Riggers : Please spare me 5 mins!

[twidup]

I am going to post my replies here, as I am sure a few others out there are wondering.

1. How long do you typically spend on a character rig?

It varies a lot. On past projects I have had anywhere from literally 1 day to build snake rigs for Snakes on a Plane, to a month or more to build rigs on Star Wars. Right now, on the game I am on, all our characters use the same rig, so I actually have had some time to build the rig, about 2 weeks, so that the deformations look good, and on top of moving more realistic than their original rig, it also works in the game engine.

2. Where do you use IK chains in your character rig? Why?

Arms, legs, spine. My rigs use IK and FK for arms and legs, and my personal and film rigs use ik/fk spines, games rigs tend to get just fk spines. allow the animator a variety of ways to control the character based off the shots they are working on

3. Do you use custom controls? (and which ones…sliders, spinners, etc)

Everywhere, I typically setup a character with custom attrs to control IK/FK, parent space, on/off for some automated systems

4. If yes, where do you typically use them? (i.e. fingers, toes, face)

Above

5. Do you use Scripts?

All the time

6. If yes, what actions do you typically use MaxScript for?

I dont rig in Max, so no max scripts, but in mel, I use them for everything from generating the skeleton, to duplicating chains and renaming, to skinning.

7. For facial animation, which is best...a skeletal or a morph target rig? Why?

A combination. morphs dont give you enough variation, but skeletal gives you a lot of control. Best is both. skeletal for bigger motion areas, and morphs for smaller tighter areas, and corrective shapes

8. How has your rigging changed from when you first started out?

definately. more attention to more minute things. the large scale things are always there, but the small little details are what I end up spending time on to add more motion and detail in, along with automating more secondary motions.

9. What would you say is the one thing that you’ve learnt about rigging that has affected the speed and/or quality of your work the most?

scripting and anatomy

[Buexe]

My answers would be almost identical to twidup`s.

[virtualmesh]

as for time spent on the rigging process:
it really depends on what deadline one is faced with. some of the best riggers out there are the ones that know (from experience) which short cuts work and which ones do not - all of it really should be based on the level of complexity the animation is expected to achieve. Nobody really likes to spend a lot of time working on a route that will take them nowhere. I'm a hobbiest, not a pro (I studied 3D animation via 3dsmax at night school at the Art Institute) so the issue of a dealine really does not have as much importance to how I rigg my animations as it would with a professional that is faced with deadlines in a team environment.

However, I always make a 'list' for myself based what will be seen in frame and what will not be seen. This list then determines how much time and complexity I spend rigging them.

In the end, what gets rendered in frame is the final product from a rigging stand point.

thanks

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