Rigging fundamentals

[twedzel]

Do more rigging. This is the sort of thing that experience tells you.

It is really tough to apply theorums to edge flow. You can have a few basics, but really in the end it depends on what you are modelling and how it is going to be used. It just has to work efficiently for A. the rigger/enveloper B. the renderer C. any kind of simulations that may be thrown at it. Most of this can only be learned with practice.

So a few recommendations,

When in doubt test it out. Do simple little bind tests and see if your joint placements are good, and see if you'll have the points you'll need in the right places to make good shapes. You'll need enough verts to make the shapes you'll need, and usually these little tests will tell you where you need more or have too many.

Form follows function. Edge flow should mirror its functions as best as possible. This way you won't fight your edges to make the shapes you'll need. How to find the function you may ask? A few good clues are muscle directions and large wrinkles. So this is where it helps to break out the anatomy books and research underlying structures to all sorts of things. This theorum comes with the warning that it is only a guideline not a rule. Sometimes an area has so many opposing forces playing on it that you cannot just look at underlying structure to get the best edge flow.

Edges should flow. Hard to explain but you know it when you see it. This is where the riggers job can be made easier with good edge flow (or conversly hard with ugly poorly laid out edges). Any kind of simulation also ussually responds better when the computer has some idea of how things should flow.

[Illusion-shadow]

Well, Practice make perfect! But they are never perfect... For Rigging, I tend to rig a character and ask other peers to play around with it, and tell me what they like and what they don't like. I do a lot of modeling and rigging myself, and if you skin them, you know where the problem are for the model most of the time. Edgeloop is always a problem, or not haveing enough poly for certain deformation. But you'll just have to fall and learn to get up.

[eek]

Some basic concepts of rigging are:

1. automation vs manual control. The balance of them working hand in hand.

2. try to avoid counter animation, this enforces the indepency of controls.

3. rig for what the character needs to do and nothing else. There is a base set of ground rules i use, but on top of these stick only what the character needs to do for the shot/scene:


Independant hip control, that doesnt affect the chest.

Independant chest/neck control that doesnt affect the heads orientation.
Independant head control, thats orientated to the root/torso control.
Shoulder controls that are orientated with the chest, but dont control the orientation of the arms - allowing for shrugging.
IK/FK arms/legs with natural hand/foot. This means if the controls move further than the ik the legs/hand naturally peels away (in ik mode)
Knee/elbow controls
Foot/toe control
Heel/Ball of foot left/roll
Ball of foot twist eg. stubbing out a cigerette.
Finger curl control & independant digit control

As for skining, i use refence - i even put bones in based on a actuall skeleton. Edge loops should follow muscles topology, and the model should exist in a naturalistic state, knees bent, arms bent, slightly forward and down.

Also i tend to regard everything as a layer, bones > setup > puppets. Keeping systems such as ikfk, and ik stretch on layers type of mentality helps alot.

Also fundementals - understand relationships of parent and child and relativity of transforms. These are crucial.

After a while your'll gain a sence of what a rig needs for it to work. And past this, the real fun happens when you like me can think of an idea at the weekend, write it down and make it happen (hopefully) the next week. Its still bloody hard, but it starts to get really cool!

[sephfire]

Those tips help. Thanks for sharing. :)

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