Multiples are traditional animation gimmicks to give you those wacky cartoon look, more like motion blur these days but 1000 times more cooler if you implement properly in 3D animation. Watch the video below which shows multiples on Eyes (yes multiples can be applied any where):
Now the trickery... Well the trick to creating Multiples is pretty simple! You might be wondering on creating each and every rigs one by one from scratch!! Well, let us keep it simple, the idea is to just select the nodes associated with any limb and Duplicate special with input graph connection (Yes that Duplicate Special button/command is the magic wand :). Works like a charm!!!
To make it even more simplier, easier and convenient without much headache; just duplicate special the main character node (See the image below). When duplicating special, make sure you have "Duplicate input graph" and "Assign unique name to child nodes" is checked on (Very important, we want all the input output connections well connected and ofcourse with unique name for every nodes.) After a few second, minutes or more, you have multiple copies or clones of the same rig. Now, just some clean-up and organising to do which I will leave it upto you! And ofcourse you will also need to show hide the mesh parts which you can simply achieve by detaching and separting mesh parts for head and limbs, simple stuff, just make sure you don't delete the mesh history; finally some tweaking with the shader for blending transparancy and that's pretty much it. (Check the image below for breakdown :)
Implementing multiples will slow down the rig as you know we have multiples for every rig, so I think it is wise to create 2 version of rig one featuring multiples and the other the standard one OR you can make some smart connection on the visibility of multiples mesh to show and hide depending on user input to make the rig faster to compute.
Well that's all folks! Easy as a piece of cake. Well go on, add some multiples on your rig, let us bring back those good old tradinal animation back into CG!
Check out this cool site for reference on many trickeries (gimmicks) used in traditional animation: http://
For more exciting topics on character rigging, feel free to join Puppeteer Lounge training workshops at Puppeteer Lounge! We offer a wide range of training workshops!
We now offer an exciting new course called Super Toon Character Setup which goes over creating a super cartoony rig featuring multitudes of animation gimmicks.Watch a quick demo here ;)
BTW do check out a quick animation test below with multiples!
