Rigging DVD

[Lyr]

I've seen it (didn't buy it). It's pretty good, especially if you don't know how to orient your joints, or have a script that will do it for you. The automated shoulder setup is pretty slick, the spine was cool too, however you can do the spine setup without IK, could probably do the shoulder setup without IK as well but I haven't tried it. He's shows some interesting scripts that WETA uses in thier pipeline, but all in all I am glad I didn't buy it. THough the notes were pretty useful. There isn't anything in there about a muscle system (other than the guy mentioning WETA has one) so don't let the cover fool ya.

[Jhonus]

thats a very devious cover then....

[Lyr]

Agreed. Further more he doesn't really talk about procedural rigs (spends about 45 secs on it) which was a really big dissapointment to me. A|W marketting sure knows how to do thier job don't they?

[dreamstruck]

You might want to check out Jason Busby's Maya Character Rigging and Maya Character Skinning videos. They are really top notch and only cost $49.95 each.

You can buy them in the store at http://www.3dbuzz.com/

You should also check out this review: http://mag.awn.com/index.php3?ltype=all&sort=date&article_no=1349&page=1


-DreamStruck

[Grgeon]

I second that... I bought both of the tapes from Buzz, and they were great!
I don't know maya very well yet, but I was able to follow along without getting lost. The result, a fully rigged alien skinned and ready to animate. Very fun. Plus, special forum to help if you have questions.

God Bless,
Grgeon

[jschleifer]

Hey all,

Unfortunatly, this DVD wasn't actually planned to be created as a DVD.. it was originally just the siggraph course where I presented for an hour and a bit and wrote up tons of notes & created a bunch of mel scripts.. that's why I wasn't able to touch upon some of the ideas as much as I would have liked.. however, the notes fully cover everything I was planning on presenting.

Once the course was over, however, there was so much demand for the information, that A|W approached me and asked if they could turn it into a DVD.. I was fully cool with that, so they did.. and now the info is out there for all of you to enjoy (hopefully! :).

The main concept behind the course was to present a few tools and tricks about rigging, but mainly give you some pointers as to where to go.. it was never intended to give you specific answers to questions, but provide some solutions.. and get your brain going on how to come up with your own.. that's the most important thing about rigging, I think.. learning how to work around problems and come up with unique and useful solutions.

I've always found that no matter how many times I rig a character, I always end up doing something different.. but there are some basic "truths" that I end up following, things that have taken a few years to learn. That's what I wanted to present in the course/DVD.

Anyway, for those of you who get it, or have seen it.. I hope you enjoyed the course and at least found some of it useful!

For those of you who have some ideas as to what could be done better, what I missed out on, or things you'd like to see covered in a future possible dvd.. please let me know!

cheers!
-jason

[MadS]

Hi Jason,

I purchased your DVD a couple weeks ago, and I found it very useful. I was a bit disappointed to see that the muscle/skin setups were not spoken abut in detail, but then Bay told me that those tools were proprietary and would be pointless to cover. Would be nice to know the mechanics involved, nonetheless. I am very interested in making my own muscle/skinning setups, but I don't know where to begin... Bay also said that you do not do the muscle/skin setups, just the rigging, so this may be a moot request, but I thought I'd try anyway. Btw, are you guys at WETA using blend shapes for the *facial* anims or muscle/skin deformations like in Shrek? And would you say that Absoulte Character Tools www.Cgcharacter.com (http://www.Cgcharacter.com) is comparable to your system?

Thanks! And keep sharing those techniques, they helped me a lot. :buttrock:

[Lyr]

MadS, I built a muscle system in MEL using this paper as a guide: http://www.accad.ohio-state.edu/~smay/Human/human.pdf It doesn't tell you everythig you need to know but enough to get something that works, and is a hell of a lot better than what you have to work with by default in Maya.

[MadS]

Thanks Lyr, but I won't lie. I'm not a master mel scripter. I'll give it a shot, but I think I might need a little more "hand holding" if you know what I mean. ;)

[jschleifer]

Heya MadS,

Glad the DVD is useful to ya! Actually, none of it was really weta stuff.. but bay is right. At weta we do use a muscle model which wouldn't have done any good for me to talk about, besides the fact that I couldn't actually show anything we were using. :)

I've done a bit of muscle/skinning setup stuff at home, and all of it is based on doing fake "muscles" by using influence objects with maya's soft skinning. I'd love to actually write something, but I can't write C code, just mel scripts.. heh :)

the stuff at www.Cgcharacter.com looks quite interesting! I'd love to give it a shot and see how it compares, but they don't have a maya version yet.. d'oh! As soon as they do, I'd love to check it out!

I'm also interested in seeing their control structures.. those look interesting as well!

cheers,
jason

[Jhonus]

Hey Lyr, I'd love to check out your muscle setup, any chance you could email me the mel script and maybe a model it has been applied to??

I've only used influence objects before and they tended to be quite particular on their placement (popping and caving vertices all over the show... does anyone else get that?)

[Lyr]

Sorry I am not in a position to be mailing out the scipt. It uses influence objects (mostly) for deformations. I'll be starting a new project in a couple weeks and I'll have a chance to put the system I wrote through some heavy testing. I'll post some avi's of how it turns out.

[jaydmax]

I purchased the rigging DVD and was a bit upset that they didn't cover the muscle system. The Cover of the DVD is defiantly deceptive. As for the actual content that was covered while extremely helpful some of the content towards the end was rushed. And after watching it a second time it made me upset that I spent $130 bucks on it. In the earlier part of the DVD the instructor, jschleifer was telling jokes and taking his time to explain things, ask questions etc. not really taking into account that there was a time limit he was working with. So towards the end he had to rush in order to get trough everything that was in that outline. I guess because this was not intended to be a DVD but they should added more once they decided to make a DVD or something. I just felt a little unsatisfied for the amount I spent.
Don't get me wrong Jschleifer, I enjoyed your presentation jokes and all, I just wish you didn’t have to rush trough things.

Just my 2 cents.

Learn MEL, Learn MEL, Learn MEL.....:)

[jschleifer]

Heya jaydmax,

Sorry that you were upset with spending 130 bucks on the DVD.. I definitly was rushed towards the end, and I had a feeling that I would be.. but there was so much information that I wanted to get across, that I couldn't leave any of it out. I figured that with the notes, people would get the full content.. and the Mel stuff is easier to deal with through notes anyway.

As for taking my time in the beginning of it, my goal was to make sure that people really understood what I was talking about. Presenting a concept to an audience always takes 3 times longer than you thought it would because you need to: "Tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them what you tell them, and then tell them what you told them." (a trick learned from one of the best presenter guys out there at A|W.. Mark Sylvester).

But I agree.. it would have been nice to not have to rush through things.. maybe next time? :)

thanks for purchasing the DVD, though! If you have any questions or problems with it (other than the rushing.. heh :), please let me know..

cheers!
-jason

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