How to rig my character with humanik?

#1

im extremely new to maya. i use maya 2012/2011. anyway, ive created a football player by modeling the helmet, head, torso, pelvis, arms, hands, legs, and feet separatley. it all looks like they’re together right now. i want to animate him and make it as quick and easy as possible, it just has to be very simple for my purposes. i came upon the humanik skeleton generator and it seems to be a good tool if i knew how to apply it properly. some questions i have are should i make my football player all into one mesh? how do i apply the humanik skeleton to my player and then animate? this is all very confusing to me. PLEASE HELP THANK YOU!

#2

I have never made a lot of progress myself Human IK, but the HIK skeleton generator works great with FBIK when you remove the prefix from the joint names. FBIK is still in 2012, but the menu is turned off by default; put this line:

optionVar -intValue showFbikMenuItem 1;

in userStartup.mel and restart Maya 2012 to make it appear.

I create a skeleton with the HIK skeleton generator, rename the joints with the Comet Tools rename script to remove the “HIKCharacterNode1_” part of the name, and then add FBIK to that. FBIK may be less powerful overall than HIK, but it is a whole lot easier to make it work.

<* Wes *>

#3

okay, i think that might help, but im confused about the oveall process of rigging my character. i mean, what should i do next, should i combine everything into one mesh or group it all toghether? Then how do i attach a humanik skeleton to my character and have it moving?

#4

OK, well here are the basic basics. You import all your meshes. They do not have to be in a single unit, there are pluses and minuses to having multiple parts, but either way can work.

You create a skeleton, scaling it and placing it such that the mesh will ‘fit’ it. The better you do this step, the better the end result.

You have to ‘bind’ the mesh(es) to the skeleton. Binding creates a skinCluster, which is a set of skin weights that associates each vertex with one or more joints. To create a basic skinCluster, select a mesh, ctrl-select some joints, and go to Animation ->Skin -> Bind Skin -> Smooth Bind. Note there is an options menu that you can select, for what I just told you you may want Selected Joints, Closest Distance and a drop-off rate of maybe 7.5. Then click the Bind Skin button.

If you have multiple meshes, repeat this process for each mesh part.

Now save everything and experiment with your model. For instance, select the lower leg, select the rotate tool, and then rotate the lower leg and observe the way the skin bends. You will probably not be satisfied with the initial weighting, you can use the weight painting or the component editor, or something like my boneTool (over at CreativeCrash) to adjust the weights until the bend is smooth. repeat as needed.

Getting a first-rate skin bind, just like a making a good texture, is what separates the pros from the beginners, so don’t expect it to be perfect without putting some effort into fine-tuning your mesh.

<* Wes *>

#5

Can we add facial bones to Maya’s FBIK skeleton? ex: jaw and eye bones?

#6

how is it for referencing? i was using fbik a lot previously for simple projects but then i got a multi character project in and the referencing didnt seem to work very well and i switched to that ultimate rig thing which works flawlessly…still i miss the easy posing

#7

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