IntroductionWelcome| 00:00 | (music playing)
| | 00:04 | Hi! I'm Adam Crespi and welcome to
Working with HumanIK Rigs in Maya.
| | 00:09 | In this course, we'll look at creating
a HumanIK Rig, and the structure of the
| | 00:13 | HumanIK Rig as a flexible
system for rigging an animation.
| | 00:17 | I'll start by showing you how to create
a skeleton and attach a control rig to
| | 00:20 | it or remap a custom rig.
| | 00:22 | Then I'll show you how to select
parts of the rig using either full body IK
| | 00:27 | that's built in or working with
body parts and using FK if needed.
| | 00:32 | We'll see how to create animations
and edit them in the Trax Editor for
| | 00:36 | mapping and retargeting onto other characters
using character sets in the Character Mapper.
| | 00:40 | We'll take our characters over to
Autodesk Motion Builder, to look at
| | 00:44 | interoperability with the
HumanIK Rig in both applications.
| | 00:47 | This will let you map motion
capture data onto a rig, and bring it
| | 00:51 | across cleaned into Maya.
| | 00:52 | Now let's get started with
Working with HumanIK Rigs in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium member of the
lynda.com online training library, or if
| | 00:04 | you're watching this tutorial on a DVD-ROM,
you have access to the exercise
| | 00:08 | files used throughout this title.
| | 00:10 | In this course, I'm using a
Maya project for each chapter.
| | 00:13 | Each movie then has its own Maya scene.
| | 00:16 | Always make sure to set your project first;
| | 00:18 | choosing File, and Set Project.
| | 00:21 | Maya maps to the default;
| | 00:24 | My Docs, Maya, Projects.
| | 00:27 | I'll browse to my exercise files and
into the correct chapter, and that's a Maya
| | 00:31 | project with the default folders.
| | 00:33 | I'll click Set, and then open the
scene, and there are the start files for
| | 00:38 | each movie.
| | 00:39 | Each scene is self-contained.
| | 00:41 | There are no textures, and no materials needed.
| | 00:44 | Everything is in one Maya scene
with no referenced external files.
| | 00:48 | When we send to Motion Builder, Maya
will automatically make a temporary FBX to
| | 00:53 | send across, so we won't need to
save a scene, and then bring it in.
| | 00:56 | If you'd like, you can save your
Motion Builder scenes as FBXs in the Scenes
| | 01:01 | directory in your Maya project.
| | 01:03 | If you're a monthly member or annual
member of lynda.com, you don't have
| | 01:06 | access to the exercise files, but you can
follow along from scratch with your own assets.
| | 01:11 | Let's get started with
Working with HumanIK Rigs in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
1. Creating and Sizing the RigPlanning for a HumanIK workflow| 00:00 | The HumanIK system in Maya provides a
common bipedal skeleton and control rig
| | 00:05 | for use in not only animating a
character but remapping or retargeting
| | 00:09 | animation between different characters,
and sharing between applications such
| | 00:13 | as Autodesk Motion Builder.
| | 00:15 | The premise is straightforward.
| | 00:16 | We're often dealing with bipedal characters;
| | 00:19 | folks with two legs, most often two
arms and some assortment of fingers.
| | 00:24 | They usually have a head, a neck, and a spine.
| | 00:27 | While it sounds silly to pronounce
these things, they're common to most bipeds,
| | 00:31 | folks that stand upright on two feet.
| | 00:33 | What HumanIK lets us do then is take
a systematized skeleton with common
| | 00:38 | attributes and common naming, so we can
share motion data between the various joints.
| | 00:44 | Let's say for example, the smiling
fellow has an animation, and his brother
| | 00:50 | needs the same animation.
| | 00:51 | If they're rigged with a HumanIK system,
we can easily transfer that motion.
| | 00:55 | When we jump to Autodesk Motion
Builder, we can see that it's got the same
| | 01:00 | controls in the upper-right in the character controls.
| | 01:02 | It's meant to transfer motion back and forth to Maya.
| | 01:05 | We use Motion Builder for animating,
and also for importing and cleaning
| | 01:09 | motion captured data.
| | 01:11 | In this way, it provides a ready pathway
through HumanIK to remap that data onto
| | 01:16 | a character in Maya, providing us a live link if necessary.
| | 01:21 | We'll start out by creating a skeleton,
nd then make a control rig.
| | 01:25 | If you'd like, you can also use a custom rig.
| | 01:28 | Maybe you need special controls or extra bones,
although the HumanIK system is pretty full featured.
| | 01:33 | We can access the HumanIK system
under Skeleton in the Animation menu,
| | 01:37 | and choosing HumanIK.
| | 01:40 | We end up with an extra tab here, next
to the Attribute Editor and Channel Box,
| | 01:44 | and this gives us our basic controls for
defining a character, and also defining
| | 01:48 | a character set or setting the character's
default pose, providing us a quick
| | 01:54 | way to get back to the characterization state.
| | 01:56 | When setting up a character for HumanIK,
there are a couple of basic things to keep in mind.
| | 02:01 | It should be around zero-zero, modelled in real scale.
| | 02:04 | This fellow is about 5 feet tall.
| | 02:06 | The arms should be straight out in
the T pose with the arms on the X axis.
| | 02:11 | Feet placed flat on the ground and hands straight out.
| | 02:14 | The fingers can be spread if needed, and it depends
on the character of the character.
| | 02:19 | He has a classic cartoon hand with
three fingers that flare out at the ends.
| | 02:24 | The HumanIK system has a head bone,
and will provide a place for linking say
| | 02:28 | a facial rig onto.
| | 02:30 | We can also add-in things like extra
spine links, extra toes, twist bones for
| | 02:34 | the forearms, and other things that are
common to bipeds, especially ones with
| | 02:40 | well, human-like conditions, such as two
bones in the forearm allowing us to have
| | 02:43 | twist or pronation and supination.
| | 02:45 | What we'll do first then is create our rig,
starting out resizing the skeleton
| | 02:50 | and then adding the control
rig and setting the character.
| | 02:53 | From there retargeting motion is straightforward,
and we can use the Maya Trax Editor as well.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating the skeleton| 00:00 | Creating a skeleton for HumanIK
character is straightforward.
| | 00:03 | We go to the HumanIK Tab or Character
Controls located next to the Attribute
| | 00:08 | Editor and Channel Box, and either
click on Create Skeleton, or drop down under
| | 00:13 | the blue HumanIK button to choose Create and Skeleton.
| | 00:17 | When a Skeleton is created, it may not
be sized to the character accurately.
| | 00:21 | We have a character scale we can play with here.
| | 00:23 | I'll click on the fourth tab, and
open out that menu so I can see all the
| | 00:27 | parts and checkboxes.
| | 00:29 | We can play with the character scale
to get it adjusted and we'll also scale
| | 00:32 | bones to actually fit where the character's joints go.
| | 00:36 | We can increase the Bone Count as
we need to make sure it fits what our
| | 00:39 | character should be able to do.
| | 00:41 | For example, we may want more bones
in the spine putting in four, and we'll
| | 00:45 | see that spine shrink along with the
character, but now have four bones and we
| | 00:48 | can scale it back out.
| | 00:51 | I'll put in a size of 3 and scale him up,
and add-in just a couple of more,
| | 00:56 | and get him big enough.
| | 00:58 | I can scale bones from here to fit.
| | 01:00 | We can also add-in things like Roll Bones;
| | 01:02 | for example, on the Lower Arms.
| | 01:05 | Roll Bones provide a place in here to
add twist, allowing us to skin front and
| | 01:10 | back here and put in pronation and supination
in a character like we'd expect to see.
| | 01:16 | For this one, I'm going to leave
out his Roll Bones, and make sure
| | 01:19 | that character sizes up.
| | 01:26 | With the character roughly resized and
ready for scaling, I can see if there's
| | 01:30 | anything else I need to add in.
| | 01:31 | For example here, he starts out with
four fingers on each hand, plus a thumb.
| | 01:35 | I may want to take that off, leaving
him with a standard three-fingered cartoon
| | 01:39 | hand, and it's an option about which fingers to remove.
| | 01:42 | I'm going to take the pinky off or
actually the middle and his hands
| | 01:47 | will reorient correctly.
| | 01:49 | I can then move these bones around
and have my standard three-fingered cartoon hand.
| | 01:54 | We can also play with the number of
finger joints and it's important to look at
| | 01:58 | the mesh when you're doing this.
| | 02:00 | If I look at his mesh, he has got lines
in here for three joints per finger, and
| | 02:04 | we can tell this by the grouped mesh lines in the middle.
| | 02:06 | I'll leave his finger joint count at 3.
| | 02:09 | And if we need extra fingers, we can
add them in, or extra in-hand joints if
| | 02:13 | somebody has longer hands per se or floppy hands.
| | 02:17 | We also have Toe Control in the same way.
| | 02:19 | As this character has on shoes,
one foot bone will work nicely.
| | 02:22 | He will roll off with the built-in IK,
and I don't need the extra Toe Control as
| | 02:27 | if I had barefoot characters.
| | 02:29 | When I've got this all in, I'm ready
to resize this rig to fit the character.
| | 02:34 | At some point, the character scale
gets us pretty close, and we can start to
| | 02:38 | actually scale the parts of that character to fit.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting the size and components| 00:00 | Once we've got the skeleton created,
and it has the right number of parts here
| | 00:04 | in the Skeleton Tab in the
Character Controls, we can get the skeleton
| | 00:07 | positioned in the mesh.
| | 00:08 | And I am going to make a fix to the mesh first.
| | 00:11 | The skeleton creates around zero-zero.
| | 00:13 | If we look in the Top View here in a wireframe,
we can see it's perfectly on that grid.
| | 00:17 | For this particular character, and for
many characters, it's easier to make sure
| | 00:21 | that character is on the skeleton and
then nudge the skeleton slightly versus
| | 00:25 | taking all the bones, and pushing
and pulling them back and forth.
| | 00:27 | I'll go into my Channel Box and right-click
on my character's layer called
| | 00:32 | Geometry and choose Select Objects.
| | 00:35 | It looks like the eyes need to be added on,
so I'll make sure I'll catch them in
| | 00:38 | the selection by holding Shift, and adding them on.
| | 00:41 | Now what I'll do in the Top View is
take this character, and slide it forward,
| | 00:45 | making sure I press-and-hold W, left-click
and hold anywhere and choose the
| | 00:49 | World axis for movement.
| | 00:52 | I'll pull him forward, lining him up
as well as I can on zero-zero, and we
| | 00:56 | can see here, because he is nicely modeled, that
his arms line up on the bones, as does his spine.
| | 01:02 | Now he is a rather round-fellow, and
so it's okay that he is round around the
| | 01:08 | pelvis and around the shoulders.
| | 01:10 | His neck is roughly in the right place.
| | 01:12 | His legs are well roughly in the right
place, although a little wider than the
| | 01:15 | skeleton, and I'm ready to
get the positioning done.
| | 01:19 | What I'll do while I'm at it is
make sure on the Geometry layer that I
| | 01:23 | right-click and add the selected objects.
| | 01:25 | Now I can take this layer, and make it a
template so I can't accidentally move the mesh.
| | 01:30 | I'll turn off my grid and start to position the skeleton.
| | 01:34 | It's a parented arrangement.
| | 01:36 | The root node is right here at the pelvis,
which selects the whole skeleton.
| | 01:40 | I'll start from the top in apparent chain
such as the hips here or the pelvis,
| | 01:44 | and pull these over into the mesh.
| | 01:46 | We do have mirroring controls available
if you'd like, although you may have an
| | 01:49 | asymmetric rig or asymmetric model,
and so can't handle the mirroring.
| | 01:54 | I'll get him positioned as evenly as I can,
going for the center of the limbs,
| | 01:58 | and making sure that the knee joints
are aligned with the knee edge loops and
| | 02:01 | then dealing with the feet.
| | 02:07 | I'll pick his feet and look in a Side View.
| | 02:09 | HumanIK is made to understand the ground.
| | 02:12 | It's an IK System as the name
implies and keeps the feet planted.
| | 02:16 | His feet look pretty good.
| | 02:18 | I like the heel bone up a little bit,
and I'll take the end nub here or end of
| | 02:23 | chain on the feet and pull them out through the end.
| | 02:25 | He has really got kind of large paddles
rather than articulate feet, because he
| | 02:29 | only has shoes on, this will work well.
| | 02:31 | If we need to actually fold, you can put in
let's say a big toe node and end up
| | 02:35 | with one extra joint on the ball.
| | 02:39 | Now we'll look at his arms.
| | 02:41 | In a Front View then, I'll zoom out
and go in on his shoulders.
| | 02:45 | First, I'll start with his spine, grabbing
the spine links, and stretching them
| | 02:49 | down just a little bit.
| | 02:53 | Because it's a link chain, it takes
all of the upper torso with it for
| | 02:56 | every link I select.
| | 02:58 | I'll pull those in and seat his shoulders right at the top here.
| | 03:03 | I'll pull them into his shoulders
and get those right through his arms.
| | 03:07 | He doesn't have much by way of shoulders,
not like the cantaloupe-shouldered
| | 03:10 | superheroes we often see.
| | 03:12 | And so, I'm not as worried about extra
bones and large deformation the shoulder
| | 03:16 | volume when he lowers his arms.
| | 03:18 | Now we'll work on the elbows, again,
positioning those arm joints right in the
| | 03:23 | center of the three elbow edge loops.
| | 03:26 | His wrist will follow as well, following
right in the cuff on his sleeve here.
| | 03:35 | You can run a mirrored rig as I've
said before or you can be asymmetric.
| | 03:39 | Sometimes, I prefer an asymmetric rig
because it builds in a character in the
| | 03:43 | character, and possibly helps you
avoid even in like motions twinning.
| | 03:47 | Now in the Top View I'll get his hands aligned.
| | 03:50 | Pulling over to his left-hand and
grabbing the fingers and placing them in.
| | 03:54 | It looks like his wrist is in a pretty
good place, and we're seeing the joint
| | 03:58 | connections or the parenting to those fingers.
| | 04:01 | I'll pull his -- well I guess we'll
call it the pinky as he has a cartoon hand
| | 04:05 | over, and rotate it into place.
| | 04:07 | I may want to turn off my Discreet Rotate
at this point, pressing and holding E,
| | 04:11 | left-clicking and holding anywhere,
and in the Marking menu for rotation,
| | 04:15 | turning off Discreet Rotate.
| | 04:18 | Now we'll go back and get his fingers in.
| | 04:21 | This is a place where switching over to
the Object axis of movement instead of
| | 04:25 | the world may get us a better positioning.
| | 04:28 | I'll make sure that I put his finger
joints on those finger edge loops, and pull
| | 04:32 | the end out all the way up to the end of the finger.
| | 04:36 | The end for us drives the orientation of the parent.
| | 04:38 | We don't actually skin to the nubs or the ends of those bones.
| | 04:44 | I'll pull him back and finish out those fingers.
| | 04:47 | It should be pretty quick to get these positioned.
| | 04:49 | Now he has got large-flared fingers.
| | 04:51 | So we'll see how this works and what
kind of folding I get when I animate him.
| | 05:01 | I'm almost done positioning his fingers,
and I'll make sure I rotate them into place.
| | 05:06 | I don't want to simply bend the joint
as we may get some odd pivots when we
| | 05:10 | start to move these around.
| | 05:12 | Now I'll finish his other hand.
| | 05:21 | I've got the skeleton placed.
| | 05:23 | I'll make sure I go to the Character
Controls, and under the Blue button here,
| | 05:27 | I'll choose Edit>Skeleton, and Save Edits.
| | 05:34 | Once I've got the skeleton saved and in
place, on the Skeleton Tab, I'll click
| | 05:39 | Lock and Lock the Skeleton Definition.
| | 05:41 | I've defined him and positioned him,
and I'm ready to get the Control Rig on.
| | 05:45 | You can add other bones in.
| | 05:47 | And if you'd like in the skeleton definition,
you can also add in your own bones.
| | 05:51 | The mapping here represents the
bones that are required for HumanIK.
| | 05:55 | We can scroll down and see for
each node selected, it's a valid or
| | 06:00 | invalid characterization;
| | 06:01 | the translation, rotation, and scale,
the rotation order, and the bone name.
| | 06:06 | If you're bringing in a custom rig,
which does happen occasionally, you need to
| | 06:10 | match up your rig node such as left arm
to these nodes, picking them, and then
| | 06:15 | clicking on the right bone in the
skeleton, or rather, the left one.
| | 06:19 | Once the skeleton is in, I can work on
Joint Orients, Skinning, and finally the Control Rig.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating controls| 00:00 | Once you've got the skeleton
defined for a character, we can skin it.
| | 00:04 | And it's easy to skin it at this stage,
and then get the controls on.
| | 00:08 | I'm going to use some default skinning
for my character here as skinning can
| | 00:12 | take up an entire course itself.
| | 00:14 | We can literally spend hours skinning a
character and finessing the weighting on
| | 00:18 | the vertices on all the different joints
and interactions, constructing motion
| | 00:22 | tests and really playing with
how it looks and how it deforms.
| | 00:26 | I'll go to my channel box and unlock
or untemplate or reference that layer.
| | 00:32 | Now I'm going to bind him.
| | 00:34 | What I'll do is to pick the mesh,
making sure I've got all of his parts except
| | 00:40 | for his eyes, and then the skeleton.
| | 00:46 | His eyes later will be either parented
or skinned to eye bones, we'll call them,
| | 00:50 | which are parented to the head bone,
so I'm going to leave them alone.
| | 00:54 | You may end up putting a face rig of
some kind in your character depending on
| | 00:57 | how articulate they are in their face,
or using blend shapes, but that's
| | 01:00 | another discussion.
| | 01:01 | For now though, I will choose under
Skin>Bind Skin>Smooth Bind, here are the
| | 01:06 | differences between them briefly.
| | 01:08 | A Smooth Bind allows weighting between
bones of vertices so that they can be
| | 01:12 | influenced by multiple bones.
| | 01:14 | A Rigid Bind then is a one-to-one, a
vertex bound to a bone exactly, and an
| | 01:20 | interactive skin bind gives us capsules to play with.
| | 01:23 | I'll use a Smooth Bind and open
up the dialog for the Options.
| | 01:27 | In here, I'm going to use the Closest Distance.
| | 01:30 | I'll get hopefully his feet not binding to each other.
| | 01:34 | I'll bind to the joint hierarchy, and this way,
it's going to bind to the whole skeleton.
| | 01:40 | Finally, in my skinning method,
I'm going to use Dual Quaternion.
| | 01:43 | Classic linear is well, like it says, classic and
has been around in Maya for ages.
| | 01:49 | It's a nice way of skinning, although we may
see some folding and some issues at the elbows.
| | 01:53 | Dual Quaternion, through Math Magic
I don't even understand all of, allows us
| | 01:58 | to solve most of those issues and the way
that the vertices regard the bone orientation.
| | 02:03 | I'll choose Dual Quaternion.
| | 02:05 | Normalizing the weights allows
me to shift from one to the other.
| | 02:09 | If I take 20% off one, it will add 20% onto the other bone.
| | 02:13 | I'll try it with a Dropoff rate of 4,
and see if that works if I get enough
| | 02:18 | influence or too much.
| | 02:19 | I'll click on Bind Skin and see how it looks.
| | 02:23 | He is bound and we can see the skeleton is now in color.
| | 02:26 | As a quick test, I will pick one of his bones and try moving it.
| | 02:31 | When I rotate his arm for example,
we can see his mesh deform.
| | 02:35 | The Dual Quaternion is handling the
elbow fairly decently, although there is
| | 02:39 | some folding there, but the default is pretty good.
| | 02:42 | As I've said, this is not a movie on skinning,
and that can really take up a lot time.
| | 02:47 | It's kind of like watching grass grow or paint dry.
| | 02:50 | And so, skinning is one of those things
that's better when it's done and the
| | 02:53 | workings of are, well, a little on the slow side.
| | 02:56 | Now that I've got him at least roughly
skinned, and I'll do a quick check on any
| | 03:00 | other places that are problematic,
I can start to make his controls.
| | 03:04 | He has got some deformation on his feet,
and they are taking his feet with him.
| | 03:09 | So eventually, I may want to
paint some weights on those.
| | 03:12 | I also see a problem here with my
joints, and they need some orientating.
| | 03:16 | What I'll do temporarily is to hide
his mesh, and in my joints here, select
| | 03:22 | them, and choose under Skeleton>Orient Joint.
| | 03:26 | What this does for us is tune which
axis faces up and whirled and is the
| | 03:31 | primary axis of movement.
| | 03:33 | I want the X for rolling for example on the feet.
| | 03:36 | I'll try orienting the joints, clicking
on Orient, and then switching over here
| | 03:41 | into Component mode.
| | 03:42 | I'll go into Component, and click on the
question mark, which is going to show me
| | 03:46 | the axes on the bones.
| | 03:47 | It looks like I'm in pretty decent shape.
| | 03:50 | Most of the axes on like-pieces
are facing in the same direction.
| | 03:53 | For example, the knees show the roll axis on X down here,
Z in front, and Y to the side.
| | 03:59 | Same with the heels;
| | 04:01 | the end effecters on the toes are
somewhat randomly placed, and we can play
| | 04:04 | with those if we like;
| | 04:06 | clicking E for rotate or going
back to Skeleton, and reorienting
| | 04:11 | those particular joints.
| | 04:12 | I'm going to leave it alone for the
moment, as again we can spend a lot of time
| | 04:16 | orienting, and I'm looking
mostly for consistency at the moment.
| | 04:19 | The major pieces I'm concerned with
are things like the spine, the hips, the
| | 04:23 | elbows, and the hands, and it
looks like he is in pretty good shape.
| | 04:28 | Most of the orients are in the right direction in like places.
| | 04:31 | So it's fairly consistent.
| | 04:35 | If you need and if you're seeing
more problems with your Skeleton, under
| | 04:38 | Skeleton, in Orient Joint, you can
start to play with the different axes, and
| | 04:43 | it will even tell you what is the most
important and second-most important
| | 04:47 | joint direction.
| | 04:48 | For example, the X here, the primary
axis, specifies the joint direction will
| | 04:52 | point down the bone to the next joint.
| | 04:55 | And for most of my bones here, it's pretty good.
| | 04:57 | For example, right here on the leg, as
I've said, the X point straight down, and
| | 05:02 | so this mesh is in a good place to move correctly.
| | 05:07 | I'll get out of the Component mode,
back into Object, and I'm ready to get the
| | 05:11 | control rig on this mesh.
| | 05:13 | I'll go to the Character Controls,
scroll up to the top, and it's already got
| | 05:18 | Character 1 selected.
I can rename him if needed.
| | 05:22 | Under Edit>Definition, and there
is Rename, and I'll name him Fellow.
| | 05:29 | Now the character is called Fellow and all of his joints are
| | 05:32 | appropriately called Fellow.
| | 05:34 | For example, picking this hip joint
shows me Fellow, left up leg.
| | 05:38 | Now with him selected again,
I'll choose Create and Control rig.
| | 05:43 | Before I do this though, I need to lock the skeleton.
| | 05:45 | What that means is in the skeleton I
need to make sure that it is locked
| | 05:49 | officially that the definition is locked.
| | 05:52 | Check this before you create the
Control rig because going back and forth
| | 05:54 | can get messy.
| | 05:55 | Now I'll make my rig.
| | 05:59 | What I get then is a skeleton on the skeleton.
| | 06:02 | We're seeing this yellow skeleton
overlaid on my Bind skeleton, and controllers
| | 06:06 | on them in two ways.
| | 06:09 | We've got our IK controllers in red
and additional or secondary controls in blue.
| | 06:15 | Our FK bones are in yellow, and these
are accessible here in the modes up at the top.
| | 06:20 | I can show and hide the IK and now I have an all-FK skeleton.
| | 06:25 | I can turn off the FK and just have the IK controls.
| | 06:31 | With both off, I don't see anything.
| | 06:32 | Depending on how you'd like to animate
and what you're doing, you may see one
| | 06:36 | or the other in use.
| | 06:37 | For example, a character placing his
hand on a table was a great use of IK.
| | 06:42 | The IK allows the hand to stick in place.
| | 06:45 | Waving your hand up in the air might be
a better place for FK as the rotation is
| | 06:49 | driven from the shoulder out.
| | 06:51 | The neat thing about this rig is that it's a full-body IK.
| | 06:55 | Here's what this means.
| | 06:56 | I'm going to grab the IK for his left wrist, and move it.
| | 07:00 | And I'll turn back on his mesh so we can see him.
| | 07:03 | I'll make him a reference, so I can see it but not touch it.
| | 07:07 | With that IK selected, as I pull it down, his arm goes.
| | 07:10 | And if I pull his arm enough, it pulls
the whole body, and he starts to bend,
| | 07:14 | but his feet stays stuck.
| | 07:16 | I'm going to pull his hand forward
and maybe up a little bit, and animate him around.
| | 07:22 | He is going to reach forward, twist his head over.
| | 07:26 | Now what we're seeing here is some
folding, and this is because of the
| | 07:29 | influence of those bones.
| | 07:30 | I haven't really dealt with the skinning,
and his head is well rather large, and
| | 07:34 | so we're seeing it fold in.
| | 07:37 | The full-body IK is pretty spectacular
though because it lets us do things that
| | 07:41 | would ordinarily be fairly complex in animation.
| | 07:43 | I've got my control rig in place,
and I'm ready to get keys going.
| | 07:47 | I'm also ready to look at how to
transfer this, and what else we can do with
| | 07:51 | this really spectacular rig.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting using the HumanIK interface| 00:00 | Once a character's skeleton is defined
and the control is established, we can
| | 00:04 | look at different ways of
selecting, and animating this character.
| | 00:07 | For example, the full-body IK allows us
to take let's say his hand, or his wrist
| | 00:12 | and pull the whole character over, bending him at the waist.
| | 00:16 | When I pick this wrist for example,
and let's see here at Frame 1, hit S to set a key.
| | 00:22 | We see down at the bottom Result 324.
| | 00:24 | What actually happened there is it
keyed almost all the pieces of the skeleton.
| | 00:29 | only have one thing selected, but
because it's the full-body IK, everything is
| | 00:33 | going to move with it.
| | 00:34 | Now I'll jump over maybe 30 frames,
and pull that hand down and make him
| | 00:39 | lean over a little bit.
| | 00:40 | I'll hit S again, and it takes the whole skeleton
with it, keying 214 components.
| | 00:46 | He has got a nice natural movement,
and I can get into my graph editor and
| | 00:51 | affect these keys very easily.
| | 00:53 | Yes, his eyes are flying out of his
head because I haven't put in eye bones.
| | 00:58 | I'll jump to the character controls.
| | 01:00 | Right now, as we can see, I've got his left wrist highlighted.
| | 01:03 | If I turn that off, I can work with the whole body.
| | 01:06 | What this lets us do is select from
this GUI if we need character controls even
| | 01:10 | if they're hidden inside the mesh.
| | 01:12 | We may have a character who is large-limbed,
round-limbed, wearing large shirt
| | 01:17 | or maybe even armor or another way is
obscured, and being able to select the
| | 01:21 | controls this way is very handy.
| | 01:24 | If we use the arrows here let's say
on the left-hand, we actually get into
| | 01:28 | our control this way.
| | 01:30 | This is for the hand or each finger.
| | 01:33 | When I focus in, there's that finger joint.
| | 01:36 | Now I can take this finger and pull it
down and even pull it back and make him
| | 01:40 | curl his hand up a little bit.
| | 01:43 | When I key this, it's going to key
all the relevant pieces affected by it.
| | 01:47 | So now, he is going to come up, and
curl that finger going from flat to curl.
| | 01:54 | Clicking back on the up-arrow lets
me return back to the whole skeleton.
| | 01:58 | What we can also do then is look at
pinning, and what this lets us do then is
| | 02:05 | say The motion is only affecting a certain part,
for example, here at Frame 30, he is bent over.
| | 02:12 | I'm going to pick let's say his pelvis
and pin it, pinning in translation and rotation.
| | 02:20 | Now when I scrub over maybe another
20 frames, pick that wrist again, and pull it up.
| | 02:26 | His pelvis is pinned and that motion is
going to occur from the pelvis up only
| | 02:30 | taking his upper body with it as part of the full-body IK.
| | 02:34 | I'll key that wrist, get 214 things keyed,
and now get a different motion.
| | 02:40 | And yes, again, his head is
deforming because of the skinning.
| | 02:42 | It's terrific though for animating.
| | 02:44 | I can bend him down, pull his arms up and pin his parts.
| | 02:48 | After this, if I want to unpin, let's
say picking his pelvis again and unpinning
| | 02:54 | it, moving that wrist up and keying it
will get me a different motion.
| | 02:59 | I'll pull him back over so his head stops deflating.
| | 03:08 | Now when I scrub on the timeline, he
bends over, pins from the waist at a
| | 03:13 | certain point, animates in, unpins, and comes back.
| | 03:17 | It's really fantastic for animating, and
it lets us select using these character
| | 03:22 | controls very distinctly, certain parts, pinning them is terrific.
| | 03:27 | We may have a motion in a whole body,
somebody is dancing around, and at some
| | 03:31 | point, we need to pin so just their arms
move but in a fluid manner.
| | 03:35 | We can also work in body parts.
| | 03:38 | Right now, up at the top, we can see
I've got the full-body button checked, which
| | 03:42 | gives me full-body IK.
| | 03:44 | I'll switch over here to body part
and pick for example his shoulder.
| | 03:49 | I'll take this shoulder and rotate it down.
| | 03:53 | Now it's just affecting that arm.
| | 03:56 | I'll key it, and it's only keying 62 pieces.
| | 04:00 | Over that animation though, he is
going to come in and pull his arm down
| | 04:05 | independent of deforming the rest of the body.
| | 04:08 | Maybe he is doing a dance of some kind here
and shaking his hips while flailing his arms.
| | 04:13 | The controls are straightforward,
and what it says then up here is we're
| | 04:17 | deriving the source from the control rig
and so we can also remap back to a
| | 04:21 | stance or another character if we need.
| | 04:24 | Right now though, I have the ability
to simply animate him in either FK or IK
| | 04:28 | using all manner of different controls
and pinning the animation to different
| | 04:32 | places, so that I can get fluid motion,
and expressive arcs, or unique motion
| | 04:38 | on certain pieces.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Animating the Rig in MayaKeying controls| 00:00 | When I'm ready to animate, I've got a lot of
options over what to animate in a skeleton.
| | 00:05 | For example, I can pick the major controls
using the HumanIK interface up on the side.
| | 00:10 | I've also got controls for things like
knees, pole vectors to affect knee swing.
| | 00:15 | I can pull these around depending on
how it needs to move and what I'm doing.
| | 00:19 | I'm going to take off his keys,
selecting the main root, and clicking on the
| | 00:23 | timeline, clicking and dragging while
holding shift to select those keys in
| | 00:27 | here, and then right-clicking and choosing Delete.
| | 00:30 | Now I'm back to one key at frame one and no movement.
| | 00:34 | Let's say for example I'm going to pull
his wrist around a little bit, and then
| | 00:37 | make him tap his feet.
| | 00:39 | I'll pick his wrist, and bend it in slightly.
| | 00:42 | Then I'll pull his hand down, and ignoring
the head deformation let him put his
| | 00:47 | arm down a little bit.
| | 00:49 | We can see I've got keys at different places here.
| | 00:52 | So I need to make sure when I'm deleting keys that
I'm actually looking at all of them. It's a big deal.
| | 00:57 | Making sure you've got the whole skeleton
selected when you're adding or removing keys.
| | 01:07 | With the keys off that wrist,
I've eliminated some of the motion.
| | 01:12 | Now I'll scrub over here to frame 35 let's say,
select that wrist, and pull it in again.
| | 01:19 | I'll hit S to set the key and on 62
elements I get a key in there.
| | 01:23 | I'd like to make him also tap his toes.
| | 01:26 | Now what we can do in here is put on additional pivots.
| | 01:29 | Right now, when I zoom in, I can see
I've got a heel control and I can also
| | 01:35 | select it in the GUI on the side.
| | 01:37 | Rotating this makes his foot rotate
reasonably, although I may want him to tap
| | 01:42 | his foot from the back of his foot for example.
| | 01:45 | What I can do is on that joint, right-click
and choose Create Pivot Effector.
| | 01:51 | I now have what looks like an extra bone,
and I don't want to move it.
| | 01:55 | What I'll do is hold D or enter Edit mode
to move the pivot, grab it on the Z
| | 02:00 | axis and pull it back and down for example.
| | 02:03 | I'll check on the side view, and
there's that pivot more back at the heel.
| | 02:07 | He is going to tap his foot from back of the heel here.
| | 02:10 | On my GUI on the side then, it gives me an
extra flyout here, showing that extra pivot.
| | 02:15 | I'll click on it to turn it on and use it.
| | 02:17 | It's very possible to have multiple
ones of these in a character added on.
| | 02:21 | Now over here, let's say at frame 40,
he is going to rotate this foot up
| | 02:25 | from that point, and key it, and back down here,
he will rotate down, keyed, and up again here.
| | 02:35 | So now he is tapping his foot from the heel,
based on that extra pivot, doing a little dance.
| | 02:42 | If we look over in the Perspective View
and zoom out, we can see him not only
| | 02:48 | bending over but there's a little foot tap
from the right place using that extra pivot.
| | 02:54 | I can turn off that extra pivot,
clicking back on the joint, and now it's
| | 02:58 | pivoting back on the original pivot of that IK handle.
| | 03:04 | Once I've got this going in his major
motion, then I can deal with things like
| | 03:08 | my pole vectors on my knees.
| | 03:09 | Let's say at this point, in addition to
tapping his foot, he needs to move that
| | 03:13 | knee a little bit side to side.
| | 03:16 | I'll pull that pole vector over a
little bit, or maybe up and down, and that's
| | 03:19 | going to give me that control.
| | 03:21 | I can pick it and even move the pivot out.
| | 03:23 | These are moderately limited depending
on how you move them as most of the
| | 03:28 | motion is derived from the IK.
| | 03:29 | But I'll put that in and set a key.
| | 03:32 | And now he has got a little
knee wiggle to go with that tap.
| | 03:36 | We can get an amazing range of
subtlety in the animation this way, making a
| | 03:40 | character bend in fluid arcs and
adding in extra pivots where we need without
| | 03:45 | adding in extra components to a custom rig.
| | 03:49 | I can extend out the animation.
| | 03:51 | The focus of this course is not necessarily
on animation but more on the rig itself.
| | 03:56 | But understanding where to animate it is important.
| | 03:58 | This way, we can take that animation and
use it and remap it to other characters
| | 04:03 | if we need, or transfer it between applications.
| | 04:06 | Lastly, I'm going to look at a stance pose.
| | 04:08 | What I'll do is back here at frame one define his stance.
| | 04:13 | I'll define a stance pose by clicking up on the blue button.
| | 04:16 | But before I do, I need to get out of
body part and back to the Full Body mode.
| | 04:21 | I'll drop down here and choose Edit>Controls
and Stance Pose with the main root node selected.
| | 04:30 | I should be able to scrub forward and
return him to a stance pose with the
| | 04:33 | Stance Pose button on the right
side of the HumanIK interface.
| | 04:37 | This is very handy as it lets you take
a mesh you may have moved around, and
| | 04:41 | return him back to a stance pose,
which doesn't necessarily have to be a T,
| | 04:45 | although we may want to return
him to a T to adjust the rig.
| | 04:50 | Now when I scrub forward, he still has his animation.
| | 04:52 | And I can take him to and from the
stance pose without adding extra keys.
| | 04:56 | I'm ready to keep animating, and I can
adjust these keys in a graph editor just
| | 05:00 | like any other animation, adjusting
the timing and weight of his motions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Retargeting animation between characters| 00:00 | One of the major benefits of the
HumanIK system aside from the easily created
| | 00:04 | skeleton and control rig is the ability to
retarget animation between disparate rigs.
| | 00:10 | It's a system where HumanIK skeletons
share the same bone placement and links
| | 00:16 | and type and controls.
| | 00:17 | So it's a remapping or retargeting
question on the animation, even if the
| | 00:21 | skeletons are in a different size or a different position.
| | 00:24 | Right now, I've got this round-headed
fellow doing a lean over and toe tap.
| | 00:28 | I'm going to make a new skeleton and
remap this animation onto the new one.
| | 00:35 | First, I'll click on the blue
button and choose Create and Skeleton.
| | 00:40 | I've got a new skeleton here, and
its size is the default tall skeleton.
| | 00:45 | Now we'll make some controls,
clicking on the blue button again and
| | 00:48 | choosing Create>Control Rig.
| | 00:51 | Note that I only had one bone selected,
but up here the Character was Character 1,
| | 00:55 | my new character.
| | 00:57 | So it made the rig for the whole thing.
| | 00:59 | I'll pick the root of the whole skeleton
down between the feet.
| | 01:02 | This allows us to grab and move the
whole HumanIK over as a statue, still
| | 01:08 | leaving the IKs in place and not affecting
where the animation is occurring.
| | 01:13 | Now we'll remap it, changing his
Source from Control Rig to Fellow that I've
| | 01:18 | called my other rig.
| | 01:19 | I'll pull him over again.
| | 01:21 | What it wants to do in the remapping
is put that onto his existing keys which
| | 01:25 | carry translation and rotation.
| | 01:27 | I'll grab his reference and move him over
and now scrub on my timeline, and both
| | 01:32 | skeletons share that motion.
| | 01:35 | There is the toe tap and the bend
over, transferred from one to the other
| | 01:38 | because it's choosing the source from the existing one.
| | 01:42 | It's a handy thing, to be able to
grab and retarget that animation.
| | 01:46 | Now that I've got this retargeting on,
if I'd like to add other motion on this
| | 01:50 | character, maybe an animation layer
for example, it will go on top of this
| | 01:54 | retargeted animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Baking animation to target characters| 00:00 | If we need, we can bake an animation into a
skeleton, giving us keyframes at every frame.
| | 00:05 | We'll use this often in an export.
| | 00:07 | Let's say we're going out to a game
engine where we want to bake the animation
| | 00:11 | into the skeleton, so that we transfer
across to our game engine bones, skin,
| | 00:15 | and skin weights without controls.
| | 00:20 | I'll select my skeleton on this second
fellow here, making sure I don't grab any
| | 00:24 | of the existing one.
| | 00:25 | And under the blue button here,
I'll choose Bake and Bake To Skeleton.
| | 00:29 | I have two options here, baking to the
skeleton and baking to the Control Rig.
| | 00:34 | Baking to the Control Rig doesn't key the bones;
| | 00:37 | it keys every key for all the control rig elements.
| | 00:41 | Doing the skeleton, keys every bone in
the skeleton, making the control rig not
| | 00:46 | necessary, baking the animation in, suitable for transfer.
| | 00:50 | I'll click on Bake Skeleton and
look at the properties a little bit.
| | 00:53 | What we can see here is that we have
some choices in what we're choosing to bake.
| | 00:57 | We can bake everything or just part of it.
| | 01:00 | We can pick, simply parts in a hierarchy.
| | 01:03 | Let's say for example, we're working
in a game and we have different leg
| | 01:06 | animations that don't affect the upper
body, such as walk, run, jog, etcetera.
| | 01:11 | And we want to bake out
different parts to be able to blend in;
| | 01:15 | these might match up with upper body
animations such as grab, throw, flail and wave.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to bake the whole thing and we
also have options over what we're driving.
| | 01:25 | Are we working from driven channels? Yes or no.
| | 01:28 | If we're using set driven keys, are we
adding in shapes or control points and
| | 01:32 | also what range are we doing?
| | 01:33 | I'm going to let it run over the Time
slider of 60 frames here, and are we
| | 01:38 | baking to a new animation layer or not?
| | 01:40 | Right now, I don't have any animation layers going.
| | 01:43 | I'm working in the Base Animation layer,
but if you'd like to bake to a New layer, that's an option.
| | 01:48 | I'll try a Bake, and at the default and see how this looks.
| | 01:56 | The bake worked nicely.
| | 01:58 | What I can see here in selecting this is
that each bone has a key at every frame.
| | 02:04 | And if we look at the channel box on that bone,
it is keyed for translation and rotation.
| | 02:10 | This is now baked in and suitable for exporting out.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating animation clips in the Trax Editor| 00:00 | In Maya for animation, we have the
Trax Non-Linear Animation Editor.
| | 00:04 | We can use it in conjunction with our HumanIK.
| | 00:07 | What we need to do though is
characterize this fellow, setting him as a
| | 00:11 | character set and then we can bring
him into Trax and create animation clips.
| | 00:16 | The idea on that is if we make
animation clips we can blend them as needed;
| | 00:21 | lengthening or shortening them and
copying and pasting, and retargeting between
| | 00:25 | different characters.
| | 00:26 | What I've done is to clean up his
animation a bit, removing the keys on the rig,
| | 00:31 | resetting him back to a Stance Pose
and I've also pruned out the weights
| | 00:35 | on his head a little bit.
| | 00:37 | He was getting some folding when I raise
the arm, but now for example, if I take
| | 00:41 | his arm and pull it in and even up next
to his head, you can see that the head
| | 00:45 | weighting is flooded to the neck bone,
which is provided by the HumanIK rig as
| | 00:51 | the base of the head.
| | 00:53 | I've also added a bit of a rig to his eyes.
| | 00:57 | When I pull his shoulders around we
can see eyes go with his head now.
| | 01:00 | They're not really set to move or
look around as I haven't added on Facial
| | 01:04 | Rigging Controls and that's really
something for another course to handle.
| | 01:07 | But at least his head will stay in one
volume when he raises his arms near it.
| | 01:11 | I haven't worked over any of the
skin weights and anywhere else.
| | 01:14 | The Dual Quaternion Skinning is doing a decent job.
| | 01:17 | Obviously, I need to go back and
paint some skin weights on his shoulders,
| | 01:21 | armpits, elbows, knees, all of the
classic problem areas in a rig.
| | 01:24 | But again, that's outside the scope of this movie.
| | 01:26 | I'll return him back to the Stance Pose
using the button up here in the HumanIK
| | 01:30 | controls and I'm ready to designate him as a character.
| | 01:34 | I'll select his root node down at the
bottom of this GUI, and this root node
| | 01:38 | allows us to pull him around as a statue.
| | 01:40 | With that character selected, I'll choose
from the Animation menus, Character,
| | 01:45 | and Create Character Set.
| | 01:48 | I've named this NiftyGuy, and I'm
going to take all of the hierarchy below
| | 01:52 | this selected node.
| | 01:53 | As I've selected his root node,
I want everything to go with it.
| | 01:57 | I'll include all of the keyable attributes
and turn off Redirection at the moment.
| | 02:01 | I don't want to redirect or reorient him.
| | 02:05 | I'll create a character set and now
in the bottom right on my screen, in my
| | 02:08 | Character Sets, I've got None, Nifty
Guy and a Character Set Editor available.
| | 02:13 | The Character Set Editor allows us
to deal with the membership very
| | 02:17 | selectively in that character.
| | 02:19 | For example if there's a piece I need
to remove from that Character Set, I can
| | 02:23 | go in and select different parts.
| | 02:26 | I'm going to make an animation
layer as well to animate him on.
| | 02:30 | With the character still selected,
I'll jump over to the Channel Box and here
| | 02:34 | are my animation layers.
| | 02:36 | We start out with no animation layers.
| | 02:39 | With the character selected, I'll click
Create layer from Selected and it makes
| | 02:43 | actually two layers, a BaseAnimation layer
and Animationlayer1 (Animlayer1).
| | 02:48 | What these let us do is, as the name
suggests, layer in animation, starting out
| | 02:53 | with let's say a walk cycle, and then
curving it on a different animation layer.
| | 02:58 | Animating a character on a curve
path is difficult, animating a character
| | 03:02 | walking in place or walking in a
straight line is much easier and then curving
| | 03:07 | that animation on an animation layer
allows us the flexibility to not only
| | 03:11 | retime but add in additional rotation for example.
| | 03:15 | I'm going to work on my BaseAnimation layer
and I'll click on it to make sure it's highlighted in green.
| | 03:20 | Alternately, I've got a dropdown here
choosing BaseAnimation or Animationlayer1.
| | 03:23 | I'm going to give him a quick animation
and what I'll start out by doing is
| | 03:29 | moving to Body Part mode and putting
his arms down to his side at Frame 1.
| | 03:33 | Over in the Character Controls, I can
always get back to the stance pose if I need.
| | 03:38 | I'll turn on Body Part mode, pick his
left arm to start with and pull it down.
| | 03:44 | I'll bring it in, so more or less
he is got his hands down in neutral.
| | 03:49 | I'll do the same with his right-hand
and I'm shooting for some asymmetry here.
| | 03:54 | I'll pull it down and bring it in, then bring
that arm down and he is in more or less a ready pose.
| | 04:02 | At this point, I'll switch back to the
full body and key it by pressing S. I've
| | 04:08 | got a result of 373 keyed objects there.
| | 04:11 | He's now set and if I needed to
come back to a stance pose, I can.
| | 04:15 | I'll scrub forward on my timeline to maybe 45 frames.
| | 04:19 | I'll look in my Preferences and I'm running at
24 frames per second and viewing it in real-time.
| | 04:25 | He is small enough and light enough on the mesh.
| | 04:27 | I shouldn't have any issue seeing this at the true speed.
| | 04:31 | At Frame 45, he's going to raise his arm a little bit.
| | 04:35 | We'll say it comes out here
and in Full Body IK he leans over.
| | 04:40 | I'll pull it up and back in.
| | 04:43 | I like to make him pull up his hand
and start to wave at somebody.
| | 04:53 | There's the start of a wave.
| | 04:54 | Maybe he sees a friend in the distance.
| | 04:56 | I'll make sure his hand doesn't clip
through his head and press S to key it.
| | 05:00 | Now over at Frame 50, I'll add in a little more of a wave.
| | 05:04 | He's going to pull his hand down and
key and up again one more time and maybe
| | 05:11 | over and I'll key it.
| | 05:14 | So now he raises his arm to
wave at somebody in the distance.
| | 05:18 | Obviously, I can put in more animation
on his fingers but this will work nicely.
| | 05:24 | There's his animation and he'll come back to that pose.
| | 05:27 | I'll take that key at Frame 1, making
sure I select everything and copy that
| | 05:33 | key, right-clicking, choosing Copy.
| | 05:35 | Coming over to frame, let's say 60,
or maybe a few more frames.
| | 05:39 | How about 72 added on the timeline?
| | 05:43 | And right-clicking and pasting in.
| | 05:47 | Now I've got a rough cycle.
| | 05:49 | He looks up, waves at somebody, and comes back down.
| | 05:54 | Now this is an animation I can take in as a clip in Trax.
| | 05:58 | I'll choose Window>Animation Editors, and Trax Editor.
| | 06:02 | What we can see here is it's
automatically loaded, NiftyGuy, and I can
| | 06:06 | create clips as I need.
| | 06:08 | What I'll do is choose Create>Animation Clip.
| | 06:12 | In this I can choose the Name of the clip
and the Start and End Time or take it
| | 06:16 | from the Time slider.
| | 06:17 | You may end up wanting to do clips
in a larger chunk of time.
| | 06:21 | Let's say you have 600 frames and clips
running in at 3-second increments or 72
| | 06:26 | frames each, spacing them out
with some blank frames between.
| | 06:30 | In that case, you can use Start/End.
| | 06:31 | For my animation, I've got 72 frames
and he animates over all of them.
| | 06:36 | So I'm going to work by the Time slider here.
| | 06:38 | We have some choices in here as what
to take, Absolute or Relative Offset, or
| | 06:43 | Relative Root and are we including any Subcharacters.
| | 06:46 | For the moment I have one character
defined so I'm going to leave that alone.
| | 06:50 | I'll create my clip and I'll call this clip, Wave.
| | 06:55 | Now I have a clip in the Trax Editor.
| | 06:57 | At the moment it functions at the
original speed, 100%, and I can edit this,
| | 07:02 | copy it, clone it, or make
other clips and blend them together.
| | 07:06 | I can also shorten it and even copy
and paste it onto another character.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing animation in the Trax Editor| 00:00 | When you're using the HumanIK Rig in
the Trax Editor, you need a little bit of
| | 00:04 | set up in order to get the mapping of
animation going, but once that's in,
| | 00:08 | it's fairly smooth.
| | 00:09 | What I've done here is to create a
new skeleton in Control Rig using the
| | 00:13 | HumanIK Character Controls.
| | 00:15 | It's a default size skeleton with
default controls and I've simply moved it off
| | 00:19 | to the side by selecting its root node.
| | 00:23 | I've also made a character set for
this character, dropping down here and
| | 00:26 | choosing TallGuy, selects him.
| | 00:29 | He is got a BaseAnimation layer
and I'm ready to get into Trax.
| | 00:33 | What I've also done then is to add in
one more animation onto Nifty Fellow.
| | 00:38 | In addition to waving, he raises up
his leg and puts it back down, and in the
| | 00:43 | Trax Animation Editor I've made this into a clip.
| | 00:46 | Now when I click on Load the Selected Characters,
I'll see him.
| | 00:51 | I'll make sure that I select him in
here in his root node choosing Fellow and
| | 00:56 | NiftyGuy in my Character sets.
| | 00:59 | When I load him in there's his animation.
| | 01:02 | He is got the Wave and also Wave1,
which is actually a foot raise.
| | 01:07 | I'll rename it here.
| | 01:08 | Any of your clips you can right-click on
and choose Attribute Editor and there's
| | 01:13 | the attributes on this particular clip.
| | 01:15 | I'll call this LegLift.
| | 01:16 | What we're seeing here is
that I've blended these together.
| | 01:21 | I'll take out this blend arrow and
right now they are just in sequence.
| | 01:26 | This means he does a wave and then
lifts up his leg and puts it back down.
| | 01:30 | If I want to take these two and blend
them, say overlapping like this, I'll lap
| | 01:34 | them together in their tracks, hold
Shift and pick Wave and choose Create Blend.
| | 01:40 | The green denotes a blend in here.
| | 01:43 | Now when I scrub on the timeline, he
waves and lifts up his leg just as his hand
| | 01:48 | is coming back down.
| | 01:50 | I'm blending the animation and I'm
going to take some of these clips and pull
| | 01:54 | them across to TallGuy.
| | 01:56 | First, I need to map the characters.
| | 01:59 | I'll choose Character and Character Mapper.
| | 02:02 | What we're seeing here is that NiftyGuy
is the source and I need to make sure I
| | 02:07 | select TallGuy for the target.
| | 02:09 | I'll go over to my Character Controls,
dropdown under Character and choose TallGuy.
| | 02:15 | I can also choose in here TallGuy in my
Character Sets, and then Load the Target.
| | 02:20 | What we see here is the like
naming from Fellow to TallGuy.
| | 02:25 | I can pick each one and choose Map.
| | 02:28 | I'll run through this very quickly
and map his pieces on, each time it says
| | 02:33 | here's the mapping from and to.
| | 02:39 | What we're seeing here when I get to the
hands is that some of the mapping won't stick.
| | 02:44 | In this case, I've got a left index and
left-hand index, but there's no middle
| | 02:49 | finger on the Fellow, he's got
a three-fingered cartoon hand.
| | 02:57 | I'll make sure I map on his pinkies correctly.
| | 02:59 | We'll see how this affects those fingers.
| | 03:06 | I've mapped him across and we can see
there are different parts on different places.
| | 03:10 | Hopefully this won't cause too many problems.
| | 03:12 | We want to make sure that we've got the
same number of pieces in our skeleton,
| | 03:16 | some of the motion we can remap; arms
and shoulders and so forth, but where the
| | 03:20 | number of fingers differ, we
end up with pieces left out.
| | 03:23 | Now we'll go into the Trax Editor and
see how it likes copying and pasting,
| | 03:27 | remapping animation.
| | 03:30 | I'll choose Window>Animation Editors
and Trax Editor again.
| | 03:33 | Here's TallGuy and I'll take Wave,
right-click and Copy the Clip.
| | 03:39 | From NiftyGuy, I'll right-click
and paste on TallGuy that clip.
| | 03:44 | I get some errors down at the bottom.
| | 03:45 | No object matches name, because it's
trying to do a mapping on something not there.
| | 03:53 | He's mapped on though and in the same place.
| | 03:55 | He took that animation with those keys
and there are both characters sharing
| | 04:00 | those keys mapped on.
| | 04:01 | Now I'll edit them in the Animation Editor.
| | 04:05 | Again, going back to my Trax Editor `
and I'll pick TallGuy's Wave for example
| | 04:09 | and stretch it out here almost 200%,
actually more than so he is got a very slow wave.
| | 04:17 | Although they're in the same place, we
can see that NiftyGuy raises his hand
| | 04:20 | much faster than TallGuy who finally
raises and waves and comes back down.
| | 04:27 | Between the two HumanIK rigs, I'm now
sharing animation and I can lengthen or
| | 04:32 | shorten it and blend with other
clips, remapping that animation onto a
| | 04:36 | different character.
| | 04:38 | It's a powerful tool because there
are a lot of animations we want to share
| | 04:42 | especially so for example in a game,
we have like characters or similar folks
| | 04:47 | doing similar things and we
preserve our continuity in animation.
| | 04:51 | After this, I can bake this animation
out if I'm going to export it or add on
| | 04:55 | other animation layers if I need to
smooth things out, maybe blending with other
| | 04:59 | clips or adding in other
parts like picking up props.
| | 05:03 | The possibilities are endless and some
careful planning and character sets along
| | 05:08 | with careful mapping are really key.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
3. Transferring between Maya and MotionBuilderSending control rigs to MotionBuilder| 00:00 | One of the strengths of HumanIK, aside
from the readymade rig and easy intuitive
| | 00:05 | controls is that it has great interoperability
with other Autodesk products.
| | 00:10 | We can send this rig over the MotionBuilder
where we might take in motion
| | 00:13 | capture data and clean it
and then map it on to this rig.
| | 00:16 | We can do an easy transfer back
and forth to MotionBuilder in here.
| | 00:20 | This is Autodesk MotionBuilder, and
its software for animating and also for
| | 00:25 | taking and cleaning and mapping on motion capture data.
| | 00:29 | If you notice in the top right, the
controls look very familiar because it's
| | 00:33 | the same HumanIK rig.
| | 00:36 | We have our same blue button and dropdown,
creating an Actor, a skeleton and a Control Rig.
| | 00:41 | The names may change slightly but
the ideas are a straight across transfer.
| | 00:45 | We define skeletons after we create them.
| | 00:48 | We make Control Rigs.
| | 00:50 | I'll create one as an example here.
| | 00:52 | And what we can see is there's our
readymade skeleton looking much like a posing
| | 00:56 | dummy or person, but still
having the same nodes and properties.
| | 01:00 | Once the skeleton is locked, we can create a Control Rig.
| | 01:04 | I'll define the skeleton as the
default and there's our standard interface.
| | 01:09 | This is our HumanIK Control Rig with
the same way of choosing bones and adding
| | 01:14 | controls as we see in Maya.
| | 01:16 | What this means then, and being that
we have the same kind of selections in
| | 01:20 | bones and controls, Full Body and
Body Part and pinning is we can move the
| | 01:25 | animation back and forth.
| | 01:27 | I'll go back to Maya, put a quick animation
on my character and take him over here.
| | 01:32 | Back here in Maya I've got a clean version of my character.
| | 01:35 | I've taken out the animation clips in
Trax temporarily, leaving me with the
| | 01:39 | character in his stance again,
his skin pose and ready to animate.
| | 01:43 | What I'll do is keyframe maybe a
step and a wave quickly and then take him
| | 01:47 | over to MotionBuilder.
| | 01:49 | I'm going to work with my Full Body IK
for now and then Body Parts for wave.
| | 01:54 | First, I'll lower his hands down to his sides.
| | 01:56 | Picking one of the wrists,
pressing W for move and pulling it down.
| | 02:01 | This is where switching over to
body parts is especially helpful.
| | 02:05 | I'll return back to this stance.
| | 02:06 | Turn on Body Part and pull that arm down.
| | 02:10 | I'll do the same with the other arm,
at least getting him down to a neutral
| | 02:14 | position here, and maybe making his
arms a little less straight by pulling them
| | 02:19 | in and forward, giving a little bend at the elbow.
| | 02:23 | With a little more work I could refine
his hands as well, maybe getting him out
| | 02:27 | of that spread pancake shape, but at
least his arms are down to his sides now.
| | 02:31 | With this selected, I'll switch back to Full
Body IK and press S to set a key at frame one.
| | 02:36 | Now I'll scrub forward and say at frame
30 or so he needs to pick up his foot.
| | 02:41 | I'll click on his left foot and raise it up.
| | 02:45 | I'll pick it up and pull it forward a little bit.
| | 02:47 | Press S to set a key, and then a few
frames later he will put it back down.
| | 02:54 | Now at least he is got a little foot and knee roll going on.
| | 02:58 | Then I'll pick up his hands a little farther along.
| | 03:01 | Here is his left-hand, and at frame 50
he is going to hold it and maybe at about
| | 03:07 | 58, he will pick this arm up and
slide it forward and up in the air to
| | 03:13 | tentatively wave to a friend.
| | 03:18 | With the Full Body IK on, he really
turns his body to match that animation.
| | 03:22 | He is going to wave, S to key
and then he will put it back down.
| | 03:28 | I'll take this key at 50, right-click,
Copy it, and paste it over at about 63.
| | 03:36 | Now he lifts his leg, waves and puts his hand back down.
| | 03:41 | It's a reasonable animation at
least for testing this interoperability.
| | 03:45 | I'll choose File and Send to MotionBuilder,
and I can send either as a New
| | 03:49 | Scene, Update a Current Scene or Add to a Current Scene.
| | 03:53 | Being that I have a blank scene in
MotionBuilder and I'd like to have his
| | 03:56 | animation isolated, I'm going to send it over as a New Scene.
| | 04:03 | In MotionBuilder it says,
Do you want to save what you had going on?
| | 04:07 | And I'll click No, because this is just an example.
| | 04:10 | It takes a minute and imports in that
fellow with his rig and ready to go.
| | 04:15 | If I scrub on the timeline here, we
can see his animation, he's going to wave
| | 04:18 | and put his hand back down.
| | 04:20 | And right in the middle is a Connected to Maya button.
| | 04:22 | Now I'm going to add another key on.
| | 04:25 | I'll scrub forward and let's say after
he puts his hand down, maybe at about
| | 04:29 | frame 69, he picks his other arm up.
| | 04:31 | I'll scroll down and pick that hand.
| | 04:35 | I'll right-click here and key it at the time.
| | 04:39 | Then I'll scrub forward a
little bit more and pick this arm up.
| | 04:42 | It works much the same way.
| | 04:44 | We can see that the data is transferring
over and even the navigation is like Maya.
| | 04:51 | Pan over and he is going to wave with that hand.
| | 04:54 | I'll right-click, key it and then put his
arm roughly back down a little bit later.
| | 05:04 | Now with those keys set, I'll update to Maya.
Back here in Maya;
| | 05:09 | I make it some minor errors depending on the naming.
| | 05:12 | But as I scrub forward, he's going to
pick one hand up and pick the other hand up.
| | 05:16 | That motion has come back and forth
between Maya and MotionBuilder using FBX for
| | 05:20 | transferring models, Rigs, Skin Weights, and Animation.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Updating animation| 00:00 | When we're animating and when we're
working back and forth between Maya and
| | 00:04 | MotionBuilder, we can use our
animation layers to affect the quality and
| | 00:07 | character of an animation.
| | 00:09 | I'm going to make an animation layer
here in Maya and do an update over to MotionBuilder.
| | 00:14 | This is definitely an iterative, interactive process
where we'll refine in one or the other.
| | 00:19 | Maybe we have motion capture data and
we are adding to it or smoothing it out
| | 00:23 | and we want to see it on both sides or add
a little tweak on this side and see it over there.
| | 00:28 | I'll start up by selecting the root
node of the character and in my Channel Box
| | 00:32 | I'll add on an animation layer.
| | 00:34 | I'm going to work on Animationlayer 1
and I'm going to leave it weighted at full strength.
| | 00:39 | Right now, he's got his hands down, he
picks up his leg, waves a little bit and
| | 00:43 | puts his arms back down.
| | 00:45 | What I'll do is go back to my Character
controls and let's say he also wiggles
| | 00:50 | his hips just a little bit as part of that wave.
| | 00:53 | There are the keys on that hip controller.
| | 00:55 | What we see here is that those keys
were baked as part of the transfer and then
| | 01:00 | started to spread out later.
| | 01:01 | I'll say at maybe about this point when
he's raising his arms, I'm going to key
| | 01:06 | his hips and then scrub forward and rotate them.
| | 01:10 | So he's got a little bit of a lean in that way,
key it and then back over he leans this way to look.
| | 01:18 | Finally, he's going to put his arm
down and lean over like he spotted
| | 01:24 | something on the ground.
| | 01:26 | I'll grab his arm and put it down and make him reach.
| | 01:32 | He waves, looks over and bends down
to reach for something.
| | 01:36 | Obviously, we can get his other arm
and his head going and all kinds of
| | 01:39 | additional animation on the bones.
| | 01:42 | I'll click on Update and send this
over to MotionBuilder and see what it looks like.
| | 01:47 | Here in MotionBuilder, now I see in
the bottom my extra Animationlayer.
| | 01:51 | And when I scrub forward on the timeline
we'll see the step Wave1, Wave2, reach
| | 01:58 | forward, and lean over for something.
| | 02:01 | That animation is transferred across seamlessly.
| | 02:04 | I'm going to set my Interaction mode
to Maya here and adjust his animation on
| | 02:08 | this side a little bit as well.
| | 02:11 | I'll choose Settings and Interaction mode.
| | 02:14 | One of the things that Autodesk has done
is let you choose the interaction mode
| | 02:18 | depending on what app you're using,
native MotionBuilder or in this case, here's Maya.
| | 02:24 | And I'm going to let it go for MotionBuilder only.
| | 02:28 | I'll click OK and now I can Alt and
left mouse to tumble around in the view.
| | 02:33 | I'll zoom in and on this animation layer, Animationlayer1;
| | 02:37 | I'm going to pull his hand forward a little bit more.
| | 02:40 | Grabbing that wrist controller and clicking on the Move tool.
| | 02:44 | I'll pull that wrist in and down a little bit.
| | 02:48 | I'm going to make sure in my HumanIK because
it's got the same controls that I'm using the Full Body.
| | 02:53 | So as I pull him forward, he really
leans into it and I'll key it here at 120,
| | 02:57 | right-clicking and choosing Key at time,
actually Frame 104 and Update it back to Maya.
| | 03:07 | Back here in Maya, we can see that animation.
| | 03:10 | He goes and reaches all the way forward,
like I set him in MotionBuilder.
| | 03:16 | It's a neat workflow being able to go
back and forth, and there are things in
| | 03:20 | MotionBuilder for scene set up that we
would find in a real world set directing
| | 03:24 | actors instead of characters.
| | 03:26 | It's really made for a live interaction.
| | 03:28 | If you'd like, you can explore in the
Entertainment Content Creation Suite from
| | 03:32 | Autodesk a live link between Maya and
MotionBuilder, and further using the
| | 03:36 | Microsoft Kinect for Windows, you can
do your own motion capture, map straight
| | 03:40 | into MotionBuilder on to HumanIK Rig.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
ConclusionNext steps| 00:00 | I hope you've enjoyed the course.
| | 00:02 | If you'd like to go further, look on lynda.com.
| | 00:05 | We've got courses in modeling,
texturing, rigging, character animation, 3ds
| | 00:09 | Max, and Maya.
| | 00:11 | We can get further into Unity in
the scripting and deep into Photoshop
| | 00:14 | for textures.
| | 00:15 | So get out there, get some reference,
and get started with Working with
| | 00:18 | HumanIK rigs in Maya.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|