Animator friendly rigging, which dvd?

[jipe]

1: Intro, bouncing ball

2A: Torso
2B: Torso, head/neck

3A: Arms
3B: Arms
3C: Hands/fingers

4A: Legs/feet
4B: Matching controls, mirroring controls, finalizing rig

Make sure you download the pdf of fixes, questions, etc. saved from Jason's old web forum:
http://jasonschleifer.com/afr/

[piximation]

I really enjoyed that series of DVD's, but I'd like to caution you that the rigs Jason creates aren't rigs suitable for use in final renders because you can't bind to them. They were made for low-resolution use by animators when CPU & graphics card capacity was much more limited than it is today.

If you're expecting to have finished rigs you can bind and use for rendering, you're going to be disappointed by the series. Unfortunately, he never made a follow-up DVD series with final bind rigs.

That isn't to say the DVD's aren't useful, especially the scripting tools you'll get, or that you can't learn a lot from them. I know I learned a great deal from them myself.

[tburbage3]

I thought the series was excellent, but they are definitely focused on rigging for the animator, not for mocap up the pipeline, or skinning/rendering down the pipeline. It would be great if AD hired folks expert in those areas to complete the picture.

Jason does not discuss Maya features like IK/FK blending. I don't know if that is because the built-in feature is not really viable for production use or simply that other means to the end have evolved and proved themselves in past production experience. Probably more the latter. The approach to rigging and animating he presents uses a combination of IK and FK controls and joint chains, and methods for switching between them and matching.

[piximation]

I don't think the IK/FK blending feature in Maya existed at the time Jason did his DVD; nor did many of the other features that are now built-into Maya. His solutions prevent most of the jumping that occur when one switches from IK to FK with many rigs.

Rigging is still not fully robust or user friendly if one relies on what comes with Maya. Having one's own rig still has its advantages and I wouldn't want to animate for most purposes using only what comes with Maya.

That being said, I don't think there's the need for Jason's chopped-up geometry rigs that there were when he created them when using today's computers. Still, the classes on his DVD's present many valuable lessons on how to approach designing robust Rigs that address problems animators face.

Just my 2 cents.

[LoudNoises]

Many thanks for your all your advice. I think I will hold off on these for the moment. I am really looking for ways to do ik/fk matching on a three joint chain so that there is no blending (I want the fk chain to match the ik chain when I switch and visa versa triggered by the switch control). I have found Sean Nolans tutorial and it excellent, but I would like to find a way that does involve adding right mouse button menu controls (I want the switch control to trigger the mel code). I am quite happy to use the zootools method, but I would like to know a way of doing this without it as not all the places I have worked like you tinkering with certain files.
I think i'll just have to sit down at a machine for a day or so an get my head around it.
Thanks.

[piximation]

Jason's lessons include tutorials and mel scripts to do exactly what you describe. Whether or not it will work with the rest of your rig when bound may be another matter. It would depend entirely on the design of the rig.

For a simple 3 point rig that isn't part of another heirarchy, it does the job quite nicely by creating object instances, then running an iterative script to find the location of the instance/match-point joint angles and such. Once it's done with that for each joint, it then snaps the IK or FK to the instances so there's no jumping between frames when switching between the IK and FK control rigs. The only problem that can occasionally occur is when the FK is outside the range of motion that's possible via the IK controls; something the animator needs to be made aware of if that's a potential problem with your rig which Jason explains in his DVD.

[jipe]

That being said, I don't think there's the need for Jason's chopped-up geometry rigs that there were when he created them when using today's computers.

Unless Maya's viewport playback has improved significantly in the last few versions, as an animator I'd say proxy rigs are still much appreciated. I've had to use full-skinned rigs at work lately and the viewport chokes like crazy.

[LoudNoises]

Thanks piximation, do you know which disc that bit is on? Is it the 4b matching controls?

Jipe I agree with you completely regarding proxy rigs, I still intend to use low res geometry on my rigs for any animation and the high res geo/displacement maps for the render.

Thanks.

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