Help, Need some character set up help..

[Brac]

How intensive of a rigg are you looking for? Is it a bi-pedal rigg or something else? Can you post some screen shots of the character?

[cgisoul]

I am working on my thesis too, I modeled this human and rigged it. The enveloped seems to be fine after lots of fixing. So, when I move the leg and the arm, it all works fine, however, when I choose the biped waist and try to move the body, the waist doesn't move at all. It's locked.

The following is the link for the bone/mesh, is in rar file.
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php?...pzKrlCL8rwIwEYU (http://area.autodesk.com/index.php?ACT=44&fid=28&aid=16520_Xgh75pzKrlCL8rwIwEYU)

If you think that you can help me, I really appreciate it for any advise/help.

[Brac]

yikes, sorry I should have asked what program you were using. I have yet to start learning Max so I'm at a loss. Hopefully someone else will have some advice.

[primal101]

Basically, my story is a old man living by himself and he grow the house, like a plant.

So basically i would like to have two types of rig. One is an old man and the other is a house that i want to be able to grow from a single seed to a house. I would like the house to eventually grown arms and legs.

Thanks CGicore, i don't have studiomax but i can use it at the computer lab from school. I have Maya 2008, student ed.

I dont have a scanner, so can't upload the image that i drawn.

Here are two image that I use for ref and that's basically how they should look.

the old man and the house

thanks. let me know

[Brac]

ok Primal, have you done any rigging yet at all or are you still at the model stage?

I would think that for that old man character you going to needs a reverse foot setup, world space controllers, IK for the legs at least, and probably an IK/FK switch for the arms.

If you going to do some facial animation then thats a whole 'nother ball of wax, as I'm sure you already know. I only know how to do joint based facial animation, but there are plenty of threads here that talk about the pros and cons of joint vs. blend shapes for faces.

As for the house, thats ambitious and I can't wait to see how you figure it out. And that means that I'm not sure how you're going to do the transition from seed to house. I am still learning a lot myself so I'm sure that there is some way out there that I juts don't know about. I would think that your going to have to have some clever way to blend from one rig/character to the next and have a series of stages that the house will have to grow through.

Anyway, bipedal characters like your old man are a great place to start learning how to rigg. Since your using the SLE of Maya are you able to upload a file? I can't promise anything stupendous but I'd be happy to take a look at your model and give you some advice of how I would rigg the character.

If you have any specific questions about how to do this or that, (Like IK/FK switches that transition smoothing or reverse feet with custom controllers) then speak up.

-Ben

[primal101]

I got my story storyboard out and a first draft animatic to get a feel of the pacing and how long my thesis gonna be.

I'm still sketching out how the old man and how's gonna look.

I have model anything yet.

I'm just trying to get a feel of how long is gonna take to rig the old man and the house.

Rigging is by far the hardest for me cuz i'm not a rigger.

But yeah, i'll definitely speak up.

thanks

[Brac]

Ok Primal, I grok.

When I did my first rigg, I had a few books to walk me through the process. I think it took me the better part of a week to get something I was happy with. I used Hyper Realistic Character Creation (http://www.amazon.com/Maya-Hyper-Realistic-Creature-Creation-hands/dp/1897177488/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235551847&sr=8-1) and The Art of Rigging vol. 1 (http://www.amazon.com/Art-Rigging-Definitive-Character-Technical/dp/B00138ZLXO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235551929&sr=1-1) to help me through an initial run.

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