A plea for help with Rigging

[alaklij]

A VERY simple approach.
Only use forward kinematics, and remember to keep pivot poins on an isoparm of the desired joint.
Use skelegons in Modeler for maximum flexibility, and convert the bones in Layout.
1. (in Layout) Convert Skelegons to bones
2. (on keyframe 0, Using Parent in place) Organize your hierarchy
3. Record Pivot Rotation
4. Record Rest Position
5. hide keyframe Zero, and begin animating on keyframe 1.
(hiding Keyframe 0 acts like a reset button).

You say you don't have money, but maybe you can beg from some people, so you can buy Lightwave 7 Chararter Animtation
By: Timothy Albee. The best book illustrating character rigging in Lightwave, among other things.

Good Luck. I hope you get a job soon!

[dragonfollower]

Thanks for the help! I'll check out the book too!

-bRiAn

[zaam]

Just a word to second that. Timothy Albee's book is great. He presents a logical step-by-step that works. I found his rig easy to set up and flexible for a lot of situations, although it was a bit different than rigs I used before. Anyway, scrape together some $$$$$ and get it. You won't be disappointed.

[madbull]

If you can scrape up $35 which is about the same price of Tim's book maybe a little less you can buy Paul Mikulecky's "Model & Rig in a day" which consists of 2 CDs that walks you through rigging a character easily. Also it comes with ACS3 (Auto Character Setup 3) on the CD (Free) that has the skelegons that you can use in your own characters. Why not let the Lscript do it for you???

Anyway, its over 4 hours of easy to follow video for character modeling & rigging that will get you up & running in no time.

if you are interested check out:
www.lostpencil.com

[kretin]

Here is an example of my basic rig, without any extraneous controls. Feel free to pull it apart to see how it's setup...

It's close to the more complex cartoon Zombie rig, but kinda boiled down to it's simplest form.

Basic Zombie Rig (http://www.zerogravity.com.au/lw/Zombie_RigBasic.zip)

With this one you need to rotate the upper arm bones (B) to point the elbows, and the hip bones (H) to point the knees. Everthing else should be self explanitory

[SplineGod]

Originally posted by dragonfollower
OK, I will state this simply, I am not a character rigger. I LOVE animation, but it seems like getting to the point where I can animate is an eternity. I've recently switched from AM to Lightwave and I can't seem to make a rigging set up that will work in this program. Could anyone here offer some advice on a SIMPLE rigging solution that would get me up and running. Again, I stress SIMPLE. I'm retawded when it comes to rigging! I know about ACS4 but I don't yet have the money to buy it (unemployed at the moment).

-bRiAn
I have some simple free rigs on my site you can check out.
http://www.splinegod.com

[anieves]

and if you want to create your own from scratch check out the lightwave dec. contest winners page; iso did a character rigging tut.contest page (http://www.lightwave3d.com/contests/dec-02/winners/index.html)

[Odrakir]

Just curious, anyone knows if it's possible to get the lost pencil training CDs outside US?.

[Dreamwave]

thnx for the zombie, I just got Lightwave 7.0 and haven't done any animating yet, only with 5.6 and 5.0.

What are all the boxes the zombie has?
and wtf is IK?
and what's wrong with the basic bones?

[lostpencil]

Hey Odrakir, sure I ship 'em wherever you are.

[kretin]

What are all the boxes the zombie has?
and wtf is IK?
and what's wrong with the basic bones?


If there are boxes, then you prolly have an older version of the Zombie rig which uses proxy objects to help select the animation controls.

The manual has a good description of what IK is and does

Not sure what you mean about basic bones, there's only basic bones in there... The definition of a complex bone would be a bone like muscle bones, which scale to a target...

[SplineGod]

Originally posted by Dreamwave
thnx for the zombie, I just got Lightwave 7.0 and haven't done any animating yet, only with 5.6 and 5.0.

What are all the boxes the zombie has?
and wtf is IK?
and what's wrong with the basic bones?
The boxes are control handles you can easily see and grab.
IK has been in LW since version 5.
FK - Forward Kinematics - Animating a stop motion puppet. You animate top down...upper arm, forearm, wrist.

IK - Inverse Kinematics - Animating a muppet. Muppets have control rods that allow you to animate the whole arm or leg simply by moving the control rod. The hand of foot moves and pulls the rest of the arm or leg with it. It animates inversely....wrist, forearm and then upperarm.

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