#rigTips: Avoid using a lot of contraints in a rig unless it is absolutely important (needed). To create a stable, fast rig use parent child hierarchy based relationship for rig objects like controls and joint. Often time a direct parenting is the best solution of fast, intuitive and scalable rigs! Using a direct connection from controller to driven joints also speeds up the rig. This is applicable for FK joint chains. Lot of the time, we use constraints from controller to drive these joints which in greater number significantly slows down the rig (for complex rigs). In the fig. I used the locators to store the offset position of each joint, so that we can directly connect from control object to joint to maintain offset.
Always use a proper rig hierarchy system: Hierachy in a character rig is similar to a book library where you have a lot of books kept in each department in an orderly manner. Think about it, let say there is no library and we have books all over the place, you will be spending a lot of time searching that one specific book you needed! Well that is the same case with a character rig, your PC will have to process each of those nodes to process the calculation, hence a slower rig. Below is an example of a standard rig hierachy for character setup. :)
ü (Character)_ALL (Top Node)
o
(Character)_TRS (Transform
Node)
o
(Character)_PP (Puppet
Parts Node)
§ (Character)_IK (IK handles
Node)
§ (Character)_SKL (Skeleton Node)
§ (Character)_CC (Control
Curves Node)
§ (Character)_LOC (Locators
Node)
o
(Character)_GEO (GeometryNode)
o
(Character)_XTR (Extra
Node)
e.g.
ü Momo01_ALL
o
Momo01_TRS
·
Momo01_PP
§ Momo01_IK
§ Momo01_SKL
§ Momo01_CC
§ Momo01_LOC
o
Momo01_GEO
Momo01_XTR Join us at Puppeteer Lounge for educational training Character Rigging Worskhops!
