CGTalk - Rigging a character without a neck

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arkl

11-20-2009, 02:04 PM

Hello people on cgtalk!

I,m working on a animated micro serie. The main character Manfred is a squared charachter without a neck or chin.

This poses for me some problems with rigging the spine and his head and neck. I tried all sorts of things but the connection between the head and the spine gives me some problems.

The ideal way is to make the head rotate and deform together with the spine

I hope you rigging guru's can give me some tips. How would you handle this character?

thanks in advance!

Arjen Klaverstijn
the Netherlands

http://www.arjenklaverstijn.com/files/ref/manfred_viewport.jpg

http://www.arjenklaverstijn.com/files/ref/manfred_wire.jpg

archanex

11-20-2009, 02:27 PM

let me start by saying I work as an animator, and not a rigger so I am by no means an expert on the subject... but I think you should add a few more edgeloops above the shoulder and below the collar line, that way you can imply a neck by having him bend there without distorting the face. You may need to build corrective shapes to achieve the desired effect though.

could you be more specific as to what types of problems you are having?

by the way, sweet design!

arkl

11-20-2009, 03:19 PM

@archanex Thanks for the tips and compliment.
I want to animate the character without a neck joint. So if he looks to the left his body twists al the way to the head.

I think I just found a solution:

I used a spline Ik with advanced twist ctrl.

(btw I am an animator to... So you probably understand my frustration...)

I'm still curious how other people would deal with this character!

Thanks!

giordi

11-20-2009, 07:36 PM

so let me understand well do u want that if u move the spine the head follow the body but still move the head ?

theflash

11-20-2009, 07:41 PM

You need to do studies of how character is going to move. Generally riggers get reference drawings or movement specs if char is stylized.

archanex

11-20-2009, 07:45 PM

have you seen the "awesome spine" post? You may want to check that out. seems like it would work well for this type of character... also sometimes called the "divine spine" by some book which I do not know the name of :)

Boucha

11-21-2009, 01:56 AM

Really interesting character ! you might wanna check out Keith Lango's blog on his Funky rigging details. There is a whole lot of tips and tricks installed for you :beer:

Click Here... (http://keithlango.blogspot.com/2009/06/funky-rigging-details.html)

BasHe

11-21-2009, 12:52 PM

Personally i`d go for a simple FK setup. Add a chain of joints from the hips to the head. Controllers for the hips and the head. Then the rotation for each of the joints would be the rotation of the head-controller divided by the number of joints you`ve got in that chain. All of this can be easily achieved with a utility node and some hypergraph connections. If you need more controll, add another controller in the middle of the chain.
Expanding upon this if you need stretchyness is easy, just connect the scale attributes from the controller(s) to the joints aswell.

arkl

11-21-2009, 03:33 PM

Thanks for all the help guys!

@BasHe (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=337425) I think your suggestion is really usefull. I just mastered making spline ik's stretchy and i really wanted to use it, but i was forgetting about simple stuff! I think this is the solution.

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11-21-2009, 03:33 PM

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