll see I
have these circles outside of the hierarchy.
| | 02:54 | Again, it's kind of like the IK Handle.
| | 02:56 | So I have something outside the
hierarchy that can actually move things
| | 02:59 | within the hierarchy.
| | 03:00 | And if I look at the joints, I'll see I
have joint2, and joint2 actually has two
| | 03:06 | objects attached to it.
Those are my constraints.
| | 03:09 | If I select that constraint, you'll see the
attributes for that constraint come up here.
| | 03:14 | For example, the Orient Constraint,
actually, the offset is 180 degrees, and
| | 03:18 | that makes sense because that
thing flipped around 180 degrees.
| | 03:22 | You can also constrain it on or off, okay.
| | 03:25 | So I can constrain it to zero
or one and anything in between.
| | 03:29 | Again, you can constrain things so
that they are attached or aren't attached.
| | 03:33 | Now, the other really good use
for constraints is in animation.
| | 03:37 | Now, we're not really going to get very
deeply into animation in this particular
| | 03:41 | title, but if you think about it, let's
say a character is picking up an object.
| | 03:46 | He picks up a ball.
| | 03:48 | You can constrain that ball to a joint
in the character's hand and then when the
| | 03:52 | character sets down the ball, you
animate that constraint to zero, and so then
| | 03:57 | the ball becomes free again.
| | 03:59 | Okay, very similar application except
just in the opposite direction instead of
| | 04:03 | constraining the joint to an object or
constraining the object to the joint. Okay, very simple.
| | 04:09 | Okay, so that's the basics of the Orient
Constraint, and we'll be using this a lot in our rigs.
| | 04:16 | So let's move on to some more constraints.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Pole vector constraints| 00:00 | The last type of constraint that we
want to look at is called the Pole Vector
| | 00:04 | Constraint, and that works
with IK, the Inverse Kinematics.
| | 00:08 | And it allows us to constrain the
direction of the IK Chain so that it always
| | 00:14 | points towards an object.
| | 00:15 | So it's kind of like an Aim
constraint, but it's for a joint chain.
| | 00:19 | So it's like, for example, if you had
your knees on your character, you could aim
| | 00:23 | the knees so that they point
at a very specific direction.
| | 00:26 | Let's show you how to do that.
We're going to go ahead and open scene 03_04.
| | 00:30 | And this is basically the scene we used
before, except added in this object constraint.
| | 00:36 | So this is essentially a IK chain, very simple.
Okay, so how do we do this?
| | 00:42 | We, just like any other constraint, we
select the constraining object first, and
| | 00:49 | the constrained object second.
Okay, so we're constraining to this circle.
| | 00:55 | We hold down the Shift,
and we select our IK Handle.
| | 00:58 | Okay, because the IK Handle has
the Pole Vector as part of it.
| | 01:03 | And then we go Constrain > Pole Vector,
and let's look at some of the options.
| | 01:06 | There's actually only one option which
is the Weight of the constraint so that
| | 01:10 | allows you to just turn it on and off or
animate it on and off, and you just hit Add.
| | 01:15 | So now, if you notice, this little
line comes up, and now it says this
| | 01:18 | is looking at that.
| | 01:20 | So if we kind of go up in our Top view
port, and we select our circle, you can
| | 01:24 | see now that the knee is always
going to follow this constraining object.
| | 01:30 | In fact, let's bend that knee a little bit
more so you can kind of see it more specifically.
| | 01:37 | So now, let's say this is again, the knee of
your character, now he can do the Charleston.
| | 01:41 | Isn't that amazing?
| | 01:42 | So, again, this is a really good way
to put something outside the hierarchy.
| | 01:46 | You could actually just go into your
character or you could select your IK
| | 01:50 | Handle and go into your Pole
Vector and animate that manually.
| | 01:55 | But that requires you dig through a
bunch of joints and hierarchies and all
| | 02:00 | that sort of stuff, and when you're
animating, you really don't want to have
| | 02:04 | to think in that way.
| | 02:05 | You just want to grab and move,
and that's why we're using this
| | 02:08 | particular constraint, okay.
| | 02:10 | So we'll actually be doing this when we
rig the character, but I just wanted to
| | 02:14 | kind of show you the operation
up front so that way you kind of have a clean
| | 02:19 | example of how it works, so when we get
into the complexities of character, you
| | 02:22 | kind of understand the fundamentals.
Okay, so that's it for this.
| | 02:26 | We're going to go ahead and move on
to some other topics or we're actually
| | 02:30 | going to move on to Attributes and creating
Custom Attributes for your characters as well.
| | 02:35 | So we'll do some simple ones of those
and then that way you'll have fundamental
| | 02:39 | theory when we get into rigging the character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating custom attributes| 00:00 | Now the last thing I want to cover
before we get into actually rigging our
| | 00:04 | character is the topic of Custom Attributes.
| | 00:07 | An attribute that you create
additional attribute for the object that can be
| | 00:11 | used to control the object itself or
it can be used to control other objects.
| | 00:15 | So, for example, in the character rig
that we're going to do, we have a number
| | 00:20 | of attributes to control the fingers,
the bend of the fingers. So each
| | 00:23 | individual finger has its own
rotation control, and then you have a spread
| | 00:27 | control for the hand itself.
| | 00:29 | So that instead of actually
manipulating all the dozens of joints in the hand,
| | 00:34 | you actually go to one place and
manipulate them there rather than having again
| | 00:39 | to dig through the hierarchy of the character.
| | 00:42 | So let me show you some of the
real simple basics of how to do that.
| | 00:46 | We're going to go ahead and create an object.
| | 00:48 | So I'm going to create--
let's just create a joint.
| | 00:50 | Okay, animation shelf here, Joint tool,
I'm going to go ahead and create joints.
| | 00:55 | And let's just pretend those
are fingers on one hand, okay.
| | 00:58 | So there's three joints per finger.
| | 01:00 | And then let's create an
object that will control those.
| | 01:03 | So I'm going to go ahead again, I
love circles, so let's go ahead and just
| | 01:07 | create a circle, easy to create,
and you can do a lot with it.
| | 01:11 | And what I'm going to do is I'm going
to use this to control the rotation.
| | 01:16 | Now, we used the Orient Constraint, but
there's another way to control parameters
| | 01:20 | as well, and that's using what are
called expressions and set driven keys.
| | 01:24 | Okay, so I have a couple of joints in here.
I have joint one, joint two, and joint three.
| | 01:31 | Okay, so what I want to do is create a
set of parameters here that controls here.
| | 01:39 | Okay, so the circle is
going to control the joints.
| | 01:42 | Okay, so what I have on the circles is
I have a couple of attributes here, I
| | 01:46 | have Translate, Rotate, Scale, Visibility.
Those are standard.Those come with every object.
| | 01:50 | What I want to do is add additional
ones so I can animate from the Channel Box
| | 01:55 | the rotation of these
just by selecting this, okay.
| | 01:58 | So how I do this is I right-click
here and go down to Add Attribute.
| | 02:06 | What that does is it brings up a
dialog box, and it gives me the name of the
| | 02:11 | attribute as well as the type of data
and then some other things like minimum
| | 02:16 | and maximum and so on and so forth.
So let's go ahead and just give it a name.
| | 02:21 | We'll call it Joint1_Rotate.
Okay, let's go ahead and add that.
| | 02:27 | Now I have a parameter here called
Joint1_Rotate, and I can actually
| | 02:31 | manipulate it if I want.
| | 02:33 | Okay, so I can attach that to this one
here, using a couple of different methods--
| | 02:39 | which I'll get into--but let's go
ahead and add three more attributes here.
| | 02:43 | Add Attribute, Joint2_Rotate, and if
I want to, I can give it minimums and
| | 02:51 | maximums and so on and so forth, but
I'm not going to do that at this point.
| | 02:55 | And let's just do it one
more time. Joint3_Rotate.
| | 03:02 | Okay, so now I have basic parameters
here, and I can use those now to control
| | 03:08 | this, and we're going to do that.
There's two methods of doing it.
| | 03:11 | So I'm going to go ahead and split
this off at this point, and we'll go ahead
| | 03:15 | and go through both methods individually,
and then you can use whichever method you want.
| | 03:19 | So the first step is to create the
attributes, the second step is to connect the
| | 03:23 | attributes, and we're going to
do that in the next two lessons.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating Set Driven Keys| 00:00 | So now that we have created Custom
Attributes, we can use those attributes to
| | 00:04 | actually control the rotation of the joints.
Now there's two ways of doing that.
| | 00:09 | The first is called Set Driven Keys,
and the second is called Expressions.
| | 00:13 | They operate a little bit differently.
| | 00:15 | One is kind of more visual, the other one is a
little bit more mathematical and more precise.
| | 00:20 | So there are differences between the way
they work, but they kind of do the same thing.
| | 00:24 | So let me show you how to do both of them.
We're going to start with Set Driven Keys.
| | 00:28 | So we're going to go ahead and open a File, 03_05,
and that's that scene that I just made.
| | 00:34 | And so, let's recall where we're at here.
| | 00:38 | We have this joint chain, and we have got
three joints and instead of having to go
| | 00:42 | through each joint and rotate them
individually, I'd like all of the controls
| | 00:46 | right here at the circle.
| | 00:47 | So I have created custom attributes
here, Joint1_Rotate, Joint2, and Joint3.
| | 00:51 | So now animating these attributes, I want
those to actually manipulate this joint chain.
| | 00:58 | Okay, so we're going to
connect these using a Set Driven Key.
| | 01:02 | So the first thing we need to do is
know which attribute on the joint that
| | 01:06 | we want to animate.
| | 01:07 | So I select this first joint, left
click, select, and I go into Rotate mode,
| | 01:13 | and I see that it's going to be the
blue axis, which if I rotate that, you can
| | 01:18 | see that right here, it's the Z axis.
| | 01:20 | So I want to put a Set Driven Key on
Rotate Z. So I select Rotate Z in the
| | 01:25 | channel box, right-click, and go all
the way down to Set Driven Key, release,
| | 01:31 | and it brings up a window called Set Driven Key.
| | 01:35 | And now what this does is it puts what
we had just selected, Joint 1, Rotate Z,
| | 01:40 | it puts that in the
driven section of that window.
| | 01:44 | Now, we need to decide what is
going to drive that rotation.
| | 01:49 | Well, it's going to be our circle.
| | 01:51 | So we select our circle, left
click select, and we go Load Driver.
| | 01:56 | And now that brings up all of the
attributes for this, and if you notice here
| | 02:00 | Translate X all the way through
Joint3_Rotate, Translate X and so on and
| | 02:05 | visibility and all those are all there.
| | 02:07 | So we want Joint1_Rotate to
drive the Z rotation of Joint1.
| | 02:12 | Okay, the first thing we do is we hit Key.
| | 02:16 | So what this does is it keys it so
that when this is zero, this is zero.
| | 02:20 | So if I look at this, if I select
that, that's zero, and that's zero.
| | 02:24 | So I'll just go Key.
| | 02:26 | Okay, so now if you notice this has
turned kind of purple and so that means that
| | 02:31 | it has a keyframe on it.
| | 02:33 | Now what we want to do is
bring this up to a new value.
| | 02:36 | So let's say, what's the
maximum that we want to rotate this?
| | 02:39 | So let's just go from zero to ten.
Let's just kind of make that an arbitrary value.
| | 02:43 | So when this is 10, this will be at its maximum.
| | 02:46 | So I select this and rotate it
as much as I want it to rotate.
| | 02:50 | Okay, in this case, it's -71 degrees
but if we wanted to, we can make it both
| | 02:54 | of these as the same number but I kind of like zero
to ten cause it's a little bit more memorizable.
| | 02:59 | So I hit Key, and now what that does
is it's created two set driven keys.
| | 03:03 | So it's created two key frames.
So I select my circle, click on Joint1_Rotate.
| | 03:09 | If I middle click and drag, you can see
how as this goes from zero to ten, this
| | 03:24 | one goes from zero to seventy-one.
| | 03:25 | Okay, so, again, I can very
easily manipulate that joint.
| | 03:34 | Now, if I want to, I could actually
take this particular joint, and I can look
| | 03:39 | at it in my Animation Editor's Graph
Editor, and you'll see that I actually do
| | 03:47 | have some values for this Set Driven Key.
| | 03:50 | So as this goes from zero to ten, this
goes from--so you can see it from zero to
| | 03:57 | ten, it's almost 12, it's not
quite, you can see here there.
| | 04:00 | From zero to ten, this goes from zero to -70.
| | 04:06 | So if I want to, I could actually
just move that key around, and I could
| | 04:09 | actually readjust it, in fact here.
| | 04:11 | I don't think you can quite see it,
because it's such a small window.
| | 04:15 | If you can see, if I reposition this
key, I can actually change that final
| | 04:19 | value, so I can tweak it very, very easily.
| | 04:21 | I can also change the curve types so that it
slows in, slows out, whatever I want to do.
| | 04:26 | Okay, now, all I have to do is do
that exact same thing for all of the next
| | 04:31 | joints, and then I'll have something where I
can control all the joints from one position.
| | 04:35 | Let's just do it one more time.
| | 04:37 | We'll go, select joint2,
Rotate Z, Set Driven Key.
| | 04:42 | Right-click here, okay, and then I'm
just going to go ahead and select my
| | 04:47 | Circle, Load Driven, Rotate Z,
Load Driver, control joint2.
| | 04:53 | Okay, so there we are.
| | 04:57 | Rotate Z. Hit Key, take this, put it to 10,
rotate this however much I want, hit Key again.
| | 05:08 | So now I have got two.
| | 05:10 | I have got this one here, which should hit
Key so that controls that, this controls
| | 05:19 | this, I can put them together
and control them the same way.
| | 05:22 | Now that I have got two of them, you see I
can actually just rotate them both, and
| | 05:27 | it makes it a lot easier rather
than rotating each joint at a time.
| | 05:30 | Okay, so that's the basics of Set Driven Keys.
| | 05:32 | If you want, you can do that third joint
as an exercise, but I'll leave it at that.
| | 05:36 | So there you go.
| | 05:37 | Okay, so next we're going
to move on to Expressions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating expressions| 00:00 | The second way to connect Custom
Attributes to an object is to use Expressions.
| | 00:05 | Now, what an Expression does is it
mathematically creates a connection between
| | 00:10 | one object and another. And yes, the
word math came up, and yes, it is a little
| | 00:15 | bit more technical than a Set Driven
Key, but it's also a lot more precise.
| | 00:19 | And it also will evaluate
faster in Maya, so, I personally, I like
| | 00:23 | Expressions because they're pretty
straightforward once you get the hang of it.
| | 00:26 | So let's take a look at this file.
| | 00:29 | I'm going to go ahead and open up the
same scene we did before, 03_05, and this
| | 00:35 | has that joint chain with three joints,
and that circle which we're going to use
| | 00:40 | as the controlling object.
| | 00:41 | We have these three Custom
Attributes that we put into it, Joint1, 2, and
| | 00:45 | Joint3_Rotate, and those we're going to
use to control the rotation of these joints.
| | 00:50 | Okay, like with Set Driven Keys, we
need to know which attribute of the joint
| | 00:57 | we're going to be controlling.
| | 00:58 | And again, it's going to be the same one
because we're basically doing the same thing.
| | 01:02 | It's going to be Rotate Z. Okay, so
let me show you--before we go into the
| | 01:07 | actual authoring of this--let me show
you a little bit about how this works.
| | 01:11 | This window is a little complicated,
and there's a lot of really tricky naming
| | 01:14 | things that you have to do.
| | 01:16 | So let me show you how it works, and
then I'll show you a trick, and that will
| | 01:20 | make it a lot easier.
| | 01:22 | So just like with Set Driven Keys,
when you want to add an expression onto an
| | 01:26 | object, you just right-click over
that attribute, that you want to put the
| | 01:31 | expression on, and that will
bring up the Expression Editor.
| | 01:34 | Okay, very similar to the Set Driven Key
window except it has to do with Expressions.
| | 01:39 | Now, I'm going to zoom out here and in
the corner you can kind of see this joint
| | 01:43 | chain and a circle that I have.
| | 01:45 | Now, when I right-click and drag and
bring up this window, it automatically goes
| | 01:48 | to the object and the attribute
that I want to put the expression on.
| | 01:53 | If you'll notice here in this
window, it says Selected Object and
| | 01:57 | Attribute, joint1.rotateZ.
Okay, so that's the name of the object, a
| | 02:03 | dot, and then the name of the attribute
that you're actually putting the expression on.
| | 02:07 | Okay, so what I want to do is I want
this attribute to be equal to the one that
| | 02:15 | I have from the circle.
| | 02:16 | Now, this is a--click off of this--
and if you notice, when I click off of
| | 02:20 | that joint, it disappears out of
this window, but if I left click, and I'm
| | 02:24 | going to select the circle down here, you'll
notice it brings up the circle and its attributes.
| | 02:30 | Okay, so the attribute I want to
use as the controlling attribute is
| | 02:34 | nurbsCircle.Joint1_Rotate, which is right here.
| | 02:37 | So I want this to actually control
this, but the trick is the expression
| | 02:41 | actually has to be here.
| | 02:43 | But the reason I brought this up is
because I want to show you a little trick.
| | 02:47 | If I select this object, I can
actually select this complex name,
| | 02:50 | nurbsCircle1.Joint1_Rotate--
which I really don't want to type.
| | 02:56 | I can select that and just copy using, PC,
it's Ctrl+C, I believe, it's--isn't
| | 03:00 | it Apple+C on the Mac?
| | 03:01 | And now that I have that, I hit
Ctrl+C, and it's in my clipboard.
| | 03:07 | So now when I select the actual
object that I'm going to be putting the
| | 03:11 | expression on, which is this joint here,
so if I left click and drag and select
| | 03:16 | that joint, it comes back up from my Expression
Editor, and I can select joint1 and rotateZ.
| | 03:23 | But I really want to make that equal to
this complex name that I just selected.
| | 03:27 | So I'm going to go ahead and
paste, just using my keyboard shortcut.
| | 03:31 | So now I have that name.
| | 03:33 | So I have nurbsCircle1.Joint1_Rotate,
so I want that to be equal, so equal to this.
| | 03:38 | So what I do is I put my cursor here,
put an equal sign there, put my cursor
| | 03:44 | at the very beginning, select this name,
copy, Ctrl+C for the PC, Apple+C for
| | 03:54 | the Mac, I believe, paste.
| | 03:57 | Okay, now I could have typed this, but
I'm a lazy person, and I don't really type
| | 04:03 | all that well, and I can't remember
all this so I just cut and paste it.
| | 04:07 | So joint1.rotateZ, which is the rotation
of this particular attribute is going to
| | 04:11 | be equal to nurbs.Circle1 and
the name of that custom attribute.
| | 04:17 | So we go Create, there, okay.
| | 04:21 | It seemed complex, but it really
wasn't once you get the hang of it.
| | 04:26 | So now if you notice, this turns purple.
| | 04:28 | And so now, if I select this I
can, again, rotate all of that.
| | 04:35 | Okay, now the hot tip with Expressions
is because they're text, it really gets
| | 04:42 | fast when you start copying and pasting them.
| | 04:44 | So what I'm going to do here is I'm
just going to go ahead and select this part
| | 04:48 | of my expression, copy that, and then I'm
just going to apply it to all my other joints.
| | 04:53 | Okay, I'm just going to close that.
I just wanted to get that name.
| | 04:56 | So if I select this, I can go highlight
RotateZ > Expressions, and I'm just going
| | 05:02 | to go ahead and hit Paste.
| | 05:04 | Okay, and instead of Joint1_Rotate,
I want Joint2_Rotate, all right,
| | 05:09 | nurbs.Circle1 and the name of the
custom parameter for joint2 is Joint2_Rotate,
| | 05:14 | select this, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Create. Okay, so
that created that one. So now I have got two, right?
| | 05:24 | So now as I move those, I get two,
and I can do the same thing for this,
| | 05:29 | select that joint, highlight
that, right-click Expressions.
| | 05:33 | Okay, so then for the last
joint, we can do the same thing.
| | 05:38 | I can actually go into this Expression,
select out and copy just that last
| | 05:46 | part of the equation, and then I could
go select my Joint3, highlight RotateZ,
| | 05:54 | Expressions, Paste. All right.
| | 05:57 | But it's not Joint2_Rotate, it's
Joint3, and now I just copy that name.
| | 06:04 | Let me go to the very beginning
of this line and Paste, Create.
| | 06:10 | Okay, so now I have got three joints.
| | 06:15 | Now, the great thing about
Expressions is you can add additional math.
| | 06:19 | So let me show you just a
little bit of how to do that.
| | 06:22 | So, for example, if I wanted to, if I
didn't want this joint to rotate as much,
| | 06:26 | I could do a couple of tricks on it.
| | 06:28 | So I could go into Expressions here,
and so instead of it just being equal to
| | 06:34 | this--so joint3, rotateZ equals this--
I could say it equals that over 10.
| | 06:41 | Okay, and so, in that case now, this
doesn't rotate nearly as much so it kind of
| | 06:50 | damps it or if I want to, I
could do the exact opposite.
| | 06:53 | I could select this, go find my
RotateZ here, and so instead of it being over
| | 07:01 | 10, I can multiply it by 10 and make it
even more so that it totally amplifies it.
| | 07:08 | So, again, by dividing or multiplying
this parameter, which I do here, so in
| | 07:21 | other words, when I go into this
Expression, it can multiply or divide this
| | 07:24 | parameter to amplify or
diminish the action of it.
| | 07:29 | And so, again, we have got a lot of control.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Rigging CharactersRigging legs| 00:00 | So in the last chapter, we understood
some of the basic tools we're going to be
| | 00:04 | using to rig this character.
| | 00:05 | So let's go ahead and apply that
knowledge and actually rig the body of a character.
| | 00:11 | We're going to go ahead and do the
head a little bit later, but let's go
| | 00:15 | ahead and rig the body.
| | 00:16 | And the first thing we need to do
is set our project to our current
| | 00:22 | chapter which is 04_Rigging. And
let's go ahead and open our scene, which
| | 00:29 | is in 04_Rigging scenes. It's 04_01.
| | 00:33 | And this is kind of where we left off
on Chapter 2, which is our skeleton, which
| | 00:39 | is all of our joints inside
the geometry of our character.
| | 00:43 | Okay, and there's--right
now there's no head skeleton.
| | 00:45 | We're going to go ahead and do that
when we do facial and head animation.
| | 00:48 | We're going to kind of do that separately.
So let's just focus on the body at this point.
| | 00:54 | So the first thing we want to do is
start setting up our Inverse Kinematics.
| | 00:59 | Actually, I tend to rig just the way I
kind of build the skeleton, I kind of
| | 01:03 | rig from the bottom up.
| | 01:04 | I start with the legs, do the spine,
then do the arms, then do the hands.
| | 01:08 | You don't have to do it this way.
You can certainly mix it up if you want.
| | 01:12 | You can certainly do the arms first if you want.
| | 01:15 | But this is the way I do it so this
is the way we're going to do it in this
| | 01:20 | particular series of lessons.
| | 01:21 | So the first thing we want to do is
actually set up the IK Handles for the legs.
| | 01:27 | So it's very simple, we know
how to create an IK Handle, right?
| | 01:30 | We go to our Animation shelf, select
the IK Handle tool, and we click on the
| | 01:34 | topmost joint of our IK chain which
would be the hip here, and then we click on
| | 01:39 | the ankle, and that creates our IK chain.
| | 01:42 | In fact, if you want we can move
that around, yup, sure enough it works.
| | 01:46 | Okay, and I hit Z to undo that
to make sure I'm always at zero.
| | 01:51 | And then that's one thing as we start
rigging this character, you're going to be
| | 01:54 | moving it around to test it.
| | 01:56 | I always hit Undo to make sure it goes
back to its original position because I
| | 02:00 | want to make sure that the character is
centered within the geometry when we get
| | 02:04 | to the point where we're going to skin it.
| | 02:06 | So now we have this IK Handle, and if we
want, we can look at it in the Outliner.
| | 02:11 | So we have our Skeleton, our Geometry,
our Skeleton, and our IK Handle here, and
| | 02:18 | I'm going to go ahead and rename that.
I'm going to actually call it iKHandle_LAnkle.
| | 02:26 | Okay, we're just going to work on the
legs, and then we're going to do the
| | 02:30 | feet in the next one.
So let's go ahead and do this.
| | 02:33 | So that's my IK Handle for my left ankle.
| | 02:36 | And what do you know, let's do
one for the right, the same thing.
| | 02:39 | In fact, I can just do it right there.
| | 02:44 | Okay, now again, your naming scheme
may be different, but this is the way I'm
| | 02:48 | going to go ahead and do it.
| | 02:49 | Now, one thing I want to do is I want
to create knee controls, and I also want
| | 02:54 | to create foot controls eventually.
| | 02:55 | So I have a second file out there which
actually has some nice helper objects,
| | 02:59 | okay, and let's just go ahead and import.
| | 03:02 | So we're going to go File >
Import > Chap04_01_controls.
| | 03:08 | Now, these are the controls for
what we're working with right now.
| | 03:11 | So we import that and what that does
is it brings in a bunch of objects here.
| | 03:16 | Okay, I'm going to show you what
they look like in the Outliner.
| | 03:19 | So it's all these objects, okay.
| | 03:20 | Now if you notice, one of the things I
did was I named them, and I named all of
| | 03:25 | these with capital letters.
| | 03:26 | Okay, that's just the way I do it and
the reason I do it is that that way these
| | 03:32 | particular objects stand out, and when
I look at them in the Outliner, I know
| | 03:36 | that these are controls because they're
all capital letters. And now stuff like
| | 03:40 | my skeleton is all upper and lower case,
it's all nice and neat, and they don't
| | 03:44 | stand out nearly as much as these.
| | 03:46 | So it's kind of just another way to
distinguish different types of objects by name.
| | 03:50 | Okay, so what I have got is
a couple of controls here.
| | 03:54 | I'm going to close this outliner window.
| | 03:56 | I have got controls for the feet--which
we'll be using in the next chapter--such as
| | 04:00 | the foot, the heel, the toe, but I
also have controls for the knees.
| | 04:05 | Now, remember when we were working with
the Pole Vector Constraint and how that
| | 04:10 | controlled an IK chain? Well,
that's what we can do with this.
| | 04:14 | We can actually use this IK Handle.
| | 04:17 | So what I do is I go ahead, and I
select, go down here and select my IK
| | 04:21 | handle for my left leg, or the left ankle, and I
want to add a Pole Vector Constraint for this.
| | 04:27 | Well, actually, I'm doing
this the wrong direction.
| | 04:30 | What I need to do is select the
constraining object, which is this particular object.
| | 04:34 | Now, what this is is it's just--it's a
box, but it's not a cube, it's actually
| | 04:39 | a box of Splines--so that way it's actually a
curve, but it just kind of looks like a box.
| | 04:44 | I just snapped it, I drew it by
snapping a spline to the corners of a polygonal
| | 04:49 | box, and so that made a very nice little
box shape that doesn't render, and it's
| | 04:55 | just a curve, okay, and I have
those down here as well for the heels.
| | 04:58 | So, anyways, I select my left knee,
Shift-select my IK Handle, go to my
| | 05:06 | Animation menu, Constrain, Pole Vector.
| | 05:10 | Okay, so now I select this, and
it controls the direction of my leg.
| | 05:19 | Let's do the same thing for the right.
| | 05:21 | So I select my constraining object,
the little box, Shift-select the IK
| | 05:27 | handle, Constrain, Pole Vector.
Okay, as simple as that.
| | 05:33 | So now, I have got my legs pretty much
done, and now we're going to go ahead and
| | 05:38 | move on to a control for the feet
because one of the things we have here is
| | 05:42 | we have got this IK Handle but I want
this actual heel here to control the
| | 05:46 | position of this IK Handle.
| | 05:47 | So what I want to be able to do is grab
this foot and move it and have the leg
| | 05:53 | move with it so that way I can
start positioning the characters legs.
| | 05:57 | So how I do that is very
simply with a hierarchy.
| | 06:01 | So I go into my Outliner, I select my IK Handle for
the left ankle, middle-click and drag to L_FOOT.
| | 06:15 | So now, this IK Handle is
actually a child of the foot.
| | 06:22 | So if I move this foot position, now
it's actually moving the IK Handle.
| | 06:30 | So now I can obviously move my hips.
| | 06:33 | I'm always hitting Undo here,
remember, and I can move that foot.
| | 06:37 | Okay, so now I have got kind of
the basics of starting my rig here.
| | 06:43 | So you can see how my geometry is selected.
| | 06:45 | I could just select that rather than
having to dig through here to actually see
| | 06:49 | where that joint is.
| | 06:50 | I have got something outside of the
character that I can actually select.
| | 06:53 | Okay, I'm going to turn off my
geometry here, and let's go ahead and just do
| | 06:58 | this for the right ankle as well.
| | 07:02 | So I'm going to say, IK Handle, right
ankle, middle click, drag so that we could
| | 07:07 | put over R_FOOT, and there it is.
Okay, so you can see it's right there.
| | 07:13 | And now, I have got that controlling that foot.
| | 07:16 | Now, obviously, we have got this toe and all
the rest of this stuff to work for the feet.
| | 07:22 | So we're going to go ahead
and do that in the next section.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging feet| 00:00 | Once the legs are rigged,
we're going to move on to the feet.
| | 00:04 | Now, the feet can be a little bit
complex, especially if I just start rigging
| | 00:08 | them without telling you where we're going.
| | 00:10 | So let's take a quick look at what we're
trying to accomplish with the foot rig,
| | 00:14 | and then I think it'll be a little
bit more clear as we step through how to
| | 00:18 | create that rig, what we're
doing, and why we're doing it.
| | 00:21 | So I'm going to actually
going to jump ahead in our Scene.
| | 00:24 | So I'm going to go ahead and open actually
Chap04_03, which has the finished foot rig.
| | 00:29 | Okay, now it's that same set of controls, but now
I have kind of moved them around a little bit.
| | 00:37 | So how the foot rig works is you grab
this--but actually it's called the foot,
| | 00:41 | and you can move that.
So that moves the actual foot of the character.
| | 00:48 | Now if you want, you can rotate
this to actually rotate the foot.
| | 00:54 | If you want to rotate the
foot out, you can do it that way.
| | 00:58 | Now, one thing with feet is that you
really won't be able to control the toe
| | 01:03 | and the way the toe lifts and the
way the heel lifts, because in a lot of
| | 01:07 | things like walking and stuff,
you're really shifting your weight from
| | 01:10 | different parts of the foot.
| | 01:11 | So you need a little bit more control
than just being able to move the foot itself.
| | 01:15 | You need to be able to rotate
certain parts of the foot very easily.
| | 01:19 | So we have created this toe control here, and
when you rotate that, it rotates the toe bone.
| | 01:26 | So when this is actually rigged and
skinned and everything, it will actually
| | 01:31 | rotate the front part of the foot.
And so, this allows him to tap his foot.
| | 01:35 | It also allows when he's
walking for his toe to bend.
| | 01:38 | And then we also have another control
here, and that is called the Heel Control,
| | 01:43 | and what that does is it lifts the heel up.
| | 01:46 | So what it does is actually
rotates this part of the hierarchy.
| | 01:50 | And if you notice here, I have got a
couple of IK Handles, so what we have got here
| | 01:55 | is I have got an IK Handle here, here, and here.
| | 01:58 | And if you notice, when you rotate the
heel, watch this IK Handle, it moves up.
| | 02:03 | So actually what we're doing is
actually moving IK Handles, and when you rotate
| | 02:07 | this, it rotates these two IK Handles, one, two.
| | 02:12 | Okay, and this is obviously
the same for the right foot.
| | 02:15 | Okay, so now we know where we're going.
Let's tell you how to get there.
| | 02:19 | Okay, so we're going to ahead and
open the scene before this, Chap04_02.
| | 02:23 | It has nothing on it.
Okay, so it basically has these basic controls.
| | 02:31 | So we're just going to work on with one
foot, and then I'll let you go ahead and
| | 02:36 | do the other foot as your own exercise.
| | 02:38 | We have already created a little bit of a
rig here where we have got this foot kind
| | 02:41 | of moving that IK Handle.
| | 02:43 | What we want is we want this
foot to be the master, all right?
| | 02:46 | So what we have to do is create a
hierarchy so that this heel and the toe are
| | 02:53 | actually children of the foot.
How we do that and where?
| | 02:56 | In the Outliner, of course.
| | 02:59 | So I select my L_HEEL in
the Outliner, middle click and drag over
| | 03:03 | the foot and select my L_TOE, I'll
click and drag over the foot.
| | 03:08 | So now I have got L_FOOT, and then I have got L_HEEL, and L_TOE.
I have also got that IK Handle as a child of that.
| | 03:16 | So now when I select the foot, and I
move it, everything moves, but if you
| | 03:20 | notice, that foot is acting really weird.
The toe is not sticking.
| | 03:24 | I'm going to undo that so that it's back to 0.
| | 03:28 | So how are we going to get these little
parts of the toe to stick so that they
| | 03:32 | don't just rotate down like that?
The best way to do it is with an IK Handle.
| | 03:37 | Let me show you how this works.
| | 03:39 | I'm going to go ahead to my IK Handle
tool and do it either here from the Shelf,
| | 03:44 | and I'm going to create a one-joint IK chain.
Okay, I'm going to show you what that is.
| | 03:52 | I'm going to go from the
ankle to the ball of the foot.
| | 03:56 | And I create a one-joint IK chain.
| | 03:59 | And what that does is it creates basically--
it's almost like Aim Constraint--
| | 04:04 | because what this is doing is it's just
since there's no joints to bend, this
| | 04:09 | joint will always point
towards this IK Handle. Okay?
| | 04:16 | So what we can do is we can do that again--
well here, let me show you how that works.
| | 04:21 | We can take that, and we can take this
IK Handle, rename it ikHandle_Left, and
| | 04:26 | that's what the ball of the foot, so
LBall, and we middle click and drag that
| | 04:35 | just below the foot shape.
| | 04:36 | And with that does below the foot,
it keeps everything flat. All right.
| | 04:42 | Because now this is actually
moving both of these handles.
| | 04:45 | But I want to have something a little
bit more when I rotate the toe control, I
| | 04:50 | want the front of the toe to rotate.
| | 04:52 | Well, the first thing I need
to do is set my pivot point.
| | 04:56 | If you notice here this has come up with
this centered, so what I do is I hit my
| | 05:01 | Insert key, and I move that back so
that my pivot point is right there.
| | 05:08 | So now when I rotate this, this is
going to rotate around the ball of the foot.
| | 05:12 | Okay, and what I need to do is I need to
create one more IK Handle before the actual toe.
| | 05:19 | So what I do is I go IK Handle tool,
start here and here, very simple.
| | 05:27 | And I have got another IK Handle in my Outliner.
| | 05:30 | If I bring up my Outliner, I have got this
IK Handle, which I can name ikHandle_LToe.
| | 05:39 | So what I can do is I can actually
drag that into the hierarchy, but what I
| | 05:42 | want it to do is I actually want it to
follow this toe, rather than follow the foot.
| | 05:48 | So what I want to do is actually drag
this ikHandle_LToe here, middle click and
| | 05:55 | drag below this toe object here.
| | 06:00 | So now I have got that, and
I have got--now my toe will tap.
| | 06:05 | Okay, so now, I have got a foot
where I can rotate it this way.
| | 06:15 | I can rotate it like this,
and I can rotate it like this.
| | 06:22 | But the one thing I
don't have going is the heel.
| | 06:25 | Now, the way we want the heel to work is
what do we want to lift when we lift the heel?
| | 06:30 | When we lift the heel actually this here,
our ankle, is actually what's lifting.
| | 06:35 | What we want to happen is we
wanted that to rotate around where?
| | 06:39 | The ball of the foot.
| | 06:40 | So actually, what we want to do is to
create a pivot point so when you rotate
| | 06:44 | this, this is actually
rotating around the ball of the foot.
| | 06:48 | So what we can do is--actually I'm going
to go into a Side Viewport here because
| | 06:52 | it's a little handier.
| | 06:54 | And I'm going to go ahead and modify my
pivot, hit the Insert key, and move that
| | 06:59 | pivot, so it's on the ball of the foot.
If I want I can snap it.
| | 07:02 | I'm going to be a little bit lazy here.
| | 07:05 | And so now, when I rotate this heel, it
actually is rotating around this center.
| | 07:16 | So now, what I want to do is take that
left ankle, because that's what I really
| | 07:20 | want to rotate around the center, right?
| | 07:22 | And I'm going to make that, middle click
and drag, and make that a child of the heel.
| | 07:29 | So now the heel is actually
controlling the position of that ankle.
| | 07:35 | So if I rotate that, now my
heel will lift up. Great.
| | 07:41 | So what do I have?
| | 07:42 | I have this is my foot and under the
foot are all the other controls, right?
| | 07:47 | So I have got my L_HEEL and my L_TOE.
| | 07:53 | But they're all children of the foot,
so when they move and rotate the foot,
| | 07:56 | they move with it so that foot object is
still my master, right? I can rotate it.
| | 08:01 | I can do whatever I want.
| | 08:04 | But if I rotate my toe, it
just moves this IK Handle.
| | 08:09 | If I rotate the heel, it
moves to this IK Handle. Great.
| | 08:15 | So now, that's a pretty
functional rig for a foot.
| | 08:17 | Now there are other ways to rig feet,
but I think this is probably one of the
| | 08:21 | more common ways, and I find
this way it works really well.
| | 08:24 | So I'm going to leave it up to you to
do the same thing for the right foot, and
| | 08:30 | pick it up and start working on the spine.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging the spine| 00:00 | After you get the legs rigged and the
feet, we're going to go ahead and move on
| | 00:05 | to the hips and the spine.
| | 00:08 | Now the hips are really
important in character animation.
| | 00:10 | The hips really are the center of most
character's motions, and it's going to be
| | 00:14 | the center of gravity for your character.
| | 00:16 | It's also going to be the top node of
the little hierarchy that we're going to
| | 00:20 | build, the little control hierarchy that
we're going to build for our character.
| | 00:23 | So let's look at where we're at
right now. Open Scene 04_03.
| | 00:29 | Okay, now that's our rig with everything,
including the legs and the feet that
| | 00:36 | we did, and I went ahead and did the
right leg and the right foot as well.
| | 00:40 | So now what we want to do is create
something to control the hips and the spine.
| | 00:47 | Just grab the hips and the
spine and just move those around.
| | 00:51 | Again, we don't want to be digging
through the character to find joints.
| | 00:55 | We want to make something that we can
grab from the outside of the character, so
| | 00:59 | we need to create a control object.
| | 01:00 | And we're going to create those at
curves, like we have done with all of
| | 01:04 | these other ones, because that's the
best type of object to use, because
| | 01:07 | it's something that doesn't render, it's
something you can use as selection mask with.
| | 01:11 | Again, I can't stress that more.
So let's go ahead and Import 04_03_controls.
| | 01:19 | Okay, and that brings in two objects here.
Let me move those up.
| | 01:23 | Those objects are, this one called C-O-G,
Center of Gravity, or you can call it the hips.
| | 01:30 | It doesn't really matter.
| | 01:31 | And now what I did was actually
created this out of a text object, and I just
| | 01:36 | distorted it a little bit.
| | 01:37 | And what it is I just made it kind
of more of a fancy-schmansy type of
| | 01:41 | object so that way you'd know that that's
the center of gravity, it's a different object.
| | 01:45 | And I also what I did with both of these,
this is actually just a square with a
| | 01:50 | little point on it is I made a point.
| | 01:52 | And what these points do is actually
it's going to kind of show you the way
| | 01:56 | these bones are pointing.
It's kind of just a visual reference.
| | 01:59 | So what I want to do is create a
way to control each of these joints.
| | 02:03 | Now remember, in our last chapter how
we played with constraints and how our
| | 02:09 | constraint can almost act like a
hierarchy without actually being a hierarchy.
| | 02:15 | Well, that's exactly what we're
going to do is we're going to actually
| | 02:19 | constrain the position and rotation
of each of these spine joints to these
| | 02:26 | particular control objects.
| | 02:28 | Okay, so first thing I wanted to do
is actually start positioning these.
| | 02:32 | So let's go into Side Viewport here.
| | 02:36 | What I need to do is snap these so that
they are coincident with these joints.
| | 02:41 | So I'm going to go ahead and turn on
Snap the Points and just snap those.
| | 02:47 | So if you notice that's snapped in, I
can do this in the Perspective view as
| | 02:51 | well, I can just snap that.
| | 02:53 | So now those are snapping
to the individual joints.
| | 02:56 | Now, what I also need to do is create a
couple more for each of these spine joints.
| | 03:00 | So what I'm going to do is select this one
here called SPINE01 and just do Edit > Duplicate.
| | 03:07 | Okay, and now that creates a SPINE02,
and I can snap that up here, and again,
| | 03:14 | Apple+D, or Ctrl+D, to Duplicate and one more.
| | 03:19 | Okay, so now I have got all of my
spine joints and my center of gravity.
| | 03:24 | Now, the one thing I need to do, also, is
I really want to have a sense as to how
| | 03:33 | these joints are pointed this way as well.
| | 03:35 | So I'm actually going to go ahead and
turn off Snap here, and I'm going to rotate
| | 03:40 | these so that they kind of line up
with each of these little abdomen joints.
| | 03:44 | Now once I rotate them, I
want to zero them out.
| | 03:47 | If you notice here when I
rotate it, it goes RotateX and 7.768.
| | 03:53 | So once I get that done I want to do a
Freeze Transformations, and that will
| | 03:57 | zero everything out.
| | 04:02 | Because one of the things is
as we rig characters here--oops.
| | 04:07 | Is you really do want everything to be
zeroed out, so Freeze Transformations is
| | 04:11 | really an important thing.
| | 04:12 | If you notice here, we have got all
these rotations and translations here and
| | 04:16 | they're all different numbers that
don't make a lot of sense, but once I freeze
| | 04:20 | it, everything goes to 0.
| | 04:22 | So that way I know I can always get my
character back to 0 just by typing in the number 0.
| | 04:30 | So now, if I ever need this to go back
to exactly 0, like I'm rigging something,
| | 04:36 | I can just literally type in 0 and also the same
for the center of gravity, Freeze Transformations.
| | 04:41 | Now, what we want to do is create a
hierarchy, but also what we need to do is we
| | 04:48 | need to create constraints so that
these bones follow these control objects.
| | 04:55 | So first thing we want to do is
just go ahead and create a hierarchy.
| | 04:58 | So I'm going to go into my Outliner,
my center of gravity is this object, and
| | 05:02 | then I just want SPINE01 to be a
child of that, SPINE02, again, highlight
| | 05:08 | SPINE02, middle click drag over SPINE01,
same as SPINE03 to SPINE02, and same
| | 05:17 | as SPINE04 to SPINE03.
| | 05:20 | So now I have got this kind of set up in
a little bit of a hierarchy, so I can
| | 05:24 | actually move up and down the hierarchy.
| | 05:26 | And this hierarchy now will control
this hierarchy, the hierarchy of joints
| | 05:31 | that is our skeleton.
Okay, so how do we do that?
| | 05:36 | All we have to do is do a Point and
an Orient Constraint on each of these.
| | 05:40 | So I select my controlling object,
which is my center of gravity, and then I
| | 05:47 | Shift-select my hips, so Skel_Hips is my object.
| | 05:57 | And then what I do is do Constrain >
Point > Maintain offset, Add. Constrain >
| | 06:04 | Orient > Maintain offset, Add.
So what do we got here?
| | 06:10 | So now when I move this
particular object, the skeleton follows.
| | 06:17 | When I rotate it, the skeleton follows.
| | 06:20 | But the really cool thing is this is
outside of the hierarchy of the hips, so
| | 06:27 | I have got all of this stuff
outside of the hierarchy of the hips.
| | 06:30 | And when I look in my Geometry, this is
also outside my character, so now I can
| | 06:35 | just select anyone of these outside of
my character, and I have controls that
| | 06:40 | are easily accessible, and
that's the big point of rigging.
| | 06:44 | And so, let's just go ahead and do
that for the rest of these objects.
| | 06:49 | I'm just going to go ahead and zoom in here.
| | 06:52 | I'm going to use my Select tool here,
select my SPINE01, Shift-select this
| | 06:58 | joint, Skel_Spine01, Constrain > Point.
Now it should default to Maintain offset.
| | 07:04 | You really should just be able to go to
Constrain > Point, Constrain > Orient.
| | 07:07 | Okay, and then we select the
controlling object, which is 02.
| | 07:11 | Constrain > Point > Orient, Point > Orient
and for the last one for 04, Point and Orient.
| | 07:26 | There we go.
| | 07:27 | Now I have got joints that will
rotate and so on and so forth.
| | 07:39 | And because I have got a Point
Constraint on there, I can't stretch the spine.
| | 07:43 | Okay, now this may not be something
you want to do, if so, you can just lock
| | 07:47 | down translation here by just doing
right-click and just take off translations.
| | 07:52 | So you can just do right-click, and you can just
do a Lock Selected, and that would lock Translation.
| | 07:58 | If you're going to do some cartoony
animation, then you can actually stretch
| | 08:01 | your character which is kind of cool.
So that's the basics of the spine.
| | 08:05 | So now we have got a spine, and now
we're going to work on the arms next.
| | 08:10 | So let's go ahead and go there.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging arms for forward kinematics| 00:00 | Now that we have the spine rigged,
let's go ahead and move on to the arms.
| | 00:04 | The arms, we're probably going
to take several steps for those.
| | 00:07 | First, we'll rig them for Forward
Kinematics, then we'll rig them for Inverse
| | 00:12 | Kinematics, and then we're going
to move on to the hands after that.
| | 00:16 | So let's go ahead and load up what
we have so far, which is Chap04_04.
| | 00:23 | And there is the rig with our spine
and everything else working perfectly.
| | 00:29 | So what I did was I created some
controls that we can use to rig the arms.
| | 00:34 | And just to make things easy, we're going to
import that, Chap04_04_controls, so Import.
| | 00:42 | And we have several circles--my
favorite thing--which we can put around the
| | 00:47 | arms, and then I have this
spline box which we'll use for ARM_IK.
| | 00:52 | So let's take a look at
what the names are of these.
| | 00:54 | We have L_BICEP, L_ELBOW, L_WRIST, and ARM_IK.
So let's start by rigging these.
| | 01:04 | The first thing I want to do is
to look at this in the Outliner.
| | 01:08 | We do need to make these into a
hierarchy, so if I zoom out here you can see
| | 01:12 | that when I move the hips, the
arm controls don't move anywhere.
| | 01:17 | So I'm going to undo that.
| | 01:18 | And so what we have is we have
the L_BICEP, L_ELBOW, L_WRIST.
| | 01:22 | Okay, now, what I have here is I
have the circular ones here for Forward
| | 01:26 | Kinematics and the box is for Inverse
Kinematics, it's kind of a pneumonic
| | 01:30 | thing, so visually, you can kind of tell
the difference between the types of controls.
| | 01:35 | So what I want to do is actually
build these into a hierarchy and link that
| | 01:39 | hierarchy to the spine.
| | 01:40 | So first thing I'm going to do is
take the L_BICEP. And actually what I'm
| | 01:44 | going to do is I'm going to take the center
of gravity, and I'm going to expand all these.
| | 01:49 | So I have SPINE04 is my topmost spine joint.
| | 01:53 | And so I'm going to take my L_BICEP, and
I'm going to middle click and drag over
| | 01:59 | SPINE04, and so now it's a child of SPINE04.
| | 02:04 | So when you move the spine,
at least that one moves.
| | 02:07 | And we'll do the same for the L_ELBOW,
which will go below L_BICEP, and L_WRIST,
| | 02:13 | which goes below L_ELBOW.
| | 02:15 | So now I have got this is a child of this,
which is a child of this, which is a
| | 02:20 | child of that, so now it all
kind of moves together. Great.
| | 02:25 | So how do we get these to
control the rotation of the arm?
| | 02:33 | Remember our good friend, the
Constraint? Let's use that.
| | 02:37 | Let's use an Orient Constraint.
| | 02:39 | Now the thing with this that is a little
bit different than the spine is that we
| | 02:44 | really don't need to control
the position of these arms.
| | 02:48 | You don't need to control the length.
| | 02:49 | So let's just do an Orient
Constraint and not a Position Constraint.
| | 02:55 | Now, one thing I did do, I did snap
these to the joint, okay, so that each one of
| | 03:03 | these is actually snapped to the center
of each joint. So that way they all line
| | 03:08 | up and so when they rotate, they
all rotate around the same axis.
| | 03:12 | So let's just set up these
Constraints, so what we're going to do is the
| | 03:16 | constraining object is the circle,
constrained object is the joint, so we're
| | 03:19 | going to start with the bicep,
Constrain > Orient Constraint.
| | 03:24 | Let's make sure we have
Maintain offset checked, Add.
| | 03:27 | Constrain, this one, okay, and constrain
this to the wrist, okay. And there we go.
| | 03:43 | So what we can do is we rotate each
one of these, and it all works perfectly.
| | 03:51 | I'm going to undo that, get that into the right
place, and so this moves the wrist as well. Perfect.
| | 04:00 | Okay, now there is one thing I want to do,
which is I do have this little forearm bone.
| | 04:07 | Now, the reason I do that is that
because the wrist rotates, I want the forearm
| | 04:13 | bone to rotate along with the wrist,
around that axis that it's going to rotate
| | 04:17 | around, which is this axis
here, which is the X axis.
| | 04:21 | So as this wrist rotates around X, I
want the forearm to kind of follow so that
| | 04:26 | way we have more of a smoother
definition that starts kind of down here towards
| | 04:31 | the middle of the arm, rather
than just rotating at the wrist.
| | 04:33 | This will give you a much
more realistic deformation.
| | 04:35 | I'm going to go ahead and
turn off this Geometry layer.
| | 04:38 | So when I rotate this, I want
this to rotate around the X axis.
| | 04:43 | For every two degrees that the wrist
rotates, this will rotate one degree.
| | 04:48 | So basically, it will rotate half as
fast as the wrist, and that will kind of
| | 04:52 | split the difference for the geometry,
and it'll make for a smoother definition.
| | 04:55 | So how are we going to do that?
| | 04:57 | Easiest way if you know exactly what
the number is is to use an Expression.
| | 05:01 | So first thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to use my little trick here.
| | 05:05 | I need to get the value of this X rotation.
| | 05:07 | I need to get the name of
that attribute variable.
| | 05:10 | So I'll right-click over this on the
circle here and go to Expressions, and it's
| | 05:14 | called L_WRIST.rotateX.
| | 05:16 | So I'm going to go ahead and copy that to
my clipboard using the keyboard shortcut.
| | 05:20 | And now it's time to create the Expression.
| | 05:23 | So I have essentially the driver in my
clipboard, so now let's go ahead and get
| | 05:28 | to my driven here, if we're
using Set Driven Key syntax.
| | 05:31 | So I want RotateX to have the actual Expression.
| | 05:37 | So now I'm going to paste this here,
L_WRIST.rotateX, and that's going to be
| | 05:43 | my Skel_LForearm.rotateX is going to be equal
to L_WRIST.rotateX, so I cut and paste that.
| | 05:51 | But I only wanted this to be half of that
rotation so I divide, which is your slash, by 2.
| | 05:56 | So my forearm rotation is going to
be the wrist rotation over 2, Create.
| | 06:02 | So now, you can see when I rotate this,
the forearm will also rotate, but it
| | 06:09 | only rotates at half the speed.
| | 06:11 | So when this is at 21, this is
at 10.5, which is half of 21.
| | 06:18 | So let's go ahead and undo that.
| | 06:20 | So those are the basic things you need to do
to get Forward Kinematics to work on the arm.
| | 06:25 | So let's go ahead and move to Inverse Kinematics,
and we'll do that in the next section.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging arms for inverse kinematics| 00:00 | So before we rig the hand, I want you
to go ahead, and as an exercise, rig the
| | 00:04 | right arm by yourself.
| | 00:06 | And the techniques are identical just
use the same techniques for the right arm,
| | 00:10 | then we'll go ahead and rig the hand.
| | 00:12 | Once Forward Kinematics is set up,
let's go ahead and configure the arm for
| | 00:16 | Inverse Kinematics as well.
| | 00:19 | So we're going to go ahead and Open
the scene Chap04_05, and this is pretty
| | 00:26 | much where we're at.
| | 00:27 | We have these arms set
up for Forward Kinematics.
| | 00:31 | So now what we want to do is create an IK
Chain and use this box as the controller.
| | 00:39 | But also, what we want to do is be able
to switch IK on and off so that way we
| | 00:45 | can switch between Forward and
Inverse Kinematics on the arm.
| | 00:48 | Well, the first thing we need to do
is create an IK Handle, or an IK Chain.
| | 00:53 | So we go to the IK Handle tool.
| | 00:55 | We can either do it here on the Shelf
or in the Skeleton Menu, click on the
| | 01:00 | bicep and on the wrist,
and there's our IK Handle.
| | 01:08 | Now, we have got a couple of things we want to do.
| | 01:10 | First thing we want to do is we want to
control it by this box here called L_ARM_IK.
| | 01:16 | So easiest way to do that is just
the same way we did it with the feet.
| | 01:21 | We take this IK Handle.
| | 01:22 | And I'm actually going to rename this
ikHandle_LArm, click and drag it in the
| | 01:29 | Outliner to L_ARM_IK.
So now this is a child of that.
| | 01:35 | Minimize my Outliner.,
and there it goes. Perfect.
| | 01:43 | But we have got a couple of problems.
| | 01:45 | First thing is that these little
controls for the Forward Kinematics aren't
| | 01:49 | really moving with the geometry here, right?
| | 01:52 | Because when we Translate
using IK, these don't Translate.
| | 01:59 | So what we need to do is Constrain them,
but we're going to Constrain them in
| | 02:03 | the opposite direction.
| | 02:04 | Now with the spine, what we did was we
constrained the spine so that the joint
| | 02:08 | followed the controller. Right?
| | 02:10 | But what we can do here is we can
have the controller follow the joint.
| | 02:14 | So I select the joint, Shift-select
the elbow controller, Constrain > Point.
| | 02:22 | Just make sure Maintain offset is checked, Add.
| | 02:26 | Now when I move this, I select the cube, and I
move it, and now that moves with my arm. Perfect.
| | 02:35 | Let's do the same thing
with the wrist. Now, perfect.
| | 02:45 | Now, I don't have to do it with the bicep,
because that's the root of the chain.
| | 02:49 | It doesn't need to move.
| | 02:51 | So I have got this set up, but the one
thing I want to do is also be able to
| | 02:56 | turn IK on and off.
| | 02:58 | Now, how I can do that is again with
an Expression and a custom attribute on
| | 03:04 | this particular box.
| | 03:05 | So I select this box, and I'm
going to create a custom attribute.
| | 03:09 | So right-click there, Add Attribute,
Attribute name, IK--let's just call it IK_FK.
| | 03:17 | Okay, and in this one, I'm actually going to
give it a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 10.
| | 03:24 | Now the IK in the actual parameter for
the IK Handle goes from 0 to 1, but if we
| | 03:32 | go here from 0 to 10, it's going to
be a lot easier to do fractional value.
| | 03:37 | So I'm actually going to multiply it
by 10, and that will actually give us a
| | 03:41 | little bit more control when it comes
to turning IK on and off. So hit OK.
| | 03:45 | So now I have this parameter.
| | 03:47 | And what I want this parameter to do or
this attribute is going to control, I'll
| | 03:52 | go to my IK Handle, it's
going to control this Ik Blend.
| | 03:57 | Okay, so first thing we need to do is
we need to know the name of the parameter
| | 04:01 | that's controlling our IK.
| | 04:03 | So easiest way for me to do it is just
go up back in the Expressions window,
| | 04:07 | right-click and drag, Expressions.
| | 04:09 | No, we're not going to create an
Expression for this, we're just going in here
| | 04:13 | to get to snag the name.
| | 04:14 | So I'm just going to hit Copy,
and I'm going to close that.
| | 04:18 | The name of this particular
variable is in my clipboard.
| | 04:21 | Now, we're going to
actually create the Expression.
| | 04:23 | I select my IK Handle, scroll
down, Ik Blend, Expressions.
| | 04:29 | Okay, now very quickly, I'm going to
paste what I have in my clipboard, which is
| | 04:34 | what is going to be controlling it.
I go to the very beginning.
| | 04:37 | In this I hit equals, and now I
cut and paste this. I do copy, paste.
| | 04:44 | So now my IK Handle, Ik Blend is equal
to this over 10, because this particular
| | 04:53 | variable is going from 0 to 10, this
has to go from 0 to 1, so I need to divide
| | 04:58 | this by 10, and I hit Create.
| | 05:00 | So now you can see this is purple, which
means it's controlled by an expression.
| | 05:03 | So now, all I have to do here is go
from my IK_FK to 10, and it works.
| | 05:10 | If I bring it down to 0, it doesn't work.
Again just like the IK Handle.
| | 05:18 | So now I have got a fairly good arm.
| | 05:21 | The one thing I also want to do is I do want
to constrain--just like we did with the knee--
| | 05:25 | I want to constrain the Pole Vector of
this IK Handle. So I'm going to go ahead
| | 05:30 | and select the IK Handle, and we're
going to set up a Pole Vector, so we can
| | 05:34 | control the elbow direction.
| | 05:35 | So I actually need to select the
controller first and the controlled, second.
| | 05:39 | So I'm going to select this box, here,
which is called L_ARM_IK_POLE, hold down
| | 05:45 | the Shift key, drag, and now all
were going to do is go Constrain > Pole
| | 05:50 | Vector, and now let's turn on IK, and
you can see here that this controls the
| | 06:02 | direction of the elbow. Undo all that.
| | 06:07 | Okay, so that's the basics of setting
up an arm that has IK and FK, and there's
| | 06:14 | actually a couple of different methods.
| | 06:16 | I'm sure if you looked at different
rigs, you'd find different variations of
| | 06:19 | this technique on how to do it, but I
find this one works pretty good, so this
| | 06:24 | is one way of doing it.
| | 06:25 | So you can certainly experiment and
play with it and do different types of IK,
| | 06:29 | if you want, or setting up your IK
differently, depending upon how the rig is
| | 06:33 | but you get the general idea with this.
| | 06:35 | Okay, so now we're going to move on to hand
controls, and that will be the next lesson.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging hands and fingers| 00:00 | Now hopefully you have got all of
your arms rigged, and let's go ahead and
| | 00:04 | move on to the hands.
| | 00:06 | The hands are very
tedious, that's all I can say.
| | 00:09 | You have got a lot of fingers
and a lot of controls to put in.
| | 00:13 | So what we're going to do is we're
going to create controls for one finger, and
| | 00:17 | then you can pretty much interpolate
those yourself and spread those out to the
| | 00:20 | rest of all the hands.
| | 00:21 | So let's go ahead and do one
finger of one of these hands.
| | 00:25 | We're going to go ahead
and Open the scene Chap04_06.
| | 00:27 | And we have got the left-hand affect.
Let's work on the left index finger.
| | 00:32 | So what I want to do is I want to have one
kind of central source of control for the hand.
| | 00:39 | So the wrist here pretty
much rotates everything around.
| | 00:44 | So this L_WRIST control, I want that to
control all of the hands, so by rotating
| | 00:50 | it, I can rotate the wrist, and then
I'm going to insert a bunch of custom
| | 00:54 | parameters here to control all of the fingers.
Okay, so how do we do that?
| | 00:58 | The first thing we need to do
is add in some custom attributes.
| | 01:02 | So I'll right-click here and go Add
Attribute, and let's start adding them in.
| | 01:07 | So let's call this L_index00 for the
index finger JOINT0, and let's just give it
| | 01:15 | a minimum of 0, so we can't go below 0.
| | 01:18 | I'm going to copy this using my
keyboard shortcut, then I'm going to hit Add.
| | 01:23 | Okay, so there's L_index00, and I'm
just going to paste L_index01, L_index02.
| | 01:35 | Okay, so those are the
three joints in my finger.
| | 01:38 | And then I'm going to need
one more to spread the finger.
| | 01:43 | I'm going to rotate around the joints, the
left index finger can also move back and forth.
| | 01:48 | I'm going to Add that.
| | 01:50 | So for Spread you can move it this
way, but you can also move it this way.
| | 01:54 | Okay, so we're going to go
ahead and add that attribute.
| | 01:57 | Okay, so here's how we do it.
We're going to do this with a Set Driven Key.
| | 02:02 | First thing I'm going to do is let's
go ahead and do all the rotation of the
| | 02:08 | fingers, so we can get the finger to
curl, and then we'll do the spread.
| | 02:12 | The first thing we want to figure out
is what attribute we want to control.
| | 02:15 | And I believe it's going to be Rotate Z, yes.
| | 02:18 | So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to
highlight that, right-click, Set Driven Key.
| | 02:24 | And we used Expressions for the
other one, let's use Set Driven Keys.
| | 02:27 | You can obviously use Expressions if you want.
It's really up to you.
| | 02:30 | But let's use Set Driven Keys just to
make this a little more interesting.
| | 02:33 | Okay, so that comes up in the Driven, now
what's going to be the Driver? The wrist.
| | 02:39 | So grab the wrist and load Driver.
| | 02:44 | Scroll down, we have our L_index00, L_index01,
and L_index02 and our L_index_Spread.
| | 02:49 | So this is our L_index00, so we do
L_index00, and let's just go ahead and set a
| | 02:54 | key for the 0 on both of them.
| | 02:56 | Now, I'm going to set this here, and
let's set this to, oh, let's say 60.
| | 03:03 | I don't think we're going
to rotate that more than 60.
| | 03:05 | Let's bring it to 75.
| | 03:06 | So we're going to make this 75 degrees,
and this we're going to rotate this down
| | 03:12 | to--okay, now this is
rotating in negative space.
| | 03:14 | We're going to rotate that to -75,
and I'm going to hit the Key.
| | 03:19 | So now, when this goes from 0, okay, so
this is why I set a 0 limit on this, so
| | 03:25 | it doesn't go below 0, up to 75.
| | 03:30 | If it goes above 75, it kind of
limits it so that's actually kind of nice.
| | 03:34 | And now all we have to do is do
the same for the other three joints.
| | 03:38 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this next joint, L_index01, load Driven.
| | 03:41 | Now the Driver is the same, L_WRIST, but
it's just a different attribute in that object.
| | 03:47 | So again, it's going to be L_index01
is going to control Rotate Z of this
| | 03:53 | particular object of this joint Key.
Now select the wrist, bring that up to 75.
| | 04:03 | Select this, we can even type that in,
which is -75 and hit Key. Let's do the same.
| | 04:10 | Okay, I'm just going to bring this back to 0.
Okay, so that works, cool.
| | 04:16 | Actually, I didn't set a limit on this
one, so I can do that by right-clicking
| | 04:21 | here, Edit Attribute, select that, Has minimum.
| | 04:25 | Okay, so that sets my minimum, and
let's do that for the rest of them.
| | 04:29 | I forgot to do that.
| | 04:31 | So L_index02 and L_index_Spread, I
don't know what the minimums or maximums are
| | 04:35 | going to be in this, so
I'm not going to do that.
| | 04:40 | So let's go to this last one here, and
we're going to go ahead and select this
| | 04:44 | joint, Index02, load Driven, and so
the Driver is going to be L_index02, and
| | 04:52 | the attribute here is going to be Rotate Z,
everything is at 0, hit Key, bring this up.
| | 04:58 | L_index02, bring that to 75, bring
this to -75, and hit another Key.
| | 05:11 | So now, what I have got here,
we will bring them all to 0.
| | 05:16 | So what I'm doing here, if you
haven't caught on, what you can do is if you
| | 05:22 | select anything here in the Channel box,
and you middle click and drag in the
| | 05:27 | Viewport, it will change the value.
| | 05:29 | So I have highlighted all of these,
middle click and drag, and there's my finger,
| | 05:34 | and it totally curls. Great.
| | 05:36 | Now, what we need to do is do one
more for the Spread of the finger.
| | 05:42 | So that is the rotation here, and we're
going to rotate that from, along the Y axis,
| | 05:49 | from about 50 to about -50,
or somewhere around there.
| | 05:53 | You know, typically when we do this, we
usually give it a little bit more than it needs.
| | 05:58 | So that way it gives the
animator a little bit of freedom.
| | 06:02 | So this one here, Rotate Y,
we're going to do a Set Driven Key,
| | 06:07 | right-click, drag, let go.
| | 06:11 | We still have that Driver here, if not we
could just select that and just go Load Driver.
| | 06:17 | So the L_index_Spread is going to
control Rotate Y. Okay, now, and we can Key it
| | 06:24 | here, but that's just
going to Key it in the middle.
| | 06:26 | We need to actually make two or three Keys.
I'm going to make three Keys.
| | 06:30 | I'm just going to Key it in the middle
so that 0 is 0, and then I'm going to
| | 06:35 | L_index_Spread here, and I'm going
to bring it over here to, say, -50.
| | 06:41 | And I am going to select this and make
that -50, and then I'm going to Key, and
| | 06:50 | let's just do the opposite.
| | 06:51 | I'm going to select again my Driver
just bring it to +50. Oops. Sorry. +50.
| | 07:02 | Bring this to +50 and Key.
| | 07:09 | So now, my Spread goes from 0, here
we go, very good. Let me 0 that out.
| | 07:23 | Now, I think 50 might have
been a little bit too much.
| | 07:26 | I probably have done it maybe 20 or 30
degrees, make it a little bit more natural.
| | 07:31 | I think I over did it a little bit.
But that's the basic way you do that.
| | 07:34 | Now that's for one finger.
| | 07:35 | We have got one, two, three, plus the
thumb, plus another five on the other hand.
| | 07:41 | So you have got your work cut out for
you, so do I, because I'm going to have
| | 07:45 | to do this for you anyway, so we'll have a
final rig at the end so that's the method.
| | 07:50 | So by the time you get to your last
finger, you'll have memorized this, and
| | 07:53 | you'll be really good at it.
| | 07:55 | So practice makes perfect, and by the
end of this, you'll definitely be perfect.
| | 07:58 | So we're going to pick this up and
finalize the rig in the next section.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finalizing the rig| 00:01 | Okay, so now we have done all of the
fingers, and I did too, and that was a little
| | 00:06 | bit of work, but not too much, and you
kind of get the hang of it, and it goes
| | 00:11 | pretty quickly. So let's a take a look at it.
So, we're going to open a scene 04_07.
| | 00:15 | And that should have everything.
So, let's take a look at these fingers first.
| | 00:19 | I am going to select this Wrist
Controller here, and you'll notice that I added
| | 00:24 | all of the fingers here.
| | 00:25 | Now, they all pretty much work the
same as the index finger except you
| | 00:29 | probably notice this when you
started rigging the thumb that it actually
| | 00:33 | rotated along the Y axis, rather than
the Z axis, and it actually spread along
| | 00:40 | the Z axis, rather than Y axis.
So the axes were kind of reversed for the thumb.
| | 00:44 | It was pretty much the same as the index
finger and did the same for both hands.
| | 00:49 | So, now that we have got this rig pretty
much done, we need to just kind of do
| | 00:55 | some house cleaning here and clean it up so
that we can get ready to actually do our skinning.
| | 01:01 | So the first thing we did was when
imported some of these controls, I actually
| | 01:05 | created the separate layer.
| | 01:06 | So, let's go ahead and
layer everything properly.
| | 01:10 | Turn off Skeleton, and then we have got--
the controls are in this layer, but we
| | 01:15 | also have this layer here
which has some additional controls.
| | 01:18 | So what I'm going to do is select
this layer, right-click on it and just
| | 01:23 | say delete the layer.
| | 01:24 | Okay, that takes what we have out of the layer just
kind of puts it out without any particular layers.
| | 01:30 | So if we turn off all layers, these
are the ones that are left, so I'm just
| | 01:34 | going to go ahead and left-click and
drag and select them all and right-click
| | 01:38 | and just go Add Selected Objects.
| | 01:39 | Okay, there are still some that
aren't showing up here. There we go.
| | 01:44 | Now, those are all of our controls.
| | 01:48 | There's our Skeleton, there's
our Geometry. Perfect. Looks good.
| | 01:53 | Okay, now one other thing is we need
to organize our Controls, so we have a
| | 01:58 | little bit more organization here.
So, let's get into our Outliner.
| | 02:01 | You'll see a lot of the stuff is just kind
of sitting out here in the middle of nowhere.
| | 02:06 | And so what we should probably do is
create kind of a master node so that we can
| | 02:11 | have one node for all of the controls.
| | 02:13 | So I'm going to go ahead and minimize
this for now, and I'm just going to draw a
| | 02:17 | circle on the ground.
| | 02:18 | I'm going to go to my Top view,
and I'm going to go to the Curves, do
| | 02:24 | NURBS Circle and just create a
circle that's big enough to kind of
| | 02:27 | surround the character there.
| | 02:29 | And I want to set this all to 0, 0, 0, 0,
everything, so we're going to 0 all of
| | 02:38 | that so that way we know that it starts at 0.
| | 02:41 | And let's name this circle CHAR_MASTER so
that way we know what the master control is.
| | 02:49 | So now that we have that, we can
select all of these other controls and
| | 02:53 | move them in there.
| | 02:54 | I also noticed here that my right
arm isn't quite rigged properly.
| | 03:00 | So I do need to put my right arm under
my spine so that was actually one little
| | 03:06 | problem that we had here.
| | 03:07 | So I'm going to drag my wrist under my
elbow, my elbow under my bicep, and the
| | 03:13 | bicep under SPINE04, and that should do it.
| | 03:17 | So now we have our L_ARM_IK,
the IK_Pole, IK, IK Pole.
| | 03:28 | And our L_FOOT, R_FOOT, KNEE and then
this CHAR_MASTER here should move everything.
| | 03:31 | It just moves our Skeleton around so
that way if we want to position it, we can.
| | 03:35 | So, that's pretty much it.
| | 03:37 | So, now we have got three kind of main
nodes, we have got our Geometry here, our
| | 03:42 | Skeleton and then Character, and then
we also have camera_group here, which
| | 03:46 | we are going to have to just kind of
move down here, let's move this up, so
| | 03:50 | they are all the same.
So these are our CONTROLS.
| | 03:53 | This is our Skeleton, and this is our Geometry.
So, let's move on to Skinning.
| | 03:59 | We're going to go ahead and save this.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. Skinning CharactersBinding skin| 00:00 | Once we have the Rig built,
it's time to skin the character.
| | 00:05 | Now skinning, essentially, what it does
is it takes the geometry, or the skin, of
| | 00:10 | the character, and it attaches
it, or binds, it to the skeleton.
| | 00:15 | So when the skeleton moves, the
actual geometry of the character deforms to
| | 00:21 | match the skeleton, okay, very simple.
| | 00:24 | Before we get into rigging the actual
character, let's go through some of the
| | 00:27 | basic tools so we understand where we're at.
| | 00:30 | Let's do some simple cases, and then
we'll go to the more complex character.
| | 00:34 | First thing we need to need to do
is set our project, so we'll go Set.
| | 00:38 | And we're going to set this to 05_skinning,
and then we're going to Open the
| | 00:42 | file, and we're in 05_Skinning,
scenes, 05_01. Very simple.
| | 00:52 | It's a very simple scene, essentially,
a cylinder with two joints in it.
| | 00:58 | And these joints can be
used to deform the cylinder.
| | 01:00 | Now if you think about it this is
pretty close to like the arm or the leg of a
| | 01:05 | character, so this actually
has some practical application.
| | 01:07 | So let's go ahead and attach a skin.
Now, there's two ways of doing that.
| | 01:12 | There's a thing called Smooth and Rigid Bind.
| | 01:15 | And let me show you some
of the differences, okay?
| | 01:18 | I'm going to go into the Side Viewport.
I'm going to select the Joint Chain.
| | 01:22 | Shift-select Geometry. Geometry is selected last.
You select the joints first, Geometry last.
| | 01:31 | Skin > Bind Skin, let's do Rigid Bind
first so I can show what that looks like.
| | 01:38 | Rigid Bind is kind of the old
fashion way that Maya used to bind.
| | 01:43 | In fact, that was the only thing you
could do in Maya 1, and that's kind of why
| | 01:48 | it hangs out still in Maya 8.5.
| | 01:51 | Rigid Bind, you notice what happens, is
that basically, what happens is that the
| | 01:58 | vertices that are closest to the bone
or the joint are attached to that joint.
| | 02:04 | So there's really no smoothness to that.
If we want we can Create what's called a Flexor.
| | 02:13 | What a Flexor is it's like a
lattice that goes around the joint.
| | 02:16 | Here, you can see a lot bit better in
this case here, you just do shade here, so
| | 02:21 | it's like a lattice that goes around the joint.
| | 02:24 | And what that does is it allows you to
deform things, it allows you to get a
| | 02:30 | little bit smoother deformation.
| | 02:31 | But again, with the Rigid Bind, that's
pretty much all you get--you get extra
| | 02:36 | tools, but it's not very robust at
all, and it's not very customizable.
| | 02:41 | So that's kind of where we'll leave it
and the fact is it's kind of there just
| | 02:46 | because it's from older versions of Maya.
| | 02:47 | Okay, so let me show you Smooth Bind, and
I'll show you the differences between that.
| | 02:53 | So, actually I'm going to go
ahead and reopen the same scene 05_01.
| | 02:56 | Don't save, okay so that's exact same shot.
| | 03:01 | And we're going to select the
joint again or the Joint Chain.
| | 03:07 | Shift-select the Geometry,
Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind.
| | 03:14 | Now we rotate this joint, and you'll
see that it's a lot smoother already.
| | 03:21 | Okay, there's a little bit
of rigidness going on there.
| | 03:24 | But you can see that this Smooth Bind
has a lot more joint controls, it's not
| | 03:30 | rigid that there is
smoothness between the joints.
| | 03:33 | And how this works is each vertex in
the mesh is assigned a relative weight, so
| | 03:41 | it's almost like a field.
| | 03:42 | So, if it's closer to the first joint
that it's going to get more strength
| | 03:47 | from that first joint.
| | 03:48 | If it's closer to the second joint, it's
going to get more strength from that joint.
| | 03:52 | So, these ones at the very end are
getting maximum 100% influence from that joint.
| | 03:58 | So here it's 100% influence from
joint1, and down here it's 100% influence
| | 04:02 | from joint2 or joint3, okay?
| | 04:09 | Now there are bunch of other tools
that we can use with Smooth Bind.
| | 04:13 | In fact, that's what we're going to use
for this character, I just want to show
| | 04:17 | Rigid Bind just so you know it's there.
| | 04:19 | But we're going to be dealing exclusively with
Smooth Bind, because that's what everybody uses.
| | 04:22 | We're going to go through a Smooth
Bind in much greater depth in the next
| | 04:26 | lesson, so this is just kind of an introduction.
| | 04:28 | Now, we're going to get
more deeply into Smooth Bind.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Painting skin weights| 00:00 | Now that we have gone over some of the
basic skinning methods, let's focus a
| | 00:04 | little bit more intently on Smooth Bind,
because that's the one that we're going
| | 00:09 | to be using throughout this tutorial.
| | 00:11 | Smooth Bind has a lot of options for
manipulating and attaching the mesh to the skeleton.
| | 00:18 | You can paint weights, you can edit them
numerically, you can also mirror weights.
| | 00:23 | Now, let's go through some of those tools.
| | 00:25 | First of all, let's go ahead and go a little
more in depth into Smooth Bind and how it works.
| | 00:31 | So I'm going to go ahead and open a
file, and that's called Chapter05_02.
| | 00:37 | It's a real simple object, it's a
polygonal object, kind of like a T Shape, and
| | 00:42 | we have got some bones here.
| | 00:43 | We have got this main bone, we have got arm,
lower, and right arm, and so on and so forth.
| | 00:51 | Okay, so let's go ahead and attach
this to the mesh using Smooth Bind.
| | 00:54 | Now, let's recall how we do that.
| | 00:56 | We select our Skeleton, Shift-select the
Geometry, Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind.
| | 01:03 | I'm going to go to my options here.
Let's go through some of these options.
| | 01:07 | First of all, we have Bind To.
What are we binding to?
| | 01:11 | We're binding to either the
Joint Hierarchy, Selected Joints.
| | 01:14 | So, if you only want to bind to the
last five joints in the chain, you can do
| | 01:18 | that, or you can also
bind to an Object Hierarchy.
| | 01:21 | So if you want, you can create bones out
of boxes or really any sort of objects.
| | 01:27 | You don't have to use Maya's joints,
but we are, so let's go ahead and keep it
| | 01:32 | there, Bind method to Closest in
hierarchy or Closest in distance.
| | 01:38 | Okay, typically we're going to draw
our hierarchy close to where our mesh is.
| | 01:42 | So, let's keep it to Closest in hierarchy.
| | 01:44 | Now, this one here Maximum influences,
that one actually can be lowered.
| | 01:49 | One of the things you'll find is
you'll get a lot of extraneous influences on
| | 01:53 | vertices, and typically, only two or three
joints should be affecting any given vertex.
| | 01:59 | So, you can bring down that
maximum number of influences.
| | 02:03 | We're going to keep it at the default
for now, but just keep that in mind when
| | 02:07 | you go to skin a character.
| | 02:08 | Then after bind, you want to
maintain the maximum number of influences.
| | 02:14 | So that's even, once it's bound,
it will maintain that number, okay?
| | 02:19 | Drop-off rate is, how fast do these
influences drop off from bone to bone?
| | 02:26 | And also, this allows you to remove unused
influences, so it makes it easier to edit.
| | 02:30 | Okay, so, we're going to leave it at the
defaults, and let's just go ahead and bind skin.
| | 02:35 | Now, that we have done that, we can
see how it works. Yeah, it works.
| | 02:39 | Now, when I go to manipulate my
influences and edit skin, one of the things I
| | 02:45 | like to do is actually do some
animation because what you have to do when you
| | 02:49 | edit influences is you have to select
your skin or actually your mesh, and edit it.
| | 02:53 | And then if you want to see how it
works, you kind of have to click off your
| | 02:57 | skin and then move your bone and then click
back on the mesh, and it's kind of tedious.
| | 03:02 | What I do here is I usually select my
bone, Animate > Set Key, and then I just
| | 03:07 | move my time slider out a
little bit and do another Set Key.
| | 03:14 | So now, I have got that, and I can keep
my mesh selected, and all I have to do is
| | 03:23 | run the time slider back and forth, and
I can edit this and see exactly how it's
| | 03:27 | deforming in real time.
| | 03:29 | So, I can always delete these key frames
and they're just temporary for right now.
| | 03:34 | So, when I edit this, I can see very
instantaneously how that's being affected.
| | 03:40 | So let's talk a little bit about editing it.
There's a couple of ways.
| | 03:43 | There's Paint Influences, which uses
the Artisan Interface. And there's the
| | 03:48 | Component Editor, which
allows you to do it numerically.
| | 03:51 | So let's go through the Paint Interface
and then in the next chapter, we'll go
| | 03:56 | through Component Editing.
| | 03:57 | So under Skin, we have an
option here called Edit Smooth Skin.
| | 04:03 | It's got a couple of things here.
First of all, you can add or remove influences.
| | 04:06 | Now, what's an influence?
An influence in this case is a joint.
| | 04:10 | So, we can add or remove joints, or
anything else that will affect the
| | 04:15 | skinning of this character.
| | 04:16 | We can also reset the number of maximum
influences, which we saw in that Options Panel.
| | 04:21 | Now, the one that we want to work with
right now is called the Paint Skin Weights tool.
| | 04:25 | So, let's go ahead and take that, and
go over to our Options and click on it.
| | 04:29 | And lo and behold, we have our standard
Artisan Interface that we have used for a
| | 04:34 | lot of things, including Sculpt
Deformations and Paint Effects, and all that.
| | 04:38 | It's the same set of tools.
| | 04:40 | So what I can do here,
let me turn on Shading here.
| | 04:44 | When you turn on Shading, what you'll see
here is you'll actually see the influences.
| | 04:49 | So, if I select the joint, like, for
example, the Lower ones or Main, you'll
| | 04:54 | see the actual vertices that are
affected are shown in white, those that are
| | 05:00 | unaffected are shown in black, and there's a
gray gradient that goes through the middle here.
| | 05:06 | So, let's take a look at this
arm which is what we animated.
| | 05:09 | So, if we want to affect this, all we have
to do is just start painting the weights.
| | 05:15 | And it's the same tool, so if you hit B,
you can scale your brush, hold down
| | 05:20 | the B key, and drag.
And it's all the other same Artisan Tools.
| | 05:24 | Now, the amount that it's going to
paint will depend on this Value slider here.
| | 05:30 | So, if I want to paint 100% influence,
I just bring it up to 1, and this will
| | 05:35 | work with pressure sensitivity
as well if you have a tablet.
| | 05:38 | So, as you can see, as I'm painting
this 100%, this bone is affecting more
| | 05:44 | and more of the mesh.
| | 05:46 | Now, if I don't want it to
be 100%, I can dial it down.
| | 05:52 | In fact, if I dial it down
to 0, I can remove influence.
| | 06:03 | If I put it somewhere in between, I can
do something somewhere in between, very
| | 06:08 | simple, very intuitive.
But it's also not incredibly precise.
| | 06:13 | You'll find as you start getting into
real serious skinning, you will need to go
| | 06:17 | down to a vertex by vertex level, not
easy to do that with this interface.
| | 06:21 | But this is a great way just rough in
your deformations, and it's also a great
| | 06:27 | way to give good smooth gradation.
| | 06:29 | So, if you have a large piece of skin,
particularly useful in animating like the
| | 06:34 | jaw, the face and those sorts of things.
| | 06:37 | So those are the basics of the
Artisan Paint Skin Weights tool.
| | 06:42 | Let's move next into the Component Editor
where we can edit these values numerically.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing skin weights in the Component Editor| 00:00 | The second method for editing
weights is called the Component Editor.
| | 00:05 | Now, the Component Editor actually
can be used for a lot of things other
| | 00:08 | than editing weights, but that's
what we're going to use it in this
| | 00:12 | particular application.
So let's go ahead and open the file 05_03.
| | 00:19 | Now, this is the same one
that we were playing with before.
| | 00:22 | It's that one that we had painted
weights, and we did this temporary animation
| | 00:28 | so we can kind of see the deformation.
| | 00:30 | But the problem is is that that
deformation is kind of a little bit funky.
| | 00:35 | So there's definitely some
tweaking that we need to do.
| | 00:38 | Let's use the Component Editor to
actually affect these numerically.
| | 00:41 | Now, the Component Editor is under
Window > General Editors > Component Editor.
| | 00:46 | Now, when you bring it up, for me, it
defaults to Smooth Skins, but there are
| | 00:50 | a bunch of other tabs here, Weighted Deformers,
Springs, Particles, a whole bunch of things.
| | 00:55 | Make sure you have Smooth Skins highlighted,
because that's what we're dealing with.
| | 01:01 | Now it is called the Component Editor,
which means you should probably be in
| | 01:05 | Component mode when you're working
with this, which means you're selecting
| | 01:10 | vertices, edges, and so on.
Now we're going to be in Vertex Selection mode.
| | 01:15 | What happens in the Component Editor is
that when you select a vertex, or several
| | 01:23 | vertices, they show up here.
| | 01:27 | So, when you select these vertices,
the weights are shown here, and these
| | 01:36 | are weights per joint.
| | 01:37 | So, I have this joint called Left Arm
01, and so this particular vertex is
| | 01:42 | weighted at 0.26, Lower01 which is this
one here, Main which is the one right in
| | 01:48 | the center, Right arm way over
here, and Top which is way up here.
| | 01:56 | So, all of those joints are
affecting these particular vertices.
| | 02:01 | Now, what I can do is I can actually
type in numbers, and change the weights.
| | 02:05 | Well, the first thing I want to do is I
want to get rid of these small weights.
| | 02:09 | So, I'm just going to go ahead and
select all of these and type in 0, and that
| | 02:14 | just gets rid of them.
Now, for one, I can scrub this.
| | 02:17 | I really didn't have much of affect on
it, but at least it get rids of those.
| | 02:21 | Now, what I want to do here is these ones
are kind of along this lower part of the skin.
| | 02:28 | So, I actually want it to be more
affected by these one called Lower.
| | 02:32 | So what I can do is I can highlight
these and just type in a number, say 0.4.
| | 02:39 | When I do that, you'll see they're
affected less, so they actually deform less.
| | 02:43 | One thing I'd like you to
notice is this Total field.
| | 02:46 | Now all of the weights have to add up to one.
| | 02:50 | So, if I type in a number here, say 0.15,
it's going to redistribute all the
| | 02:56 | rest of the weights over the remaining bones.
| | 02:59 | So, if I type all these in as 0.15,
whatever is left is going to be distributed
| | 03:04 | amongst the other bones.
| | 03:06 | So, it gets frustrating at first, but
you get used to it as that you're going to
| | 03:11 | be typing in numbers here and then the
other numbers are going to be changing.
| | 03:15 | So you can't just specifically type in
very specific numbers for everything, you
| | 03:18 | kind of have to type in here
and then type there and so on.
| | 03:23 | But it all works out, and yeah, okay,
so there. So that works pretty good.
| | 03:27 | So let's go ahead and do this one here.
| | 03:29 | That's kind of getting away--
in fact, I like this one here.
| | 03:33 | It's getting totally pushed in.
| | 03:37 | If you notice, these are 0.2, 0.3,
and this one here is 0.6.
| | 03:41 | Let's go ahead and bring that down let's
say, 0.3, and you'll see it's not being
| | 03:46 | affected as much so that kind of works for that.
| | 03:52 | Now, this one here, a little
too affected by Left Arm 01.
| | 03:56 | So, I'm just going to go
ahead and make that let's say 0.6.
| | 04:01 | And you can see, you can actually
just by typing in the numbers, you can
| | 04:05 | actually see how that's
affected, if you look at all these.
| | 04:09 | So, you can just go through this, and
you get the idea as to how this works.
| | 04:14 | In fact, if you want, you can
even do whole swaths of ones.
| | 04:17 | Like if you wanted to, say, want to
pick all of these, you could actually go
| | 04:21 | through and do giant swaths of ones and
just zero out things, or do whatever you want.
| | 04:27 | So there's a lot of room for customization here.
| | 04:30 | In fact, I can make this bone here control
a vertices way over here if I wanted to. Okay?
| | 04:36 | Now, there are a couple of
different options in the Component Editor.
| | 04:40 | Let me go through some
of the basic options here.
| | 04:42 | Let's go ahead and select
up some components here.
| | 04:45 | One of these, under these options
here is you want it to update, hide zero
| | 04:49 | columns. If you turn that off, what that does
is it brings up all the columns for all the bones.
| | 04:54 | Now sometimes, this is really handy.
| | 04:56 | Let's say you zeroed out a bone, and
you kind of made a mistake, and you wanted
| | 05:00 | to go back and put some weight on that
particular bone, then you can just unhide
| | 05:04 | your Zero Columns and just go
type in the number that you want.
| | 05:07 | There's other options there, you want
to sort it alphabetically, you want to
| | 05:12 | show the path name, change your
precision, and you can also remember the layout
| | 05:19 | so that when you come back in, you can
go right back to where you were, okay?
| | 05:23 | And Layout, you can also load selected
objects and columns and so on and so forth.
| | 05:29 | Okay, so those are the
basics of the Component Editor.
| | 05:32 | Next, we're going to go through a few
more tools for skinning, and then we're
| | 05:35 | going to actually skin our character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Other skinning tools| 00:00 | Before we get to rigging our character
let me show you a few more tools that you
| | 00:04 | can use to modify skins
on our little simple rig.
| | 00:08 | So that way, you can get a clear
understanding of how the tools work.
| | 00:12 | So, let's go ahead and open a file.
We're going to open Chapter05_04.
| | 00:18 | And again, it's that same T-shape structure.
| | 00:21 | So, I'm going to select the skin and
let me go ahead and scrub it, and what I
| | 00:25 | did was I cleaned up using the Component
Editor, and some paint weights, kind of
| | 00:29 | cleaned up this one side.
| | 00:31 | Now let me show you some of these tools,
the first one under Skin > Edit Smooth Skin.
| | 00:37 | The one I want to show
you is Prune Small Weights.
| | 00:39 | Now, what that does is basically it takes away
any weight that's below this specific value.
| | 00:46 | So, that's really great for getting rid
of just kind of really minor influences.
| | 00:51 | So it's a really good tool to use.
| | 00:53 | As soon as you skin the character just
prune all of the small weight and then go
| | 00:57 | ahead and start working with it.
| | 00:58 | Another one that you can
use is Mirror Skin Weights.
| | 01:03 | So, let's take a look at how that works.
| | 01:05 | First, I'm going to scrub this, and
we'll see that we have actually only modified
| | 01:09 | the weights on one side.
| | 01:10 | So, what we can do is
mirror those to the other side.
| | 01:14 | So let's go Skin > Edit Smooth Skin >
Mirror Skin Weights, so I'm going to bring
| | 01:21 | up this dialog box here.
| | 01:22 | So, around what axes are
we going to mirror this?
| | 01:26 | Well, the easiest thing to do is just
look right here, see where that arrow is.
| | 01:30 | We'll see it's actually going along the Y,
Z axis, so Y, Z, so we want to mirror
| | 01:37 | it across Y, Z, positive to negative.
| | 01:40 | Well, this is actually X positive to
negative, so positive X to minus X. And
| | 01:45 | let's just leave it at the default
which is closest point on surface.
| | 01:49 | So basically, whatever point is closest,
for example, I'm going from this point
| | 01:53 | to this point, whichever one is closest,
and this is a very symmetrical object,
| | 01:58 | so I don't think that's going to be a problem.
Influence Association, again, the closest joint.
| | 02:02 | So basically, we're trying to mirror
this exactly, and this rig is built that
| | 02:06 | way, so it should be okay.
| | 02:08 | Most characters is going to be
built this way, so let's go ahead and hit
| | 02:12 | Mirror, and now let's mirror the weight.
| | 02:13 | So, let's go ahead and
select one of these bones here.
| | 02:16 | And we can see that it's deforming properly.
Okay, so that's how Mirror Skin Weights work.
| | 02:22 | And typically, what we do when we
create a character is we skin one side of it,
| | 02:25 | and then we just mirror
it over to the other side.
| | 02:27 | Okay, some other Edit Smooth Skin Tools would
be, we can also export and import Weight Maps.
| | 02:35 | You can save Weight Maps if you like
them, and if you want to save it and maybe
| | 02:38 | try again or whatever you want
to use, you can use it that way.
| | 02:42 | We can also copy skin weights, and we can
also reset all the weights to the default.
| | 02:47 | So, if you're working on a character,
and it's just not going the way you wanted
| | 02:51 | to, you can just reset and start from scratch.
| | 02:53 | So, that's basically some
of these extra tools here.
| | 02:55 | So, let's go ahead and in the next section,
we'll actually start skinning our character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Skinning a character pt. 1: Legs| 00:00 | Now that we understand the basic
skinning tools, let's go ahead and put them to
| | 00:04 | use and skin our character to the skeleton.
So let's go ahead and open them up.
| | 00:08 | File/Open/scenes/Chap05_05.mb,
and this is our character here.
| | 00:15 | And basically we have three layers
here, we have the CONTROLS, we have the
| | 00:20 | SKELETON, and we have the CHARACTER.
| | 00:21 | So there's the SKELETON, there's
CONTROLS, and there's our CHARACTER.
| | 00:26 | So let's go ahead and turn off the
CONTROLS right now because we're going to
| | 00:30 | skin the character, and what do
we need to skin the character?
| | 00:33 | We need the SKELETON, and we need the Geometry.
| | 00:35 | So let's go ahead and turn on Wireframe
so we can see inside of him, and let's
| | 00:40 | select our SKELETON.
| | 00:41 | How we do that is we select--we can
select up here, but that only selects the
| | 00:45 | arm or shoulder or whatever.
| | 00:47 | If we select here at the hip, we'll
select everything, because that's the
| | 00:51 | root of our skeleton.
| | 00:52 | So we select that, and then we Shift
select our character, actually the body,
| | 00:57 | because we're going to skin the
head separately when we go to do head
| | 01:01 | skinning and all that sort of stuff, so we'll
rig that face, we'll skin his head separately.
| | 01:05 | So now that we have the SKELETON
and the Mesh selected, so we go Skin >
| | 01:11 | Bind Skin > Smooth Bind.
| | 01:14 | Now, I'm going to open up the Options
here, and let's go ahead and make sure
| | 01:18 | that we're all set the same way.
| | 01:20 | So Bind to Joint Hierarchy,
Closest in Hierarchy, Maximum influences.
| | 01:25 | Now, this will probably default to 5,
but I going to try and bump it down one
| | 01:29 | notch to 4, because I find it that
actually works a little bit better, you
| | 01:33 | have less stray vertices when you
have 4, if you go much lower than 4, it's
| | 01:37 | probably not going to work, but somewhere
between 3 and 4 is actually a good number.
| | 01:41 | Maintain Max influences, all these, let's
just leave those at default, Bind Skin.
| | 01:45 | So now that we have the skin bound,
we can start to tweak the skin.
| | 01:51 | So let's go ahead and see
what we have first of all.
| | 01:54 | So I'm going to go ahead
and turn on Smooth Shade.
| | 01:56 | I'm going to go ahead and turn on the
CONTROLS because that's what we need to
| | 01:58 | use to manipulate the character.
| | 02:00 | And I do want to animate the
character in motion, so it makes it easier to
| | 02:03 | tweak the skinning.
| | 02:05 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this Heel Control, actually called L_FOOT
| | 02:09 | and hit W for Move, and let's just go
ahead and move him and see what it looks like.
| | 02:16 | Well, that's not too bad, actually the
skinning is not too bad, but you can see
| | 02:20 | right here that it's
really pulling on this at here.
| | 02:22 | So I'm going to undo that, and
let's go ahead and set some keys now.
| | 02:26 | So I'm going to go ahead and hit S for
Set Key--in fact, if you go Animate > Set
| | 02:29 | Key, you'll see the hot key is S. So
I'm just going to hit the S key, and that
| | 02:33 | sets the key right here.
| | 02:35 | Now, I'm going to go ahead and make
sure I toggle this little button on, and
| | 02:39 | that'll go ahead automatically set a key.
| | 02:41 | So I'm going to go ahead and move my
Time slider out to say, 10, and I'm going
| | 02:45 | to go ahead and move that foot up.
| | 02:49 | So that way we can see how it affects
the hip and then one of the things we can
| | 02:54 | also do, we can select this foot here or
actually the toe, I'm going to go ahead
| | 03:00 | and set a keyframe for the toe,
and then I'm going to animate it.
| | 03:06 | And animate a little bit of a bend
on it so that way we can see how it's
| | 03:10 | bending, how the toe is bending.
| | 03:11 | Actually, it's typically going to bend
up like that, so we can kind to see that.
| | 03:19 | And then what I'm going to do is going to go
ahead and move the Time slider out a little bit.
| | 03:24 | And in fact, I'm going to take that toe,
and then I'm just going to rotate it
| | 03:32 | back the other way, and then I'm going
to take the Foot Control here, and I'm
| | 03:36 | going to move it out.
| | 03:37 | Okay, so that way I can see what the
leg looks like when he puts his leg out.
| | 03:42 | Okay, what I did here--so I want to make
sure I center that on frame 10 and then
| | 03:48 | at frame 20, it moves out.
So he's going to move his foot up and then out.
| | 03:51 | When he moves his foot out,
look what happens to the knee.
| | 03:55 | So what I need to do is set some
keys for this Knee Control here.
| | 03:58 | So hit S to set the key at 1, S to
set it at 10 and then let's go ahead and
| | 04:06 | move it out to 20, so you see this is what
I have done, getting kind of a nice motion here.
| | 04:14 | Okay, so now we have got that setup,
let's go ahead and look at what's going on
| | 04:18 | with the skin and see where we need
to tweak it and what we need to fix.
| | 04:21 | One of the first things I notice is
if we go down here to the feet, notice
| | 04:26 | how this foot is affecting these vertices,
and this foot here is affecting these vertices.
| | 04:34 | So when it's skinned, they were kind
of close together, you can see it right
| | 04:38 | here and so they kind of got some
overlap in their influences, and this is a
| | 04:42 | real typical problem, and you'll see this a lot.
| | 04:44 | And then also another problem that you
very typically have is that you see the
| | 04:49 | thigh, as the thigh starts to bend, it
actually is affecting that waist, this
| | 04:53 | little area here in the
waist just a little bit too much.
| | 04:57 | So let's do some real quick clean up,
so I'm going to go to Skin > Edit Smooth
| | 05:02 | Skin > Prune Small Weights just hit that.
| | 05:05 | So now I have got all the little tiny
weights gone, but we still have some
| | 05:12 | influences here from the foot, and we can get
rid of that just by painting some weights here.
| | 05:17 | So let's go ahead and go up to the foot,
and we're going to Skin > Edit Smooth
| | 05:23 | Skin > Paint Skin Weights.
| | 05:25 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this Options Box here, and that brings up
| | 05:29 | our Artisan Interface, and let's go
ahead and start working on the foot.
| | 05:33 | Now, remember what we're going to do here is
we're going to do just one side of the character.
| | 05:39 | So I'm going to work here on the left side.
| | 05:42 | Now, if you want to work
on the right, that's fine.
| | 05:44 | I typically go left side, and
then I mirror over to the right.
| | 05:48 | So I want to make sure that just
the left side is deforming properly.
| | 05:51 | So these vertices down here, I'm
really not going to be too concerned with
| | 05:55 | those, because when I mirror these
one's over, it's going to fix it.
| | 05:59 | So what I want to do is instead of
getting rid of this one coming up, I want to
| | 06:03 | get rid of this one coming down.
| | 06:05 | So how I can do that is just by
finding the bone I want this attached to.
| | 06:10 | And in this case, I think there's a
left heel bone here and what I can do is I
| | 06:15 | can actually just paint the back part
of this foot with this left heel bone.
| | 06:19 | So what I want to do is make it a value of 1.
| | 06:23 | So, all the ones that I paint are
going to be just of this value of 1 here.
| | 06:27 | So if I paint the left heel bone will
now affect just the back part of this foot
| | 06:33 | with the value of 1.
| | 06:34 | Notice how these vertices just kind of pop
right into place, and that's kind of nice.
| | 06:40 | And you do want the heel of
the shoe to be fairly rigid here.
| | 06:43 | So let's go ahead and just paint those,
and you can see how I'm doing that, it's
| | 06:47 | pretty standard process.
Now, let's go ahead and work with the toe.
| | 06:52 | So we have got our toe bone here, and I
really want my toe to affect--and we
| | 06:56 | have also the ball of the foot.
Okay, so we have toe, which is a very tip one.
| | 07:01 | We have the ankle, and then we have the ball.
| | 07:04 | Okay, so let's go ahead and make this
ball of the foot affect these 100%, so the
| | 07:09 | tip of that foot is going to be pretty solid.
| | 07:12 | Okay, so now we have got--we had some
vertices here that we're going stray, okay.
| | 07:20 | So now we can see that this foot here is
bending a lot more, a lot more smoothly.
| | 07:27 | Now, if we want we can go
and continue to touch it up.
| | 07:29 | I'll leave that to you, you can
kind of see how we're doing this.
| | 07:33 | So let's go ahead and move up the body here.
Let's see how the knees are working.
| | 07:37 | Quite honestly, I think those knees are
fine, looks like it's bending just fine.
| | 07:43 | So we don't have to worry so much about
the knees, we kind of lucked out there.
| | 07:47 | This hip is you can see how it's kind
of just appearing like a big dent there,
| | 07:52 | and that's because this thigh bone here,
you can see, as the thigh bone moves,
| | 07:55 | it's affecting all of this, and so we
really don't want that to be affected.
| | 08:02 | Now, there are two ways to do it.
One is by painting it.
| | 08:05 | In fact, if we wanted to, we
could paint away the thigh bone.
| | 08:08 | So if we take the left thigh, you can
see how the influence kind of overlaps way
| | 08:14 | into this area here.
| | 08:15 | If I move my Time slider back we can
just kind of see how this left thigh bone
| | 08:21 | is kind of going way up--a little
bit way too far into this hip area.
| | 08:26 | So what we can do is we can dial the
value down right here to 0 and just paint
| | 08:31 | out--basically, we just paint all of this black.
| | 08:35 | Okay, so, and then we can go
through and paint all of it.
| | 08:41 | Now the one problem is with painting,
sometimes you don't get everything,
| | 08:44 | sometimes it's just easier just to go
to in the Component Editor, in fact, I'm
| | 08:49 | going to do that right now.
| | 08:50 | I'm going to go ahead and get rid of
this window here, I'm going to go into
| | 08:54 | select mode and select by Component Type.
| | 08:59 | Now, what I want to do is really from
the belt up, I don't want that thigh
| | 09:03 | to affect anything.
| | 09:05 | So all of those vertices and the
belt, I really don't want them to be
| | 09:09 | affected by this thigh bone.
| | 09:12 | So I'm going to go ahead and use the
Lasso tool, and I'm going to select all of
| | 09:18 | the vertices above a certain point.
| | 09:21 | So let's just say one, two, three,
actually more like five rows, five Edge Loops.
| | 09:27 | So I'm just selecting all of those.
| | 09:28 | I'm going to go into Window >
General Editors > Component Editor.
| | 09:32 | Go over, find Smooth Skins, there we go.
| | 09:36 | So all of these ones I have selected, I
do not want them affected by the thigh.
| | 09:42 | So if I scroll down, most of them
aren't, but every once in a while you'll
| | 09:47 | see, ones that are.
| | 09:48 | So the easiest thing to do is just
select this, scroll all the way down just go
| | 09:54 | all the way down and select that whole
column, that's the left thigh and just
| | 09:59 | hit 0 in the bottom value.
| | 10:02 | Once you do that, it goes away, and
now none of those vertices are affected.
| | 10:09 | Okay, well, that's a good start,
but we still have some problems.
| | 10:13 | One of the things is that some of these
ones like this one here, this one right
| | 10:18 | here isn't really deforming properly.
| | 10:25 | We're kind of getting like this little divot
here, getting this little bit of a notch here.
| | 10:29 | So we really don't want that, we want
those to not be so affected by the thigh.
| | 10:33 | If you notice this Edge Loop here,
and this one, this one, and maybe--so
| | 10:39 | one, two, three, these three are really a
little too much affected by that thigh bone.
| | 10:48 | So what we can do is
just select them one by one.
| | 10:51 | So we're going to pull up the
Component Editor, try and scale it down just a
| | 10:55 | little bit and move this over.
| | 10:57 | Now you'll probably have more window
space than I do, but again, I want this
| | 11:01 | one, and this one, and this one.
So let's do them one at a time.
| | 11:04 | I want to take this one, see how
much the thigh is affecting it.
| | 11:08 | It's affecting it 0.472.
| | 11:09 | That's almost halfway,
it's really a little too much.
| | 11:11 | I don't want it affected that much.
| | 11:13 | So let's go ahead and bring it down
to say 0.3, see how that affects it.
| | 11:19 | So that actually looks a little bit
better, but it looks like this one above
| | 11:22 | it, if you look at this from the side, you'll
see that these ones are getting really stretched.
| | 11:27 | So I'm going to take this one here,
and it's still affected by 0.422.
| | 11:31 | So I'm going to make that affect at 0.2
and the same with this one here, that one.
| | 11:37 | So I'm going to make that one say, 0.2 as well.
So you notice now we have got a lot smoother.
| | 11:46 | This looks more like a curve, and
that's kind of what you want, you don't want
| | 11:50 | them to go astray, or go way out of the way.
| | 11:52 | So now, that's a little bit better, but we
still have a little bit of a divot there.
| | 11:57 | So we can still--we'll just start
working with these, so I'm going to make that
| | 12:01 | instead of 0.3, I'll make it 0.2,
and that affects that one down there.
| | 12:06 | Let's see how that one--we'll
make that 0.2, let's make it 0.25.
| | 12:16 | And again, what I'm doing here is I'm
just going through all of these one at a
| | 12:21 | time and typing numbers and
trying to get these to balance out.
| | 12:27 | We just find numbers that can kind of work.
| | 12:29 | And if you want to, you can still
continue to paint, if that's how you prefer to
| | 12:33 | do it, but there is a point we have to
go down and start typing in numbers.
| | 12:37 | So I'm going to leave at this point, I
think this is a good point for us to kind
| | 12:45 | of stop, you see the tools, you see
how the tools work and the rest is really
| | 12:50 | just, it?s tweaking, it's just the
tedious part, and we don't need to spend a
| | 12:55 | lot of video time on that.
| | 12:56 | So I'm going to stop here, and I'm
going to go ahead and continue to work on
| | 13:01 | this lower part of the body and get it
to the point where I like it, and I suggest you
| | 13:05 | do the same and practice with the
tools, and see how well you can do.
| | 13:09 | So let's go ahead and go off our separate
ways and tweak our character, and then
| | 13:14 | we'll come back and work on the upper body.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Skinning a character pt. 2: Arms and torso| 00:00 | Okay, I took some time out, did
some more work on the lower body.
| | 00:04 | So let's take a look at that, Open,
05_06 is the name of the file.
| | 00:12 | So let's take a look at what we have here.
So I pretty much have this left leg working.
| | 00:19 | Now, if you notice here I still have a
little bit of problems on that right leg,
| | 00:24 | but that will go away
when we mirror the vertices.
| | 00:28 | So first thing I want to do is let's go
ahead and delete these keyframes I created.
| | 00:33 | So I'm going to go ahead and select
this foot and Shift-select on the timeline
| | 00:37 | just hold down Shift key and drag,
so it's all red and then just go
| | 00:41 | right-click > Delete, that'll delete those keys.
| | 00:44 | But we still have the knee and the toe,
so I'm going to go ahead and select the
| | 00:49 | toe, highlight all the keys, Delete,
and then select that Knee Controller,
| | 00:57 | Shift+left-click-drag,
highlight all those keys, and Delete.
| | 01:02 | So basically I just got rid of
those keys I used for testing.
| | 01:05 | Okay, so the next part of the
character is the upper body.
| | 01:10 | I'm going to focus here--there's
actually a lot that you need to do, and we
| | 01:13 | don't have enough time to do all of it.
| | 01:16 | So I'm going to give you a few pointers here,
go ahead and work on it again by yourselves.
| | 01:20 | So, the one area that I really want to
focus on is the shoulder, because that is
| | 01:25 | probably the most flexible joint of the body.
| | 01:29 | And in fact, I have got this IK Handle here, so
we can just select that, up, it can move down.
| | 01:34 | The shoulder can move forward, back, I
mean there's a lot of ways that shoulder
| | 01:40 | can move, let me go ahead and undo that.
| | 01:43 | And actually, I want to go ahead and
have a little bit more precise control over
| | 01:48 | that shoulder joint.
So I'm going to turn off IK for now.
| | 01:51 | So I'm going to Select this box here,
go to the IK_FK and just set that to 0.
| | 01:56 | So now I can select this shoulder
control here and just rotate it.
| | 02:02 | So again just like with everything else,
I'm going to go ahead and set some keys.
| | 02:07 | I am going to go ahead and set some keys.
| | 02:09 | I am going to go and set a
key here, set a key here.
| | 02:13 | So let's go ahead and move Time
slider forward, set a key there.
| | 02:17 | And then let's go ahead and set a key
with the arm forward like that. Okay?
| | 02:29 | So now we have got--okay there we go.
| | 02:39 | So I want arm by the side and arm
forward, those are probably the two
| | 02:42 | most important poses.
So let's take a look at arm by the side.
| | 02:48 | And with this, it's just a few
vertices so I'm not going to even go into
| | 02:53 | painting, I'm just going to go ahead
and go straight to the Component Editor,
| | 02:56 | because you can see right now it's
this vertex here is kind of messed up, and
| | 03:02 | this one under here is a little messed up.
So let's just go ahead and tweak those.
| | 03:08 | So I'm going to go in the Component
mode right there and--oops, but I have the
| | 03:13 | wrong thing selected.
| | 03:14 | I need to select my body, so I'll
select my body and make sure I'm in Component
| | 03:19 | mode, and then I'm going to select the
offending vertex, this one here, and I am
| | 03:23 | going to go Window > General
Editors > Component Editor.
| | 03:28 | Okay, so that's the vertex
that I really want to nail down.
| | 03:33 | So it knows how that's gone way deep
into the body, because that's highly
| | 03:37 | affected by this bone here. What's that bone?
That's the bicep, close to the left bicep bone.
| | 03:42 | So I want to go ahead and basically
make that a lot less influenced by that.
| | 03:46 | So I am going to go SKEL_LBICEP, and let's
just make it say 0.1, see how that works.
| | 03:51 | Oh, actually, we can probably make it
a little bit more, so let's make it
| | 03:56 | 0.2, yeah, there we go. Okay, that's good.
| | 03:58 | Now, this one here, I want this one to be
affected by the Bicep2 just a little bit.
| | 04:06 | When this one comes in, I want this
one to come in as well, but this one is
| | 04:11 | being affected by all these other Spine Joints.
| | 04:14 | So when I set it to have four influences,
it turned out that all four influences
| | 04:18 | are actually coming from the spine.
| | 04:20 | So I want to get just a
little bit of bicep motion there.
| | 04:23 | So, what I can do here is in the
Component Editor, go Options, Unhide Zero Columns.
| | 04:28 | So just make sure that's unchecked
and then scroll over until we go to
| | 04:33 | SKEL_LBICEP and make that 0.1.
So now when that comes down, it's not too bad.
| | 04:42 | So we have a little bit of flexibility
there just right there on the armpit.
| | 04:49 | Okay, and we still have some more
problems here, you can see there's kind of
| | 04:55 | like another big divot there and
so that's from that vertex there.
| | 05:00 | So that's that same one, that was
the one that we had a problem with and
| | 05:04 | then this one again.
| | 05:05 | So let's bring up our Component Editor
and SKEL_LBicep, let's go ahead and bring
| | 05:08 | that influences down from
0.4 to say, 0.25, maybe.
| | 05:14 | Not quite enough, because what it's
doing is getting folded under there, so
| | 05:17 | let's make it--we can just
bring it up a little bit, 0.3 maybe.
| | 05:21 | Yeah there we go, 0.3,
there we go, that looks good.
| | 05:28 | Okay, so let's take a look at that.
Okay, that looks pretty good.
| | 05:32 | Now, we have got few more problems here.
| | 05:34 | We got this one here, we can again
bring the influence of the bicep down, say
| | 05:38 | 0.3, and that looks pretty good.
| | 05:44 | Okay, you can see how we're doing this,
and it's pretty much the same for the
| | 05:48 | rest of this character here.
| | 05:49 | So if we want, we can look it here when
the--we can get rid of that head there.
| | 05:54 | So, you can see when it's from the top,
again, we get kind of that hook shape,
| | 06:00 | and that's because it's
affecting these vertices.
| | 06:03 | This one, and that one, you can see how
they move and they're just a little bit
| | 06:09 | too influenced by that.
| | 06:11 | So what we can do is we can select
that vertex, and again, we dial down the
| | 06:16 | influence of the L_BICEP.
| | 06:18 | So let's say I'll make it 0.1 or 0.12,
and for this one, let's make it 0.2, or
| | 06:26 | maybe even 0.25, there we go.
There, now that's much better.
| | 06:34 | So again, we're just reducing influences.
| | 06:37 | Now another thing I noticed here
is that it's affecting the collar.
| | 06:42 | So what we can do again is just
Lasso Select all the vertices around that
| | 06:47 | collar, go to our Component
Editor, find the Bicep Column here.
| | 06:55 | In fact, I'm going to go
ahead and Hide Zero Columns again.
| | 07:00 | Okay, and we're going to select
that Bicep Column and make it 0.
| | 07:12 | Okay, so now when that shoulder
moves, it doesn't affect the collar.
| | 07:18 | Okay, right now I'm just going to hit
Delete, get out of Component mode here.
| | 07:23 | Select that shoulder and delete those keys.
And now I'm going to select this Elbow.
| | 07:32 | Okay, let's go ahead and set a key,
hit the S key, move forward, and let's
| | 07:37 | rotate that elbow forward.
| | 07:38 | And you'll see here, we're getting a
little bit of a problem here as well.
| | 07:42 | This is another very typical problem,
so you can see as that elbow bends, it's
| | 07:47 | not quite doing what we wanted to do.
| | 07:50 | So again, let's go in to Component mode,
select the Mesh, and let's just start
| | 07:57 | working with these Edged Loops here.
| | 07:58 | So I'm going to start at the top here
and just going to select--you got to be
| | 08:02 | careful when you do this, because if
I'm facing this way, and I select like
| | 08:06 | this, see it's going to nab
all of these vertices here.
| | 08:08 | So what I want to do is kind of position
this so that this arm is kind of in the
| | 08:13 | clear, so there's nothing behind it.
| | 08:15 | So, I'll turn on Wireframe, and you'll see
that when I select these, it will be in the clear.
| | 08:20 | Okay, so I'm going to select this Edge
Loop, and then I'm going to go in to my
| | 08:25 | Component Editor, and you'll see
this is affected by three bones.
| | 08:30 | It's affect by the bicep up here, this
is the bicep, the elbow here and then
| | 08:37 | remember, we put in this forearm
joint which is right here, kind of halfway
| | 08:41 | between the elbow and the
wrist so we can twist that arm?
| | 08:44 | Well, that's not going to affect this
at all so that's one column that we can 0
| | 08:48 | out, so let's go ahead and 0 out
that column, and see how that goes.
| | 08:56 | Okay, and then I want to
give more weight to that bicep.
| | 08:59 | So let's make it say 0.7 or 0.75.
So now--or maybe even 0.75.
| | 09:16 | Okay, so that makes that better.
| | 09:17 | Now this middle row, we want
those to be affected equally.
| | 09:20 | So actually I am going to take away
everything from that forearm and then just
| | 09:24 | make all of these 0.5.
| | 09:26 | So it's 50/50, and that looks good,
and now the same for this one here.
| | 09:31 | I'm going to go ahead and get rid of the
forearm, and then I'm going to make the
| | 09:37 | elbow joint here 0.75.
| | 09:42 | So basically, we're mirroring
what we're doing on the other side.
| | 09:45 | See, now we kind of got rid of
that hook that we had before.
| | 09:48 | Now we have got a nice even
deformation right there.
| | 09:52 | There's a lot of work to do on the
upper body as well, so you also want to go
| | 09:56 | ahead and make sure that these
Spine Joints work and all of that.
| | 10:00 | So go ahead and continue to tweak it,
and I'll do the same, and then we'll hook
| | 10:05 | up for some more little
detail work in the next chapter.
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| Finalizing the skin| 00:00 | Okay, so I went ahead and
did the rest of the upper body.
| | 00:04 | So let me show you what I did.
| | 00:07 | I am going to open up Chap05_07, and
you'll see I have got--actually I did
| | 00:14 | the left side of the upper body.
So the arms pretty much work.
| | 00:23 | I have got the wrist, wrist
works, it twists and all that.
| | 00:30 | And then also I went ahead and did the
fingers, so you can see the index fingers
| | 00:36 | and all the other fingers
move, so that works just fine.
| | 00:39 | Now how I did the fingers
is just a lot of detail work.
| | 00:43 | So what you need to do is really just
get in there, and what I did was I used
| | 00:47 | these custom parameters, these custom
attributes that we set up, and I just
| | 00:52 | used it to bend the fingers one at
a time to make sure that nothing is
| | 00:57 | overlapping, and that all the bones
are affecting the proper vertices, so it
| | 01:01 | really is just a lot of detail work.
| | 01:04 | Okay, so now that I have got this one
side done, I can go ahead and mirror it
| | 01:09 | over to the other side.
| | 01:11 | So if you actually want to take a look
at some what we have got here like, for
| | 01:15 | example, if I went through
some of these fingers here.
| | 01:18 | You can see that my index finger
is kind of not working really well.
| | 01:24 | You see I have got like stuck vertices there, and
I think this finger here had a lot of problems.
| | 01:30 | Yeah, you can see that
that one has a lot of problem.
| | 01:33 | So we'll go ahead and fix
those by mirroring them.
| | 01:36 | Okay, so I'm going to undo all that.
| | 01:38 | Okay, let's go ahead and select our
Mesh, and now we just need to do Skin >
| | 01:43 | Smooth Skin > Mirror Skin Weights.
| | 01:45 | So I'm going to select the Control Box
there, and so we can see our dialog box.
| | 01:53 | And again, it's just the same as we did before.
| | 01:55 | We're going to mirror over X, over Y-Z,
you can see right here, Y-Z, from positive--
| | 02:02 | which is why I did with the left side
first because the left is on the positive
| | 02:07 | side--to negative, otherwise,
you would have to click that off.
| | 02:10 | Just leave the defaults
Mirror, and there it goes.
| | 02:15 | So what that did was that went ahead and
mirrored all the stuff on the side over
| | 02:20 | that side, so let's see how it works,
grab some of these control points here.
| | 02:23 | Let's grab the foot here, see how
that works, that works pretty good.
| | 02:29 | Let's see it on the other side.
| | 02:30 | Yep, it looks good and then
let's see what the arm looks like.
| | 02:38 | Oops, I have got IK turned on on that hand.
| | 02:41 | Let's take a look at these fingers
that'll be a good indication as whether it
| | 02:45 | mirrored, that ring finger was kind
of funky, and now it's not, well good.
| | 02:49 | Okay, so I'm going to trust
that everything is mirrored.
| | 02:52 | Now, I have got one more little
issue here, and that's this bowtie.
| | 02:57 | Actually, we still have to do the head
but notice how the bowtie is not moving
| | 03:01 | with the rest of the character.
| | 03:04 | So what we need to do is just take that
bowtie and either link it hierarchically
| | 03:10 | to this little bone here or probably
the easiest thing to do would be to take
| | 03:15 | the bone, select the bone, and then
select the tie, so actually I'm going to
| | 03:20 | select mode here, select that, select
the tie last. And we'll just constrain it
| | 03:24 | just like we did
constraints with all these controls.
| | 03:27 | So what we're going to do is actually
constrain this geometry to move with that bone.
| | 03:31 | So let's just go Constrain--and we're
going to have to do two constraints--we're
| | 03:35 | going to have to do a Point Constraint,
which actually constrains it to there.
| | 03:39 | Now, when I did Point Constraint,
I want to make sure that I have
| | 03:43 | Maintain offset on, okay.
| | 03:45 | Because when you do that then
otherwise it'll snap to that bone.
| | 03:49 | Okay, so now if I move that you see it
actually maintains its position relative
| | 03:56 | to that, but it's not rotating.
| | 03:58 | We can make that rotate easily by
selecting again, the bone, then select the
| | 04:05 | bone, and then the bowtie, and then
we just do Constrain. What do we do?
| | 04:12 | We do an Orient Constraint, right?
| | 04:14 | And again, let's go ahead and keep
Maintain offset, that's important.
| | 04:18 | And now, when I select this control and
rotate it, that bowtie goes with it. Perfect.
| | 04:25 | Now, the bowtie seems like it's a
little far forward, so what I can do is I can
| | 04:30 | certainly just move it back.
So that attaches that.
| | 04:33 | But actually I'm going to go ahead
and undo that because I want that be
| | 04:38 | straight, and I'll go ahead and move
this bowtie back in the neutral position.
| | 04:43 | Okay, so that's basically the body,
and that's how to skin a body.
| | 04:48 | Now, I'm sure if you actually did to go
through all the detail work, you realize
| | 04:53 | it's not a trivial task, but it's not
a difficult task, it's just a lot of
| | 04:58 | details and just a lot of tests.
| | 05:00 | So I think that's the most important
thing is to test your character as you work
| | 05:04 | through the skinning to make sure
that everything works, and you don't have
| | 05:07 | anything that breaks.
| | 05:08 | So I'm going to go ahead and save
this out, and then we're going to go into
| | 05:12 | facial rigging, and that's where we'll
go ahead and skin the head but we need to
| | 05:17 | skin the head with things
called Morph Targets and all that.
| | 05:20 | So I kind of wanted to leave that separate
and out of this particular set of lessons.
| | 05:24 | So let's go ahead and move on to the
head in the next chapter, Facial Rigging.
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|
|
6. Facial RiggingCreating a skeleton for the head| 00:00 | Now, we're going to rig the head and the face,
and this is going to happen in several steps.
| | 00:04 | First thing we're going to do is create
a small skeleton for the head and face
| | 00:08 | and jaw so that we can
move the head and the jaw.
| | 00:11 | Then we're going to skin the
head geometry to that skeleton.
| | 00:16 | And in this particular
character we do have a separate head.
| | 00:19 | Now, all these techniques do work
for single skin characters as well.
| | 00:23 | I just kind of separate it out because it
makes a little bit easier conceptually
| | 00:27 | just to focus on the head.
| | 00:29 | And then after we skin the head we're
going to add some Blend shapes to give
| | 00:33 | facial animation, and then we're going to
add some controls to make it easy to animate.
| | 00:37 | So with that in mind let's go
ahead and start building our skeleton.
| | 00:42 | So first thing we need to do is set our project.
We're working now in Chapter 06/06_Facial, OK.
| | 00:49 | And let's go ahead and open the scene.
| | 00:53 | Now, for in 06_Facial, the scenes are
going to be in the scenes directory.
| | 01:00 | Let's go 06_01 and here's our character.
What we need to do is create a skeleton.
| | 01:07 | Let's take a look at what we have right now.
| | 01:09 | I'm going to do shading,
I'm going to put in wireframe.
| | 01:12 | The skeleton we create kind of
stops right there at the neck.
| | 01:16 | So we need to create something
for the head and then for the jaw.
| | 01:20 | It's not really that difficult of a
task, and we could have actually done it
| | 01:24 | when we drew the original skeleton,
but I just kind of left that off.
| | 01:28 | So let's do this head skeleton here.
| | 01:31 | So we want to attach the skeleton to here,
and then we want to create one set of
| | 01:35 | bones for the upper part of the head,
which actually doesn't move if you really
| | 01:38 | think about how a head is constructed,
this whole part of the head is pretty
| | 01:43 | much the skull, it's one bone.
| | 01:46 | It only moves as a big mask and then
the other bone in the face is the jaw,
| | 01:52 | which is down here, and that allows
you to open and close the mouth and move
| | 01:56 | the jaw side to side.
| | 01:58 | So we need to create bones,
or joints, for all of that.
| | 02:01 | So we're going to go into our
Animation Shelf or if you want you can just do
| | 02:05 | Skeleton Joint tool.
| | 02:07 | I'm going to select my Joint tool here,
and then I'm just going to click over
| | 02:12 | this top joint here, and that starts to
extend that chain, and then we're just
| | 02:17 | going to bring it up right around
the ear, somewhere around there.
| | 02:22 | It's not that important where this is placed.
| | 02:24 | It gives me a little warning which I
don't need to worry about, and then I'm
| | 02:28 | going to draw a second bone that goes
all the way out to the tip of the nose.
| | 02:33 | And then I'm going to hit Enter, and
now I'm going to draw a second chain.
| | 02:37 | So we're going to go Joint tool, and
I'm going to start here, click and then click.
| | 02:42 | Where is the jaw hinged?
| | 02:45 | If you really just think
about it, where does the jaw hinge?
| | 02:48 | And that's where we need to put this joint.
| | 02:51 | And then we need to go one more joint
all the way out kind of just right under
| | 02:56 | the lip there and then hit Enter.
| | 02:58 | If I want to, I can select this one
here, and you can see that this is going
| | 03:04 | to be my jaw, okay?
That's the one that's going to move.
| | 03:07 | First thing I want to do is
I want to start naming these.
| | 03:10 | So I'm just going to go up through the
heart, so I'm going to select that one
| | 03:14 | instead of joint1 I'm going to call it head,
or actually, Skel is my naming scheme, so Skel_Head.
| | 03:19 | I'm going to copy the word
Skel so I don't have to retype it.
| | 03:24 | And this one here would be Skel_Face.
| | 03:31 | This one here is Skel_Jaw, okay, and
this one here is Skeleton, we can just
| | 03:43 | call it Jaw1, okay?
| | 03:44 | So now I have head and jaw, those are the
two ones that we really need to worry about it.
| | 03:51 | Okay, so, now I have got my skeleton built,
one of the things I want to do is the
| | 03:56 | teeth in this character is separate geometry.
| | 03:59 | So one thing I can do is attach those
to these joints so that way they'll move
| | 04:06 | when the jaw moves, and when the head moves.
| | 04:08 | Now, the easiest way to do is just
go in the outline and just drag the
| | 04:12 | geometry to the skeleton.
| | 04:13 | But in this character we're keeping our
skeleton separate from the geometry just
| | 04:17 | for ease of management.
| | 04:18 | So what I need to do is, again, do some
constraints to constrain this piece of
| | 04:24 | geometry, the gum, and the teeth.
| | 04:27 | So the gum and the teeth to the
upper, to the head, and to that jaw1.
| | 04:33 | Now, what I'm going to do is I'm actually
going to do this a little bit differently.
| | 04:38 | What I'm going to do is I am actually
going to create a locator and constrain
| | 04:42 | that and then make this
geometry the child of that locator.
| | 04:44 | So how do we create a locator?
We just do Create > Locator.
| | 04:48 | Now when we create a locator,
it always comes in at the origin.
| | 04:52 | So if I zoom out here, and I hit my
Move tool, you can see it's right here.
| | 04:58 | So that's my locator, and it's
basically just a non-rendering object that I can
| | 05:03 | use as kind of like a helper object.
| | 05:06 | So what I want to do is I want
to actually create two of these.
| | 05:09 | One for the upper jaw and one for the lower jaw.
| | 05:12 | So I'm going to go ahead and actually
I'm going to name this, I'm just going
| | 05:16 | to name it Loc_Jaw, and then I'm going
to duplicate it, I can just hit Ctrl+D
| | 05:21 | or Edit > Duplicate and instead of Locator
Jaw I'm going to Locator, let's call it Head.
| | 05:30 | So now we need to snap these so
that they are centered on the joints.
| | 05:33 | So I'm just going to turn on Snap and then
just snap that one there, and that one there.
| | 05:40 | Okay, turnoff Snap, zoom in.
| | 05:45 | In fact, because I'm working with just a
skeleton so I can probably just hide my geometries.
| | 05:49 | So I'm just going to turnoff this layer,
so we can see this a little bit better.
| | 05:55 | So what I want to do is I want to
constrain this so that it moves and rotates
| | 05:59 | with each of these joints.
| | 06:01 | So I'm going to select the joint
first, that jaw joint, Shift-select the
| | 06:04 | Locator, Constrain > Point, make sure
you have Maintain offset, Add, Constrain >
| | 06:11 | Orient, and again, Maintain
offset should be on, and it is.
| | 06:16 | And we'll do that with this one too.
Constrain > Point, Constrain > Orient.
| | 06:21 | Okay, so now when this rotates
the Locator rotates with it.
| | 06:26 | So now I have something to attach the jaw
geometry to, or actually the teeth geometry.
| | 06:33 | So I'm going to turn on my geometry,
and now I'm going to go into my Outliner
| | 06:37 | because what I want to do
is create a hierarchy, okay?
| | 06:41 | So I go into my Outliner, and you
see I have these two locators that I have
| | 06:45 | created, they're outside
of all of that geometry.
| | 06:48 | So now that I have them all in the
Geometry Node, I can go ahead and take the
| | 06:55 | lower teeth, Ctrl-select the lower, middle-click
and drag so that they are under the Jaw.
| | 07:03 | Select the upper ones, middle-click
and drag so that they are under the Head.
| | 07:07 | So now when I select my jaw and
rotate it, the teeth move with it.
| | 07:11 | Okay, so now the next step is to
get the skin to move with it, okay?
| | 07:16 | So now I have got the teeth moving, but I
need to have the whole face moving, and
| | 07:21 | that's where skinning comes in, and
we're going to do that in the next section.
| | 07:25 | So let's go ahead--I'm going to save this out, and
then we're going to move on to skinning the head.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Skinning the head| 00:04 | Open the scene 06_02, and that's our character.
So how do we skin something?
| | 00:11 | It's real simple, you select the
Skeleton, you select the Mesh, Bind Skin.
| | 00:16 | So let's go into our Side view.
| | 00:18 | Select the Skeleton, Shift-select the
head, do Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind.
| | 00:25 | Well, that didn't work, we have an error.
Skin on bicep was bound at a different pose.
| | 00:32 | Okay, now what that means is that our
skeleton is in a different position than
| | 00:37 | when we bound it to the body, okay?
| | 00:40 | So this whole skeleton is actually
going to be used to bind two skins.
| | 00:44 | It's used to bind the body and the head.
So for some reason the skeleton got moved.
| | 00:49 | Now the way to put that back
is by using Go to Bind Pose.
| | 00:53 | Now when we do that--well,
we have got another error.
| | 00:57 | See Diagnostics and Script Editor.
| | 00:59 | Well, let's take a look at the
Script Editor and see what it says.
| | 01:02 | It says blah, blah, blah,
blah IK, IK, IK, oh okay, IK.
| | 01:07 | Well--oh you know what?
| | 01:10 | Yes, that's the problem because what I have
is this particular control, I turned off IK.
| | 01:19 | So once I turned it back on, it's back
to exactly the way it was when I skinned
| | 01:25 | it, so now I can click on the
Skeleton, Skin > Bind Pose, that works.
| | 01:31 | Okay, so now I have the skeleton
selected just hold-down the Shift key, select
| | 01:35 | the Head, Skin > Bind Skin >
Smooth Bind, and there you go.
| | 01:41 | Okay, so let's go ahead and start tweaking this.
| | 01:45 | Now, we have the head here, we can move
it a little bit, but the real thing that
| | 01:52 | we want to work on is the jaw.
So I'm going to go ahead and set some keys here.
| | 01:57 | S key for Set, open that jaw, and hit Set again.
Now if you notice it's not working all that.
| | 02:05 | No, actually, I'm going to move my
Time slider forward then open the jaw.
| | 02:12 | If you notice that jaw is affecting the
top of the head and so we have got a lot
| | 02:17 | of stuff that we need to tweak here.
Let's go ahead and do that in the next lesson.
| | 02:22 | So let's go ahead and leave this at
this point, I'm going to go ahead and go
| | 02:26 | File > Save, and we'll save that out,
and then we'll pick this up, go through
| | 02:29 | the detail of tweaking the Smooth Skin.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Fine-tuning the skin| 00:00 | Now that we have bound the skin we need
to edit it, and that's going to take a
| | 00:05 | little bit of time, so let's just
go through and start working on it.
| | 00:08 | So I'm going to go and open up
Chapter 06_03, which is my head.
| | 00:15 | And that has the keyframes on it, okay.
| | 00:16 | So first thing I want to do is just
to kind of get some of the basic stuff
| | 00:22 | blocked in, and I'm going to
use Component Editor for that.
| | 00:24 | Now the top of the head--if you look at
the head from the side here--the top of
| | 00:27 | the head is really, it's really, all the skull, really.
| | 00:30 | I mean, we have a spine that comes into
the skull right about here, and then you
| | 00:36 | have a big mass, which is the skull
which kind of just comes through here.
| | 00:39 | And then the jaw and the neck are
really the only parts of the head that
| | 00:43 | actually flex due to skeletal deformation.
| | 00:45 | Obviously, the face is going to move,
but we're going to use a different
| | 00:47 | animation method for that.
| | 00:49 | So for the skeletal deformation all we
have to do is kind of tie all the top of
| | 00:54 | the head to one bone and then
work with the jaw and the neck.
| | 00:58 | So let's, first of all, go into Component Editor.
| | 01:02 | And I'm just going to select the
whole top of the head, actually I'm going
| | 01:05 | to Lasso select it.
| | 01:06 | I'm going to start up here and come over, from just
above the lip, okay and then right about there.
| | 01:15 | Okay, so I selected all of these.
| | 01:17 | And now let's go into Window >
General Editors > Component Editor, okay.
| | 01:22 | And scroll over here, find
Smooth Skins, there we go, okay.
| | 01:26 | Now, what I have here is I have a High
Zero Columns on, so let's turn that on.
| | 01:33 | And so we have to decide which bone is
actually going to rotate this mass of the
| | 01:38 | head, and I think the head,
there's actually one called Skel_Head.
| | 01:41 | So let's go ahead and take that, and
I'm just going to go scroll down, it's
| | 01:45 | going to take a little while to
scroll all the way down at the very, very
| | 01:49 | bottom, and then I'm going
to put 1 into that, okay.
| | 01:54 | So now when that jaw opens, it doesn't
affect any of that upper part of the head.
| | 01:59 | That part of head is pretty much rigid,
because it's bound just to the skull, okay.
| | 02:04 | So now we have to start working
on the lower part of the face.
| | 02:08 | So let's start working on the jaw.
| | 02:10 | So I'm going to start off with
a little bit of Paint Weights.
| | 02:14 | So I'm going to go Skin > Smooth
Skin > Paint Skin Weights, okay.
| | 02:19 | In fact, I'm going to go into camera
view here. And what I want is I want,
| | 02:24 | actually, this jaw bone, here, to affect
pretty much everything along the chin, okay.
| | 02:30 | So if you really think of
what does a jaw bone affect?
| | 02:33 | It affects the chin and part of the cheek.
| | 02:36 | So I'm going to go ahead and move my
Value up here to one, and I'm going to
| | 02:41 | slice down my brush a little bit.
| | 02:43 | I'm going to hit the B, B for Brush key,
and scale that a little bit, and then
| | 02:49 | I'm just going to start painting, okay.
| | 02:50 | Actually I'm still in Component mode
so I need to get out of Component mode
| | 02:54 | before I can paint, so there we go.
| | 02:57 | And to start painting--and I just
want to get some of those vertices kind of
| | 03:02 | locked in, and it's pretty much for power, okay.
| | 03:08 | Now, the next step is to go in and
start tweaking his upper lip, okay.
| | 03:15 | I can try and do some of that with the
brush, but there are a lot of overlapping
| | 03:19 | vertices here, and I am probably going
to have to do most of it one at a time.
| | 03:24 | So let's just go that route.
| | 03:27 | So I'm going to go ahead and use my
Select tool, go back into Component mode,
| | 03:31 | and we're going to start
working on these vertices.
| | 03:34 | Now if you notice, like this top lip
right here, that's totally stretching, and
| | 03:40 | so it's actually totally
being affected by that jaw bone.
| | 03:44 | So what I want is take these, that
one, that one, so I'm basically just
| | 03:50 | Shift-selecting all of these.
| | 03:52 | In fact, I can Shift-select these two here,
so all that kind of lower edge of the lip.
| | 03:59 | Go into my Component Editor--I'm going
to be using this a lot, and you see that
| | 04:04 | the jaw--there's actually three
that are affecting it: Jaw and Jaw1.
| | 04:07 | Jaw1 is this little ball at the end
here, that's not one that we really need
| | 04:11 | to use for anything.
| | 04:12 | So now it's affected mostly by the jaw,
so actually I want this to be affected
| | 04:18 | mostly by--actually I'm going to put in 0.9.
| | 04:20 | Now typically you want to put in 0.1,
but there is going to be some tweaking
| | 04:26 | back and forth, so I really don't want
to lose the weight on the jaw, so I want
| | 04:30 | to go back into it, I still have a
little bit there that I can play with.
| | 04:35 | If I set jaw to 0, then I'd have to go
into Options and Unhide Zero Columns and
| | 04:39 | start digging through it, and
that's not something I really want to do.
| | 04:42 | So let's go ahead and put 0.9 into all
of these ones for skeleton head, okay,
| | 04:47 | and see how that works,
okay. Yeah, much better.
| | 04:50 | Okay, so it's opening up.
| | 04:53 | But you see also there's a whole other
line of vertices in here that are getting
| | 04:57 | affected, so the only way we can
take a look at that is through Wireframe
| | 05:01 | or--actually I like X-Rays.
| | 05:03 | So I'm going to turn on X-Ray, and
I'm going to try and track these down.
| | 05:07 | Now these are the ones I already have
selected, you can see there highlighted in yellow.
| | 05:11 | All we have to do is follow the lines.
| | 05:13 | So we'll follow that line all the
way down, and I say--okay, there it is.
| | 05:17 | Okay, so those are the ones that are
getting stretched by the jaw bones, so I'm
| | 05:21 | going to take all of these, now
there should be five of them at least.
| | 05:25 | So take all of those, and now I'll go
to Jaw1, I'll get rid of that, and then
| | 05:32 | I'm going to go ahead and give these again.
| | 05:34 | I'm going to give these 0.9 to the head
bone, or the head joint, and we turn on
| | 05:40 | Shading, turn-off X-Ray here, and you
can see now, starting to get in there.
| | 05:45 | Okay, so that's working a little bit better.
| | 05:51 | Now the mouth is actually opening,
but we still have some problems here.
| | 05:54 | We have got this one here.
| | 05:55 | Now that one is actually being overly
affected by the head, and actually with
| | 06:01 | this one here, the head and the face,
so actually with this one--I'm going to
| | 06:05 | put this one at 0.95 to the jaw--
and so that pretty much opens it up.
| | 06:11 | And then all these ones around
here are also getting stretched.
| | 06:14 | They're not getting stretched
as much, but they still are.
| | 06:17 | So this one, this one, this one, that,
that, that, that, they're still getting
| | 06:24 | stretched, because when this one is at
0.95, it is going down a lot further.
| | 06:29 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
take those off from Jaw1, take those off
| | 06:33 | from the neck, I am going to delete a
bunch of them there, and I'm going to
| | 06:37 | give them weight to the jaw 0.95 again, okay.
| | 06:40 | And that one is one more, so
I'm just typing in numbers here.
| | 06:45 | So that's starting to look better.
Let's take a look at that.
| | 06:51 | Okay, so as I scrub my timeline here, my
jaw animates, and that's starting to work.
| | 06:57 | It's starting to work.
It's starting to look a little bit better.
| | 07:00 | Some of these here on the
side here, we can affect, there.
| | 07:10 | So again, what we're trying to
do is get a nice even balance.
| | 07:12 | The real trick here is the
transition from the top lip to the lower lip.
| | 07:17 | So this one here, and this one here,
these sets of vertices are pretty much
| | 07:22 | going to be affected 100% by the top jaw.
| | 07:25 | These ones here are going to
be affected by the lower jaw.
| | 07:27 | It's the ones in between, so this one,
this row, that row, where you really need
| | 07:32 | to kind of find a good
value, you need to tweak them.
| | 07:37 | So I'm going to go ahead and
take a look at some of this.
| | 07:41 | Now look at this one here. You can see that.
| | 07:43 | These are kind of an upper lip one, but
it's getting really pulled down, and it
| | 07:47 | is looking really kind of funky here.
So I'm going to zoom in.
| | 07:50 | Actually I'm going to go into--let me
highlight one of these so I know where I am at.
| | 07:55 | Let me go back into X-Ray, and I'll see
that it's actually a group of one, two,
| | 07:59 | three, we can take all of those.
| | 08:02 | Again, I'm going to delete Jaw1, and
then I'm going to go ahead and make them
| | 08:07 | more weighted towards the head, so Skel_Head.
So let's give them, say 0.6.
| | 08:13 | Okay, and let's do Shading.
So now that looks a lot better.
| | 08:21 | Maybe even not as much as 0.6, so I can
take one of those here instead and make it 0.7.
| | 08:26 | Okay, so now yeah, that works a lot better.
| | 08:29 | So you can kind of see how you want to
maintain the integrity of this geometry
| | 08:35 | and still stretch it.
So it's almost like sculpting with numbers.
| | 08:41 | So let's go into these ones here, we
have another row of three here, one, two,
| | 08:46 | three that we need to affect.
| | 08:48 | Again, I'm going to take them off from
that Jaw1, which is just that little divot
| | 08:52 | at the bottom of the lip, and let's
make these a little bit more weighted
| | 08:56 | towards the jaw, rather than the head.
Let's make those 0.7.
| | 08:59 | Okay, maybe even a
little bit more, make it 0.75.
| | 09:03 | Okay, so now, much better.
| | 09:10 | Now this one here, if you look here,
we have got this angle here, that's not good.
| | 09:14 | You want this to kind of be fairly
smooth, so this one is a little too
| | 09:18 | affected by the lower jaw.
| | 09:20 | So I'm going to go ahead and
make that go a little bit less.
| | 09:23 | So I'm going to make it say,
instead of 0.63, let's say make it 0.6.
| | 09:27 | So now you have got a little bit
more of a smooth transition there.
| | 09:33 | And again, we're just going to be
working through this whole thing.
| | 09:36 | Now one of the things you can do--okay,
so you pretty much get the hang of it.
| | 09:40 | I'm just going to go
ahead and continue to tweak.
| | 09:43 | Now one of the things you can do is you can
treat this head just like you treat the body.
| | 09:48 | In other words, you can just do one side
of the face and then mirror the results
| | 09:52 | over to the other side so that way
you don't have to re-double your work.
| | 09:56 | So I'm going to go ahead and work on
this a little bit more, and I want you
| | 10:01 | to do that as well, then we'll pick it up and
start working on some more stuff, okay?
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating Blend Shapes for facial animation| 00:00 | Now I have went ahead and skinned the rest of
that head, so let me show you what we have here.
| | 00:06 | Chapter06_04, and if I scrub it,
you can see how it works the head.
| | 00:14 | So, the next step is to actually add in what we call
Blend Shapes for creating the facial animation.
| | 00:23 | Now, what a Blend Shape is is
it really just shape animation.
| | 00:26 | So what we do is we model a bunch of
different shapes for the character's head,
| | 00:30 | and then we apply those, and
we can mix and match those.
| | 00:35 | I have a simpler example here.
| | 00:36 | So we can go through how to create
blend shapes, and then we're going to go
| | 00:40 | ahead and then apply them.
| | 00:41 | So, let's go ahead and do
File > Open Scene/06_04_Heads.
| | 00:49 | So, this is just the head of the
character, and let's go ahead, and I'll show
| | 00:53 | you how to model a Blend Shape and how
to apply it and then after that we'll go
| | 00:58 | ahead and apply it to our main character.
| | 01:00 | Now what we want to do when we model a
blend shape for a character is we really
| | 01:06 | want to mimic the way that the
facial muscles pull the face.
| | 01:10 | How Blend Shape works is you take
the model, and you duplicate it.
| | 01:15 | So let's go ahead and do this, Edit >
Duplicate, or you can do Ctrl+D, and then
| | 01:20 | you model the duplicate to equal the
shape that you want, and then we reapply it
| | 01:26 | back to the original character.
| | 01:29 | So, for example, if I wanted to do a
blink, I could take this copy, maybe
| | 01:34 | even rename it blink or something like that
and then model, literally just model, okay?
| | 01:43 | Pull vertices around, use all of the
modeling tools, and all the modeling skills
| | 01:48 | that you know, and sculpt what you want.
| | 01:53 | So, for example, in this case, we're doing a
blink, we want to kind of move that skin down.
| | 01:59 | And to make the blink, okay?
So let's say that's good enough.
| | 02:09 | So we go back out of Component mode.
| | 02:11 | Now, what we can do is we can
apply this to our neutral head.
| | 02:16 | So, I select my target, or multiple
targets if you have them, if you have a
| | 02:21 | bunch of blinks, smiles, whatever.
And then select our target, do Create
| | 02:28 | Deformers > Blend Shape.
| | 02:29 | Once I do that, I can go into Window >
Animation Editors > Blend Shape, and
| | 02:36 | you'll see now that I have that
copy of my head with the blink.
| | 02:40 | So now I can blink my character.
Okay? Simple as that.
| | 02:45 | Except it's not that simple because
really what you'll need, you'll need a lot
| | 02:49 | of different shapes to create
your full set of Blend Shapes.
| | 02:54 | Now, when you create these, what you need
to do is understand what shapes you'll need.
| | 02:59 | Obviously, you'll need blinks, you'll
need eyebrow motion, and for the face,
| | 03:04 | you'll need things like smile.
| | 03:05 | So, when a character smiles, there's a
muscle that kind of pins the corner of
| | 03:10 | the mouth, and kind of runs up towards
the ear, kind of pulls it up that way.
| | 03:14 | You maybe have a sneer, you maybe
have smiles, frowns, so on and so forth.
| | 03:19 | And all of these, when you create
these, try and understand how the
| | 03:22 | muscles attach to the face.
| | 03:25 | If you create your morph targets with
muscle based targets, then all you have to
| | 03:30 | do is just dial, it's like kind of
pulling the puppet strings on the face.
| | 03:33 | Now, if you start doing very
specific poses, then they may work for that
| | 03:37 | one pose, but they may not be able
to work generically for a bunch of
| | 03:41 | different poses, okay?
| | 03:43 | So, to make things easy, I have a
whole layer of these here called Head.
| | 03:47 | So all I have to do is unhide that
layer, and you can see a whole wealth of
| | 03:52 | targets that I modeled for you. Okay?
| | 03:55 | Now, some of these we're going
to use, some of these we won't.
| | 03:58 | If you look here, we have got
this one here, eyes wide open.
| | 04:01 | I have also named these.
| | 04:02 | So, E stands for Eyes, Wide, E Eyes,
Squint Left, Squint Right, Blink Up-Left to
| | 04:09 | blink left and right.
| | 04:11 | We also have ones for Disgust, we
have Frowns, Smiles left and right.
| | 04:18 | Now one of the things I tend to do is
I tend to break out things like smiles
| | 04:23 | into left and right components so
that way you can get a symmetry in your
| | 04:27 | character's face when you
animate him or her or it.
| | 04:32 | Now, there's a couple here that I have
modeled that actually have open mouth poses.
| | 04:36 | Now, those we probably won't be using because
we're actually going to be using a jaw bone.
| | 04:41 | So some of these ones where the mouth
is open, the jaw will actually do that
| | 04:45 | particular part of the animation.
| | 04:47 | Let me show you very quickly how to
apply all of these to the face so we can
| | 04:51 | actually play with this particular head.
| | 04:52 | So I'm going to select my neutral head,
and I'm going to go Edit > Delete By
| | 04:57 | Type > History, and that deletes
the last blend shape that I put on it.
| | 05:02 | Now I'm just going to go ahead and
select all of these here and then
| | 05:05 | Shift-select the last one, which is my
neutral head, and that's where all of
| | 05:09 | these are going to be applied,
Create Deformers > Blend Shape.
| | 05:12 | So now, once I have that, this
Blend Shape is on all of these.
| | 05:18 | So, go Animation Editors > Blend Shape,
and you'll notice here that I have got,
| | 05:26 | all of these targets are now available.
Okay, now there's two options.
| | 05:30 | Your Orientation, it defaults to
this Vertical Orientation here.
| | 05:33 | I'm not a big fan of this.
| | 05:36 | Actually, I like it better with
the Horizontal for it as Orientation
| | 05:39 | particularly when you have got
a lot of targets like this.
| | 05:42 | So now you can just dial any one of
these, you can smile, side, eye, blink, so
| | 05:57 | on and so forth, okay?
And you can mix them.
| | 06:00 | You can actually have more than one,
so you can actually mix targets, loads
| | 06:05 | of fun to play with.
So, go ahead and play with these.
| | 06:08 | In our next lesson we're going to go ahead
and apply all of this to the character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying Blend Shapes| 00:00 | Now that we understand a little bit
more about how blend shapes work, let's go
| | 00:04 | ahead and apply blend shapes
that I created to this character.
| | 00:07 | So let's go ahead and open the scene 06_05,
and there's our character, and his
| | 00:15 | jaw is still moving.
| | 00:18 | So let's go ahead and bring
in those shapes that we have.
| | 00:21 | So, we're going to go ahead and go
File > Import, and I have them in
| | 00:26 | 06_04_Heads, Import.
| | 00:28 | Now, what that does is it brings in the head
that we were playing with, which we can delete.
| | 00:35 | And so let's select that head and just
hit Delete, and it brings in actually a
| | 00:39 | couple of layers, it brings in the
layer of heads that we had, and it actually
| | 00:44 | creates this other layer for
the objects in the previous scene.
| | 00:47 | But we can delete that.
So let's just delete that layer.
| | 00:50 | So now let's go through the heads and
make sure that we're only going to apply
| | 00:53 | the heads that we need.
| | 00:55 | So actually, I'm going to go into
the Front view here, and I have kind of
| | 00:59 | organized these in groups.
| | 01:00 | So these are all the brows. The brows
are along the top, angry, okay. We want
| | 01:04 | those, down, brow up, left and
right, brow frown, left and right.
| | 01:13 | So typically, I have three for each of
these, one with a centered version and
| | 01:18 | then a left and a right version.
Now for the eyes, I have a couple here.
| | 01:23 | I have eye wide open so that's
kind of like deer in the headlights.
| | 01:27 | I have this one here which is a squint,
left and right, and also just blink up,
| | 01:33 | which is just blinking the upper lid.
That's what that means.
| | 01:38 | And then, I have a regular blink.
| | 01:40 | Now, the way that we're going to do
blinks here, we're actually going to tie our
| | 01:43 | blinks to an external controller.
| | 01:44 | So I don't need these normal blinks,
because what happens in these blinks is
| | 01:48 | that I have actually animated the lower
lid up as well, and I want to separate out
| | 01:53 | the upper and lower lid, so I can delete these.
Let's go ahead and hit Delete on those.
| | 01:58 | So we have got the eyes.
| | 01:59 | Now, for the lower face, I do have some
here modeled that have open mouths, and
| | 02:05 | for this particular application, we're
not going to use the open mouth shapes.
| | 02:09 | Now, if you wanted to, what some people
do is they do all of their mouth shapes
| | 02:13 | as morphs, they don't use a jaw
bone and they just model everything.
| | 02:17 | I think that has a little less
flexibility when it comes to animation.
| | 02:21 | So I'm going to go ahead and
delete some of these open mouth ones.
| | 02:25 | I'm going to delete this one here which
is ey for the letter A. This one here.
| | 02:30 | Now, this one here is for the
letter L. So I'm going to leave that.
| | 02:34 | E, I'll leave, and I'll leave smile
open, I'm going to delete that, smile,
| | 02:41 | teeth, yeah, that's fine.
| | 02:42 | Regular smile, that's good,
frown, and these ones for disgust.
| | 02:48 | They do have kind of an open mouth,
in fact I'm just going to go ahead and
| | 02:52 | delete the center, disgust, and
we'll just have right and left.
| | 02:57 | So, now that I have got these, and then
also we have mouth left and right to side
| | 03:01 | moves the lips left and right.
| | 03:03 | Now, we can do that with the jaw,
so we really don't need that either.
| | 03:07 | So now we have got the targets that we
want, so I'm going to go ahead and select
| | 03:12 | those morph targets that work for this.
| | 03:14 | So if I selected everything here and
then selected the head, Shift-select, and
| | 03:18 | did Blend Shape, I'm going to get an error
because it says No deformable objects selected.
| | 03:25 | What actually happened here was that I
have my camera's target as right here.
| | 03:28 | So if I just disconnect
that, then I can select that.
| | 03:32 | So what I'm going to do is I'm going to
select everything, deselect the camera
| | 03:38 | target, then Shift-select the head, Create
Deformers > Blend Shape, go. Here we go.
| | 03:51 | Now we have got this pretty much working.
| | 03:54 | So, in fact I am going to go into a Perspective
viewport here, and let's see what we have got.
| | 03:59 | And in fact, I'm going to hide these
heads, so we don't need to move with them.
| | 04:03 | So now I have got this mouth can open
and close still, but now, on top of that,
| | 04:07 | I have got Window >
Animation Editors > Blend Shape.
| | 04:12 | Now I have got this Extra Blend Shape here.
I don't know where that came from.
| | 04:16 | So I can just hit Delete, get rid of that.
| | 04:18 | Now, we can set our Orientation to
either Horizontal or Vertical in this window.
| | 04:24 | I like it Horizontal.
| | 04:28 | That means the sliders are
horizontal. All of this works.
| | 04:32 | We have got blink, we have got frown,
eyebrows, we have got mouth frown, smile, and we
| | 04:40 | can also work the jaw with that.
| | 04:44 | In fact, if I wanted to,
I can play with the jaw.
| | 04:50 | Let's delete these keys.
We don't need those anymore.
| | 04:52 | If I wanted to, I could move the jaw
however I want, and add in a smile on
| | 04:58 | either side and so on and so forth.
So, we have a lot of flexibility there.
| | 05:13 | Okay, so that's basically how
you apply these morph targets.
| | 05:16 | Now, you can animate, character is
pretty much ready to animate right now.
| | 05:20 | You could actually animate everything
manually, but it's always best to have
| | 05:25 | additional controls to make things easier.
| | 05:27 | So, in our next section, we're going to start
adding custom controls for the character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging the head pt. 1: Creating head controls| 00:00 | Now that we have the head pretty much
ready for animation, let's go ahead and add
| | 00:05 | some controls to our character.
| | 00:07 | What we want is we want some additional
controls to control let's say the jaw,
| | 00:11 | eye direction, blinks, stuff like that.
Real simple controls.
| | 00:15 | I'm going to show you how to do these
basic controls and obviously you can
| | 00:19 | expand on that all you want, and there
are some very sophisticated rigs out there.
| | 00:22 | And really, kind of, they all build on the same tools.
| | 00:25 | So let me show you how to
use some of those tools.
| | 00:29 | I'm going to go ahead and open the file 06_06.
And that's our basic character.
| | 00:35 | Now he's pretty much ready to animate,
but what I want to do is I want to make
| | 00:40 | the animation a little bit easier for him.
So we're going to add some controls.
| | 00:44 | One of the first things I want to
do is add a control for the jaw.
| | 00:48 | If you notice here we have got kind of a
bone here for the jaw, which is nice, but
| | 00:52 | we want to isolate the skeleton from
our control rig, and that's kind have been
| | 00:57 | the theory all along with this character.
| | 00:58 | So we need to create an
external control for that jaw.
| | 01:01 | I created kind of like the little control panel.
So let's go ahead and import that.
| | 01:06 | So I did some work for you.
And that's basically a control panel.
| | 01:09 | Now we have got this center one here.
I have called that Jaw Control.
| | 01:13 | Really it's just a deformed circle.
| | 01:14 | These are all just curves, and then
we have got ones for the eyelids to control
| | 01:20 | those, and then we have got a master
one or what we called the Head_Control.
| | 01:25 | So let's go ahead first of all we need to
set up a little bit of a hierarchy here.
| | 01:29 | So let's go into our Outliner, and you
see all of these are just kind of sitting
| | 01:34 | outside of this hierarchy.
| | 01:35 | So what I want to do is select all of
these that are inside this box, middle
| | 01:41 | click and drag those to the Head
Control box, and now the Head Control will be
| | 01:46 | kind of the master of those.
| | 01:48 | Then drag that into my character
master, which is my Control Hierarchy
| | 01:54 | underneath this one here which is the
four spine joints so that when a spine
| | 01:58 | moves this head moves as well.
So it kind of moves with the character.
| | 02:03 | So I'm going to select this Head
Control and drag it underneath the spine.
| | 02:07 | So now when this rotates that rotates as well.
I'm going to undo that.
| | 02:16 | The first thing I want to do is get
the head moving with this Head Control.
| | 02:20 | The setup of this is pretty much the same
as we have for the setup of all of these.
| | 02:25 | So for all of these little joints here
we're going to do a point constraint to
| | 02:29 | the joint in the head that this
head control is going to control.
| | 02:33 | First thing I need to do is I need to move
the pivot point of this to match that joint.
| | 02:39 | So let's go to our Front view.
It's going to be a lot easier.
| | 02:42 | In fact, I'm going to hide the Geometry.
| | 02:44 | So what I want to do is I want to take--
this is my head joint right there or the
| | 02:49 | top of the neck is really
what I want to snap that to.
| | 02:52 | So I'm going to hit the
Insert key to move my pivot point.
| | 02:55 | I'm going to hit snap, and I am
going to snap that to that joint.
| | 02:59 | So if I look at it from the camera
point of view that's what I'm going to be
| | 03:06 | rotating the head with. Turn off Insert mode.
I'm going to go in the Select mode.
| | 03:12 | I'm going to select, this
is going to control that.
| | 03:15 | So this is the last thing selected.
So we're going to do constraint.
| | 03:18 | I'm going to select my head and then
select that joint, Constrain > Point.
| | 03:23 | Okay, make sure Maintain offset is on.
Constrain > Orient.
| | 03:30 | So now I'm going to rotate
this, it rotates the head.
| | 03:35 | In fact, if we can take the geometry here,
you can see it's rotating my head. Perfect. Undo, undo.
| | 03:45 | Okay, so now that I have that
set up, I can set up my jaw.
| | 03:50 | So we're going to go ahead
and do that in the next section.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging the head pt. 2: Creating a jaw control| 00:00 | Now that we have the Head Controls in
place, let's go ahead and start wiring up
| | 00:04 | the attributes to the
controls on the control panel.
| | 00:06 | We're going to start with the jaw.
| | 00:08 | Let's go ahead and open the scene that
we have been working with. I have 06_07.
| | 00:15 | That's our character.
| | 00:18 | So I'm going to select my jaw and what
we want to do is we want to take this and
| | 00:24 | wire it to this little teardrop shape.
| | 00:28 | So when this teardrop moves up and down,
I want the jaw to move up and down,
| | 00:33 | actually rotate up and down.
| | 00:35 | It kind of moves back and forth and
with the jaw to rotate back and forth.
| | 00:39 | When it rotates left and right I want the
jaw to rotate left and right. Pretty simple.
| | 00:44 | We're going to do this with set-driven keys.
So how we do a set-driven key?
| | 00:47 | We figure out which
parameter we want to work with.
| | 00:51 | So in this case Skel_Jaw.
| | 00:54 | If I go ahead and turn off geometry
here, this is the bone we have selected,
| | 00:58 | Skel_Jaw and RotateZ, here,
is what moves it up and down.
| | 01:06 | So I right-click on that and drag down
to set-driven key, release, and it loads
| | 01:12 | that as Driven, because the jaw is
going to be driven by the controller.
| | 01:17 | Well, this is the controller.
| | 01:20 | So moving that up and down, or moving it
along Y, is what's going to drive this.
| | 01:25 | So let's go ahead and load the driver.
| | 01:27 | So translate Y affects Rotate Z. Well, the
first thing I want to do is set a key, Key.
| | 01:35 | So that sets up our first
set-driven key which is our 0 key.
| | 01:39 | So now we move our controller down to
the very bottom, and then we select our
| | 01:43 | jaw, and we rotate that down.
| | 01:47 | Now I kind of want to see how that affects
the character so I'm going to turn on geometry.
| | 01:52 | I'm going to go over to my Layers
panel and click back on Geometry, and I'm
| | 01:56 | going to rotate that jaw
down as far as I want it to go.
| | 02:00 | This is going to
actually set a limit. So there.
| | 02:03 | That's the limit of that.
| | 02:05 | So that's as open as the jaw
will ever be, and we hit a key.
| | 02:09 | So now W up and down moves the jaw.
| | 02:18 | Now if I wanted, I could
actually go the opposite direction.
| | 02:21 | In fact, let's go ahead and do that.
| | 02:23 | Let's set that to 0, and let's go up a
little bit and set a maximum, and we'll
| | 02:29 | select our jaw, rotate that up, and
maybe what we can do is just make it go up
| | 02:35 | just a little bit and have a key.
| | 02:37 | So now we have got it so that when it's
at 0 the jaw is in the neutral position,
| | 02:43 | we go down, and then we can actually
bring the jaw up just a little bit, which
| | 02:47 | is kind of nice, you may need
that in some sort of animation.
| | 02:50 | So let's go ahead and zero that out.
Now let's go and do the left and right.
| | 02:56 | So left and right on this particular
bone is Rotate Y. So rotate Y is going to
| | 03:08 | go with Move, or Translate, on this
one in X. So let's select the jaw.
| | 03:17 | So go rotate Y and Translate X. We
don't even have to reload any of these,
| | 03:24 | because we have got these all up here.
So rotate Y on the jaw.
| | 03:28 | It's going to be driven by jaw
control Translate X. So hit this, set a key.
| | 03:34 | Now I'm going to move my
controller over to the far right.
| | 03:38 | I'm going to select my bone, and again
we're trying to settle limit here so how
| | 03:44 | far over was that jaw going to go.
Let's say that far. Hit key and move that.
| | 03:52 | Now let's move that all the way over to
the other side and select that bone again.
| | 04:00 | Rotate that as far over as I can go.
| | 04:03 | In fact, if I was really smart I would
have remembered what that value was and
| | 04:07 | just typed in the negative numbers so
that they would be equal and then key.
| | 04:10 | So basically now we have left to right.
| | 04:14 | Now the thing is is that because we have
got complete control over X and Y here we
| | 04:20 | can actually do that.
| | 04:23 | So I'm going to go up and down, left and right
or really any variation of that. Isn't that cool?
| | 04:29 | In fact, we don't want this translating
in Z. So if we want, we can just lock that.
| | 04:37 | So now it's only going to
move in X and Y. There you go.
| | 04:43 | Okay, now we also want to get jaw rotation.
We'll that's pretty easy.
| | 04:47 | Again, it's the same thing.
| | 04:49 | So the only parameter that we haven't
done is rotate X and on this one here
| | 04:55 | we're going to actually--what is
rotation--what's rotation do we use?
| | 04:58 | Actually, rotate Z. So rotate Z on jaw
control, control rotate X on the actual jaw bones.
| | 05:09 | So I'm going to set a key.
Now I'm going to rotate this.
| | 05:13 | How far do we want to rotate?
Okay, let's just rotate it.
| | 05:16 | In fact, let me give this a very
specific value, and that's up to 45 and then
| | 05:21 | with this one here rotate this, and
again we have to kind of ballpark this,
| | 05:26 | maybe not that much. Then hit a key.
See what looks like.
| | 05:40 | Okay, let's go 45 in the other
direction and take this and rotate that in the
| | 05:47 | other direction, and set the key.
This is off the screen here.
| | 05:53 | So we set the Key, and
now we have got left, right.
| | 05:57 | We hit the move key and move that.
| | 06:02 | So really if we'd zero all
those out it goes back to zero.
| | 06:05 | So now that's our jaw control. Isn't that cool?
| | 06:07 | So it goes there and then when I
rotate it, I can rotate the jaw back and forth.
| | 06:13 | So isn't that cool?
| | 06:14 | I'm going to zero these out and save it,
and now we're going to move on to the eyelids.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Rigging the head pt. 3: Creating blink controls| 00:00 | Now we're going to go ahead and
create some controls for the eyelids.
| | 00:03 | It's very much the same as how we did it for
the jaw, we're going to use set-driven keys.
| | 00:09 | And let's go ahead and open up the Scene 06_08.
And these are going to control the lids.
| | 00:18 | Now instead of controlling actual
parameters, we're actually going to control the
| | 00:23 | Blend Shape parameters on
this particular character, okay.
| | 00:28 | So what I have to do is I have to go to
Blend Shape and find the names of these.
| | 00:34 | Scroll down here and I
go into INPUTS blendShape2.
| | 00:40 | And then I select the parameters for the
Blink and then there's another one here
| | 00:44 | for SquintR and SquintL,
somewhere here--SquintL, okay.
| | 00:48 | And we're going to wire those
to the right and left of these.
| | 00:52 | So let's start with the BlinkUpR.
right-click drag, Set Driven Key.
| | 01:00 | Our driven is that Blend
Shape, Driver is this LID UP.
| | 01:07 | So load Driver, and again just like
with the other one, translate Y, which is
| | 01:17 | green, it's going to be controlling it.
| | 01:19 | So we'll set a key here, and then we'll
move that down, it covers the eye, and
| | 01:30 | then we'll take this parameter here.
| | 01:32 | So I'm going to select the head
again, go to my Blend Shape, link up.
| | 01:38 | I'm going to set that to--there it is--
I set that to 1, okay, and hit key.
| | 01:46 | So now I'm going to move this, it moves
to, so if we move back to zero, the eye
| | 02:01 | is open, and when I move
it down it's closed, okay.
| | 02:04 | Now one thing I can do, I
can do a Blend Shape backwards.
| | 02:10 | So let's go ahead and do
it like we did with the jaw.
| | 02:13 | Let's go ahead and do one with those
a little overshoots in the other way.
| | 02:17 | Let's select the Controller first,
move it up just a little bit, and then I'm
| | 02:22 | going to select my head, find that
particular thing, blink up right, and I'm
| | 02:29 | going to make it negative, say 0.25.
Now watch what happens when I do that.
| | 02:37 | Okay, so that opens up a little bit more.
| | 02:42 | It actually over extends that
lid a little bit so let's go key.
| | 02:46 | So now, I'm actually using my Blend
Shape in the opposite direction so I can go
| | 02:52 | down and go up to normal, or I can overshoot
it just a little bit, okay. Very simple, okay.
| | 03:01 | Now let's do the same thing for the
lower lid, and then I'll let you do
| | 03:06 | the other eye yourself.
| | 03:07 | So let's go ahead and select the head.
Going to be left squint right, eye squint right.
| | 03:13 | Now, when you get down to the other eye
squint left for some reason came up at
| | 03:16 | the bottom of my list--I'm not sure
how it came up on yours, but it's at the
| | 03:21 | bottom of that list.
| | 03:22 | So we're going to take that, right-click,
set-driven key, it's on squint right.
| | 03:26 | In fact, we can just
select it here if you want to.
| | 03:31 | And now we're going to load another
driver, right lid low and
| | 03:37 | again it's going to be translate Y. So first
thing we want to do is do a set key just key that.
| | 03:45 | Now we're going to go ahead and move
this so that it's closed, and then I'm
| | 03:49 | going to select that target.
| | 03:52 | So I'm going to select the head, scroll
down, open this up again, put that at one.
| | 03:59 | Okay, when you put that
at one, watch what happens.
| | 04:04 | Okay, so this is zero, and this is one.
| | 04:06 | When it's at one, then
we're going to key it, okay.
| | 04:10 | So again the same thing. There we go, okay.
| | 04:18 | When that's at zero, that's at zero when it's
closed, the eye is closed. Very simple, okay.
| | 04:26 | Now, again, very much the same for the
other eye, so go ahead and do that, and
| | 04:31 | then we'll go ahead and add
some controls for eye direction.
| | 04:34 | We're getting to the point where we're
almost done, so let's go ahead and finish
| | 04:38 | up to the next lesson or so, okay.
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| Rigging the head pt. 4: Creating eye direction controls| 00:00 | Okay, so now we're almost
done with our character.
| | 00:02 | We still need to work with
the actual eyes themselves.
| | 00:05 | We have done the lids, let's work with
the eyes--in fact, we haven't even attached
| | 00:08 | the eyes to the skeleton yet.
| | 00:10 | But let's go ahead and see where we're at.
We're going to open the Scene 06_09.
| | 00:14 | Okay, so if I select my HEAD_CONTROL,
you'll see that the eyes aren't even
| | 00:21 | attached to that head skeleton.
So let's go ahead and do that real quick.
| | 00:25 | And then we'll have some controls
for eye rotation, eye direction.
| | 00:30 | So the first thing we need to do is put
these eyes into that head hierarchy so
| | 00:34 | let's go into our Outliner.
| | 00:38 | And it's under Geometry, R_Eye1, which is
actually--let's go ahead and rename that Left Eye.
| | 00:47 | And those actually just need to go below
that locator that we created for the head.
| | 00:51 | So now just go ahead and bring them below that.
Minimize the Outliner.
| | 00:58 | And now because they're in the
hierarchy of that they will move with the head.
| | 01:03 | Okay, that makes it easy.
| | 01:05 | Now we need to have something
that controls eye direction.
| | 01:08 | Typically, what people do is they just
create eye targets, things to actually
| | 01:12 | for the eyes to look at.
So let's go ahead and do that.
| | 01:15 | We need a little piece of geometry to point at.
So let's go ahead and create a circle.
| | 01:19 | I'm going to go to my Front viewport.
| | 01:22 | Go over to Curves, circle, and
just create a small circle here.
| | 01:28 | Call that Right Eye Target. All right.
Okay, there we go.
| | 01:39 | And I'm going to go ahead and
duplicate that, just hit it, and just go Edit >
| | 01:42 | Duplicate, or hit the hotkey.
| | 01:45 | And we have got one now instead of Right
Eye Target we'll have Left Eye Target.
| | 01:51 | Okay, so now that we have these
targets, we need to have the eyes actually
| | 01:59 | pointing at those targets.
| | 02:01 | So let's go ahead and first
thing we need to do is position them.
| | 02:04 | So I'm going to go into my Top view and move
both of them somewhere in front of the character.
| | 02:09 | Okay, so right there.
| | 02:13 | How this is going to work is these eyes
are going to look at each one of these
| | 02:16 | targets and then when I move the
targets the eyes will move to follow.
| | 02:20 | So let's just start with the left eye.
| | 02:22 | I'm going to select that piece of geometry,
and then I'm just going to do Constrain > Aim.
| | 02:28 | Okay, so this is now an Aim Constraint.
Maintain offset--oops, I forgot to
| | 02:34 | select my target first.
| | 02:35 | So select my target, Shift-select the eye,
Constrain > Aim > Maintain offset > Add.
| | 02:44 | Okay, so now when I move this
that eye follows, very, very simple.
| | 02:52 | Let's do that for the right eye.
| | 02:54 | Select the target, Shift-select
the eye, Constrain > Aim.
| | 02:58 | Okay, so now the eyes follow that target.
| | 03:04 | And no matter where this head rotates the
eyes will maintain position on the target.
| | 03:10 | Isn't that nice?
| | 03:11 | Now what I would like to do is
actually have something here where I can move
| | 03:18 | both of these targets.
So I'm going to create one more circle.
| | 03:23 | So I'll go in my Front
Viewport, select Curves, circle.
| | 03:30 | And actually I'm going to
distort that a little bit.
| | 03:34 | I'm going to scale it just more of an oval.
| | 03:36 | And I'm going to make it big enough so
that it actually--here let's move it in
| | 03:43 | front of these, I'm going to
move it over these eyes here.
| | 03:48 | So what I want to do is I just want this
to surround those geometry for right now.
| | 03:53 | Okay, so let's just call that EYE_TARGET_MASTER.
| | 04:00 | Okay, all caps because this is a
control, that's my little naming scheme.
| | 04:10 | Okay, so now I have this EYE_TARGET_
MASTER and what we want to do is take the
| | 04:17 | two targets in the Outliner and
middle click and drag them so that they're
| | 04:24 | below the master, okay.
| | 04:26 | And then let's take that master target
and put it--middle click and drag below
| | 04:32 | the character master so now it's
part of that control hierarchy.
| | 04:37 | Let's turn on the geometry.
| | 04:39 | So now we have got this one control here,
the master controls both eyes, and this
| | 04:47 | controls the cross-eye controls.
| | 04:49 | So you can actually control each eye
individually but typically you'll just want
| | 04:53 | to put that wherever you
want the eyes to be pointed.
| | 04:57 | Pretty simple, huh.
But it works like magic, it's really cool.
| | 05:00 | And one of the things we want to do
also with this is we can also we increase
| | 05:05 | transformations on that as well as both
of those so that we have kind of a zero
| | 05:09 | point to work from, okay?
| | 05:11 | Now, one of the things we also want to
do is take all of these new controls that
| | 05:17 | we have, Shift-select them all
and put them in that control layers.
| | 05:19 | So right-click over Controls and Add
Selected Objects so that way we can switch
| | 05:25 | off all these controls. Perfect.
Okay, well this looks almost done.
| | 05:29 | I think this pretty much is done.
| | 05:31 | So I'm going to go ahead and save this out,
and this is pretty much the rig that we want.
| | 05:37 | So we're going to do some more additional stuff,
but this is the rig that we're working with.
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|
|
7. Finalizing the RigHiding unused attributes| 00:00 | Well, our character is pretty much done.
| | 00:02 | Now, there's a bunch of little clean
up things that we need to do in order to
| | 00:06 | make the animation worthy.
And let's go ahead and go through some of those.
| | 00:10 | I'm going to open the scene 07_01.
And there he is he pretty much is working.
| | 00:20 | But one thing that I'm noticing is that
a lot of these controls have parameters
| | 00:25 | available that we really don't need.
| | 00:26 | For example, this jaw control it's nice
that we can move it in X and Y. And in
| | 00:32 | fact, we did freeze Z, but we don't even need
to see the parameters that we don't want to animate.
| | 00:39 | So what we can do is we can freeze them,
and then we can hide them or actually,
| | 00:43 | let's go ahead and select all
the parameters that we don't need.
| | 00:46 | Now in this one, Rotate Z
is what rotates the jaw.
| | 00:51 | So in this particular control, we need
Translate X, Translate Y, and Rotate Z.
| | 00:56 | So let's select all the ones except for that.
Use Ctrl not to select those.
| | 01:02 | And then right-click on these.
| | 01:03 | First thing we want to do is we want to
lock those so that we can't animate them.
| | 01:08 | And then we right-click again,
and then we hide them, okay.
| | 01:14 | So now once we have hidden them, when you
select this, the only things available
| | 01:18 | are the ones that we need.
That makes it a lot easier.
| | 01:22 | For example, on these you only use
Translate Y, you don't use any of the other ones.
| | 01:28 | So what I'm going to do is select all of
these, Ctrl-unselect that, Lock > Hide, okay.
| | 01:38 | So now when you select that you
only have one parameter to use.
| | 01:46 | And we can go ahead and do that for
the rest of the skeleton or all the
| | 01:50 | controls on the character.
| | 01:51 | Why don't you go ahead, and we'll do
that for all the controls that you want to
| | 01:55 | restrict, and then we'll pick it up,
and we'll do some more clean up and smooth
| | 02:00 | the character out so he
looks good when he renders.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating a smooth proxy| 00:00 | Let's go ahead and open 07_02.
| | 00:05 | Now that we have some of these
parameters locked down so that we don't
| | 00:09 | accidentally move them around, we
can do the same for the geometry, okay.
| | 00:13 | So one of the things we want to do with
geometry is you want make sure that it's locked, okay.
| | 00:18 | So if we select this geometry, make sure
that all of these are grayed out so you
| | 00:23 | can't accidentally move them.
| | 00:24 | Now the other thing we want to do with
geometry is we want to smooth the character.
| | 00:29 | This character is actually fairly low-res
character and typically how you create
| | 00:34 | a character is you model at low-res,
and then you smooth it using Smooth Proxy
| | 00:39 | to render at a higher res.
| | 00:40 | Now how Smooth Proxy
works is really very simple.
| | 00:43 | We go into our Polygons menu,
we go under Proxy > Subdiv Proxy.
| | 00:50 | What that does is it tells you
how many subdivision levels we want.
| | 00:53 | Now this could be changed later and
then a bunch of other parameters as to how
| | 00:57 | you want the mesh to be created
exponential creates a smoother mesh so you
| | 01:02 | kind of want to do that.
And usually just the defaults are fine.
| | 01:06 | So if we hit Smooth watch what happens.
| | 01:09 | You can see here it's created
actually two pieces of geometry.
| | 01:12 | If we go into my Outliner I
can see this a little bit easier.
| | 01:16 | So go into Geometry, and now
it's created this new group called
| | 01:20 | Geometry_Head_NeutralSmooth--so Head_Neutral
is the name of the geometry--so SmoothProxyGroup.
| | 01:27 | And under that we have two things, we
have Head_Neutral, which is my original
| | 01:31 | head, and that's what we're actually animating.
| | 01:33 | But what it did is it put a kind of a
semi-transparent texture on it so you
| | 01:38 | can see through it.
| | 01:39 | And then it created a
second head called Head_Neutral.
| | 01:43 | And that head actually has
a SmoothProxy node on it.
| | 01:47 | And so what that does is it allows us
to smooth the head so if we want to we
| | 01:52 | could up it from 1 to 2, and
you can see you get more detail.
| | 01:56 | Now when you go to render this,
this is what we'll render.
| | 01:59 | Now one thing I have find is that it's
kind of ugly to look at this cage around
| | 02:03 | there, so one of the things I do is I
tend to take those Smooth Proxies, and I
| | 02:08 | put them in their own layer.
In fact, let's go ahead and do that.
| | 02:11 | We're going to go into Layers, Create
Empty layer, and let's just call that PROXY.
| | 02:17 | So those are going to be
all of our proxy objects.
| | 02:20 | Okay, then I'm going to select just
the cage 1, Add Selected Objects, okay.
| | 02:27 | Now I can hide that, isn't that nice?
| | 02:31 | Okay, so, let's do that for the body as
well, so select the body geometry, Proxy >
| | 02:37 | Subdiv Proxy, and it does the same thing.
| | 02:41 | Now look at Geometry we
can look at BodySmoothProxy.
| | 02:45 | So I'm going to select the original
body, add that to my PROXY layer by
| | 02:49 | right-clicking, okay.
And the same for this little bow tie as well.
| | 02:55 | So I'll just go ahead Proxy > Subdiv
Proxy, and then I'm going to go into my
| | 03:01 | tie, select my Bow_Tie.
| | 03:07 | So now when I hide that now I have
a smooth version of my character.
| | 03:11 | If I wanted to I could actually
take this PROXY group and apply a
| | 03:17 | different texture to it.
It doesn't have to have to have this texture.
| | 03:20 | I can retexture that with my
original textures, and I could animate that
| | 03:25 | and then render this.
| | 03:26 | Now another thing you can do is you
take this geometry here, this SmoothProxy
| | 03:34 | Geometry, and we can tie this
Exponential Level to a slider.
| | 03:39 | So if I wanted to I could have
variable resolution and just slide them up and
| | 03:44 | down, because when it's at 0,
it's actually where the proxies are, okay.
| | 03:50 | When it's at 1, it's one set of subdivisions.
| | 03:54 | So what you could do is you could
actually create a slider for the character, so
| | 03:58 | you just slide down the resolution so
you could animate low resolution and slide
| | 04:02 | it up and render high resolution, okay.
| | 04:06 | So that's how you smooth out your
character and get them ready for rendering,
| | 04:09 | and that's pretty much it.
So let's move on to the next thing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating the rig| 00:00 | Actually, our character is pretty much
done, so let's play with him a little bit.
| | 00:05 | We are going to go ahead and open Scene 07_03.
| | 00:09 | So now we have a character
that's fairly well smooth.
| | 00:11 | Now smoothing can take up a lot of
processor time, so you may want to dial down
| | 00:17 | the smoothing when you're
manipulating the character.
| | 00:20 | My machine is not terribly fast, I
like to manipulate this guy in real time.
| | 00:25 | So if you have a fairly recent
machine that shouldn't be a problem.
| | 00:28 | But anyways, how do you
manipulate the character?
| | 00:30 | Well, it's fairly simple.
| | 00:31 | The key here is to just use the
controls that we have created, and that's been
| | 00:35 | pretty much the whole process of rigging,
it's creating all of these controls to
| | 00:39 | manipulate the character.
| | 00:41 | So for basic animation we don't want
to be able to select this geometry.
| | 00:47 | So one of the things I want to do is
just turn off this Select Surface Object so
| | 00:51 | that way I don't have to
accidentally select the surfaces.
| | 00:57 | In fact, if you want we can turn off
everything but curves, because all of our
| | 01:01 | controls are curves, right?
| | 01:05 | So it makes it very easy for us so that
way I don't accidentally select my character.
| | 01:10 | Now, I can also hide my skeleton so
that way I don't need to see that.
| | 01:16 | And then you just animate the controls.
| | 01:19 | So, for example, if I wanted to move
the character's leg or pose him, I can
| | 01:24 | just start animating.
| | 01:25 | In fact, I'm just going to go ahead
and set some keys here and just get my
| | 01:30 | character into a nice pose.
| | 01:36 | Okay, at this point he's going to be
standing, so I really don't need IK.
| | 01:39 | I'm going to turn IK off,
that's just one of my things.
| | 01:43 | A lot of people like to
animate with IK, I don't.
| | 01:46 | I use it when it's
absolutely needed, and that's it.
| | 01:49 | So I like rotating my joints, so I'm
going to go ahead and put his arms down to
| | 01:55 | this side, and I can continue to set keys here.
| | 01:59 | If I want I can create a more natural
hand pose by bending some of the fingers.
| | 02:06 | So what I do here is I just select
all of the finger joints and then just
| | 02:12 | middle click and drag.
| | 02:14 | And if I want to, I can also just Ctrl-select
all the one's I want and just
| | 02:19 | move them all at once.
So let's do that with this hand.
| | 02:23 | So if I want to move all the fingers I
just Ctrl-select now I got to skip over
| | 02:28 | these ones and say spread, okay.
| | 02:32 | And then just middle click and drag,
and I have got a more natural hand pose.
| | 02:36 | And I can hit Rotate as
well to rotate that hand.
| | 02:40 | If I want to I can also rotate the arm.
| | 02:50 | And of course when you're doing a pose
everything starts with the hips, so I'm
| | 02:53 | going to start with my master hip
control here and start posing him.
| | 03:00 | So as you can see he's a fairly
robust character, very easy to pose.
| | 03:04 | He's going to be pretty much standing
on this leg, his weight is going to be on
| | 03:09 | this leg, so I'm going to go
ahead and move that leg out.
| | 03:15 | In fact, I'm going to move the knee out as well.
| | 03:18 | And I can just keep hitting S to set
keys for all of these, all of these joints.
| | 03:23 | If I want to move his head, I can rotate it.
And I can set a key for that.
| | 03:40 | Change his eye direction, and I can do that.
| | 03:51 | And if I want to go ahead and start
working with the face, I can do that.
| | 03:57 | I can go into my window, Blend Shape Editor.
| | 04:00 | Now some of these are locked off you
notice those are locked off because we have
| | 04:05 | the set driven keys on the blinks.
So but we can put a smile on his face.
| | 04:11 | You know I like to do kind of asymmetrical.
| | 04:33 | In fact, let's make him wave, I
think that would be a good one, okay.
| | 04:34 | And we can set Keys for all of these, okay.
So I'm going to go ahead and rotate his arm up.
| | 04:51 | Anyways, you get the hint.
| | 04:53 | And so he's very, very
animatable and pretty good character.
| | 04:57 | So now you have gone through the process
of rigging an entire character, and I'm
| | 05:02 | sure you can apply that to pretty
much any character that you create, these
| | 05:05 | controls and these techniques really work for
just about any character you want to create.
| | 05:11 | And if you encounter a character that
somebody else has built, chances are a lot
| | 05:15 | of these techniques will be
used in those characters as well.
| | 05:18 | So, I'm going to go ahead and
keep playing with my character.
| | 05:21 | Go ahead and play with your character as
well and animate your character and enjoy.
| | 05:27 | So we'll catch you in the next title that I do.
Okay, bye-bye.
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| Going further with the rig| 00:00 | So now that we understand all the
processes involved with rigging a character, I
| | 00:05 | want to show you one more character,
and this is really just the same
| | 00:09 | character but taken further.
| | 00:11 | And it's using the exact same techniques that
we have used, but I have just added a few more things.
| | 00:16 | And let me just show you what we have here.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to open Scene 07_04, and
it's our same character except these got a
| | 00:25 | lot more controls, especially on his face.
| | 00:28 | So I have added to these facial controls to
give you a little bit more upfront control.
| | 00:33 | Now a lot of these you could just do,
we go into our Animation Editors and go
| | 00:37 | into the Blend Shape, all right
let me show this horizontally.
| | 00:42 | And you see actually because all of
these salmon colored ones are ones that have
| | 00:46 | expressions, or set-driven keys,
that sort of thing in there.
| | 00:50 | And so what I have done is I have taken most
of the facial expression, and I have just
| | 00:53 | tied them to sliders.
| | 00:55 | And it's essentially the same
technique we used for the rest of the face.
| | 00:58 | Now we used set-driven keys
here to work with the lids.
| | 01:03 | And I did the exact same thing for these
other blend shapes, so this one's Widen.
| | 01:09 | And then for the brows I used the X
and Y parameters so that way you can have
| | 01:15 | like a two dimensional thing here.
| | 01:17 | But it's essentially the same
techniques, so up and down is one set of
| | 01:21 | set-driven keys, and left and right is
the other set of set-driven keys, and
| | 01:25 | then you can just mix them and the
same for all of these phonemes here Ooh,
| | 01:30 | Eee, Mom, and so on.
| | 01:36 | So again, you can see that as you take
these techniques you can build upon them
| | 01:42 | to create some very complex interfaces.
| | 01:44 | And if you come across a character that
has been rigged by somebody else you'll
| | 01:48 | know that the techniques are pretty
much the same for all the characters, it's
| | 01:51 | just how you choose to rig the character.
| | 01:55 | So I'm going to go ahead and leave this
character with you as well, and you can
| | 01:59 | go ahead and go through and see
how it's put together as well.
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | Thank you so much for working with me
and going through these lessons on how to
| | 00:04 | rig characters in Maya.
| | 00:06 | I hope you learned a little bit
about Maya Rigging and have a good firm
| | 00:11 | foundation in the tools that you
will use to rig and skin characters.
| | 00:17 | As you can see, rigging can get very
complex and more professional rigs have
| | 00:21 | even more complexity than what
we have shown here, but the fundamental
| | 00:25 | principles are all the same.
| | 00:27 | So if you understand these basics, the rest
of the stuff will come fairly easily to you.
| | 00:32 | So continue to practice, rig some of
your own characters, come up with your own rigs.
| | 00:37 | There's tons of rigs and tons of
resources on the Internet, and you can
| | 00:43 | download some very robust rigs from a
number of websites, and you can take those
| | 00:49 | apart as well to see how they're done.
| | 00:51 | And with your knowledge that you have
learned here you can understand exactly how
| | 00:54 | those are put together as well.
| | 00:56 | So good luck, have fun rigging,
and I'll catch you next time.
| | 01:01 | I'm George Maestri from
lynda.com and see you next time.
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