The ultimate character rig

[Cullen]

Hmmm. It doesn't matter as long as it is the simpilest thing to animate. Differs all the time depending on the actor.
But I use biped where possible.

What I hate is over complicated rigs.

[MikeRhone]

I agree with keeping rigs as uncomplicated as possible, but I find that characters are sometimes very limited in what they can do.

Does anyone here employ a HI-Lo res rig rig set up? (Where level 1: could be the COG and head, level 2: the arms and legs, level 3: the facial and fat controls, secondary animation)

Im not too familiar with biped, but I've heard its extremely limited. Any opinions on what its strengths and weaknesses are?

Mike R

[bentllama]

I usually use 2 rigs...but it really depends on the situation.

1 for animation = simple rig for anim

1 for rendering = deformers, influence objects, skinning, dynamics, etc

...often though I will include the facial rig with the rendering rig...it really depends on complexity of the character, etc...

[KingMob]

moved by request of mr.rhonedoggie.

[GunBoss]

I a bonifide noob and have only used biped... mostly. What is limited about bipeds? What are the differences between that and a hand done rig?

[Cullen]

Im not too familiar with biped, but I've heard its extremely limited. Any opinions on what its strengths and weaknesses are?
There are zillions of things I could write here... so here is a couple... there are probably other threads about this already.

Strength: Click... done. (almost) rig that just needs tweeking.

Weakness: Planted keys limited to hands/fingers, feet/toes. I would like to see some sort of planted key system where the pivot could be placed anywhere. Elbows and knees I would use alot... but it should be anywhere on the body... and not just limited to an edge on the biped mesh.

Strength: Animation does a good job. Straight forward. Easy to use. Add your own custom bones wherever. Easy to train up new people. Always improving with new versions.

Weakness: $. It's not free with max.

I like it. I use it. But some times you might hear me bitching about it.

[nottoshabi]

Nice thread Rhonedog....


Curves, poly boxes, volume primitives, anything that stands out.
FK back and IK spline.
For the hands I intend to use 2 controllers one for the hand rot and trans, and one for the fingers.
As for the gimbal solution. Well this one is a little trickier I try to work out al the gimbal out before I hand it to the animator. But sometimes it comes back to hunt you.
Auto shoulder I create my own since different riggs call for different set up.
Stretchy spine I have yet to use it on the back, but I use it for other things.

Quote..

Corrective blend shapes to help with weighting? Lots of influence objects? Wrap deformers? (ack!)

Quote..

I use both what ever gets the job done.
I also use them for muscle and jiggle.
As for the low rez high rez deal. All in one rig, layers to hide one or the other. Referenced to the teeth.
Facial> Ospina all the way, with a small modification favoring specific animators.

I don’t have a favorite set up. Its always what the animator wants.

:)

[eek]

The key thing is ease of use and trying to put the functionality of automated and manual controls together, eg. ik/fk spine, finger curl but also manual etc etc. The hardest rig i had to do was a dragon, it had 117 bones! eek.

I found and easy fix for gimbal lock (same technique pixar uses) pose the character how you want then freeze the transformations, generally i find if a hand is at 45 degrees it works in all axis!

Also i hate sliders and button, constraint on/off stuff etc. You want to get in the view and MOVE stuff! Much more easy to tweak.

eek

[kees]

hey eek,

you wanna share a bit more on 'preventing' gimbal lock?

thanks,

-Kees

[eek]

Hi kees,


Its the holy grail of problems in 3d, the dreaded gimbal lock! Gimble lock occurs when to prominent axis rotate over each other, causing one axis to control another and the eventual flipping.

Its all to do with the most prominent axis you use. A lot of people set controls to YZX from the standard XYZ. Other fixes are when you have one control parented to anther control. The first control is for XY(i.e the most important) The control its parented controls the Z.

Generally ill do this setup, basically an additional parent, but recently i played with max's "FREEZE TRANSFORMS" button which instead of have to align everything to world, for them to be constitant with the f-curve. It's local axis become its world axis, its local Y-green becomes the same in the f-curve. You still get very slight tapering towards gimbal lock, but whats good about this is that its most important axis's work.

Its a bit complicated, basically your freezing or resetting an objects axis of the world, based on it local rotations. Meaning that you dont have to have the arms straight out etc etc, the classic pose, instead you can have a relaxed pose arms down, and generally i find it works.

It also means that if you character is in a complicated pose at frame 0, you can freeze the transfomations and know it'll work.
Its a bit like using local, instead of view or world in the rotation mode.

To put it very simply it resets all the axis to 0,0,0 in the pose you set. It mean animations that stem from this pose, will always work. I think pixar maybe able to reset the axis on the fly? during animation i dont know?

anyway its very complex stuff, ill hopefully show you guys my new rig sometime soon, which will introduce some new methods,expressions etc etc.

eek

[jeb]

i hate complication in rigs as much as anyone, and im not riggin master at all, but sometimes complicated stuff must be implemented.

My latest rig was for my short film wich has a dead line of 4 months, so no much time to loose on rig. What i did was a custom modeled bone setup to work as a proxy for the hi res model. i found this way to be so quick in realtime feedback in viewports.

i use usual stuff like ik legs /arms, look at constraints, etc..

since im no scripter i did all the automatic things with the available tools like wire parameters (3dsmax)

One new thing i tried was to do some new controllers for the fingers, this work in two parts. the knuckle wich rotates the whole finger and a finger tip controller that rotates the two last bones of the finger. I know it adss too much elements but it worked very nice and it was very simple to key since the only rotate.

Other parts i like in rigs are the ones used in daniel martines lara IK joe, i use it as reference a lot. Im trying more and more to get a custom rig that behaves like character studio, because i like how you can select the hand or foot directly (no controllers) to move the ik chain.

Does anyone know how this can be achieved in a custom rig without doing an object that controls the IK? im clueless in that field

Oh also a jaw bone helps to make a lot more interesting poses for the mouth when blended with the facial targets

eek cant wait to see your rig, i know i can learn a lot about it.


here is a shot of my rig in one of the characters

http://www.3dartisan.net/jeb/squik/sq%fcik_rig_01.jpg


in action (production shot)


http://www.3dartisan.net/jeb/squik/sq%fcik_test_09.jpg

[eek]

Hi jeb,


Does anyone know how this can be achieved in a custom rig without doing an object that controls the IK? im clueless in that field

I used to do this with a few of my set-ups, but much prefer now having a seperate control.

I only directly rotate specific parts at there base level i.e bones if there predominantly fk, and need ik occasionally. Also if you need to build a rig onto of a rig eg. to a have a horse leg to lock at the foot when it places its wieght on it. This is when you have a fk leg thats also controlled by ik-setup that "floats" on top. It means you can go in and hand tweak specific parts whilst controlling the lot.

Also recently i had to work out a cloth setup(not dynamic), that had to work with extreme movement, also i may change per animation, so a base setup is best.

eek

A quick pose of a rig im working on:

[kees]

Eek,

thanks for your response.
I'm still a little confused though.

I can see how 'freeze transform' can solve some issues for a particular pose, but when you start animating you end up in many different poses that can still easily cause gimbal?

...or are you saying you add a new controller each time you run into gimbal? Meaning you would have A LOT of controllers over time.


thanks,

-Kees

[eek]

kees,

I think its a matter of averages, i still get slight gimballing occuring, but as my frozen transform pose is a good generally pose most animations work. If i where to get extreme poses happening i would get a new controller and parent the gimbal locked handle to it, then carry on animating from that frame. Its a matter of reducing the problem, your'll never get rid of it completely but if you can reduce it by say 80% well thats fine with me!

eek

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