Variable foot

Variable foot from Armin Halac on Vimeo.

Variable foot setup by Armin Halac. Nice approach!

“Spies in Disguise” Rig Notes (draw-overs)

"Spies in Disguise" Rig Notes (draw-overs) from Jim Jackson on Vimeo.

Production rig notes at Blue Sky studios.

Show Controller on Mouse Proximity (Puppeteer Lounge)

Show Controller on Mouse Proximity (Puppeteer Lounge) from Suchan Bajracharya on Vimeo.

Add this cool rig feature to your character setup to turn on and off the visibility of the controller based on mouse proximity. Lean character rigging at Puppeteer Lounge!

Skirt rig based on bell collider

Skirt rig based on bell collider by Alexander Zagoruyko. Here is the link to the tutorial.

Mesh Locator

Mesh Locator from Xavier Dorion on Vimeo.

Mesh Locator control setup by Xavier Dorion. Looks very intuitive and animator friendly!

Collision Offset Skin

collisionOffsetSkin from TianShaopeng on Vimeo.

This looks promising! Collision Offset Skin tool by Tian Shaopeng. Beta version download here.

Rigging Road Test by Andrew Daffy

Character rigging road test (guidelines) document by Andrew Daffy!

shot sculpt tool

shot sculpt tool update from Luiz Elias on Vimeo.

Shot sculpt tool demonstration by Luiz Elias.

Proportional Modifier Setup Demo

Proportional Modifier Setup Demo from Suchan Bajracharya on Vimeo.

This video goes over Proportional Modifier Setup which can be applied on-to existing character rig to create multiple character variation from the same base rig. This approach can also be used in fixing, fine-tuning or polishing the look, appearance and silhouette of a character during animation. To learn more about Proportional Modifier Setup, take a look at Puppeteer Lounge's Morphing Character Setup Workshop. You can watch Morphing Character Setup Demo below:
BoGo Morphing Character Setup Demo from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Maya Command Search

Looks like a great tool to speed up the workflow

FACS Facial Rig Discussion

FACS Facial Rig Discussion by Puppeteer Lounge alumni Mathias Røyrvik.

Transfer UV onto a rigged and animated model in Maya

Transfer UV onto a rigged and animated model in Maya. from Marko Vukovic on Vimeo.

Handy little tutorial to transfer UVs without creating junk nodes on the actual bind rig. You can use this technique of tweaking the Orig Shape node to quickly update you rig mesh with updated new model with the same topology, run multiple meshes with the same base Orig Shape mesh and such. #rigTips

#rigTips on Faster Character Rig

#‎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!

Setting up Multiples on Character Rigs

Here is a quick #rigTips on Setting up the Multiples. 

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://animationsmears.tumblr.com/

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!

FLEX Super Toony Animation Test from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

Classic Linear vs Dual Quaternion

How often do you use Dual Quaternion Skinning Method?

Notice how Dual Quaternion method preserves the volume (very important). There is also a 3rd option called Blended Weight where you can paint the DQ and CL influence on bind mesh.

The dual quaternion smooth skinning method is designed to eliminate these undesirable deformation effects. While linear smooth skinning allows a mesh to collapse or shrink when a bone twists, dual quaternion skinning helps to preserve volume in the mesh, creating more realistic deformation in those problem areas.

BTW feel free to take a look into these wonderful tech demos on skinning & deformation.

Automated Normal Maps with ShaderFX

Automated Normal Maps with ShaderFX from Suchan Bajracharya on Vimeo.

A quick tutorial on creating automated multiple normal maps blending using ShaderFX as per special request of my student William Esteban Méndez at Puppeteer Lounge. I find using ShaderFX pretty comfortable than DirectX11 Shader, probably because of more flexibility and similar workflow based on game engines such as UE4. Check it out! I hope it is helpful for your next rigging show-reel/project.

“Auto Beard” rig using Maya Muscle

"Auto Beard" rig using Maya Muscle from Ty Viveiros on Vimeo.
Auto Beard rig created using Maya Muscle to prevent mesh penetration by Ty Viveiros.

Mirroring Blendshapes (rigTips)

Mirroring Blendshapes (rigTips) from Suchan Bajracharya on Vimeo.

#‎rigTips‬ on easy mirroring of blendshapes

Driven Wrinkle Maps by Damien VIE

Here is an image by one of my talented student Damien VIE showing the shading network to generate automated (driven) wrinkle map for a characters brow and face (The entire network is pretty big!). The maps can be projected real-time in the viewport with normal maps (used in game) or switch to dynamic displacement maps for realistic film quality render.

At Puppeteer Lounge, we constantly challenge our students to come up with new and better ideas out of many different possibilities.

Click here to learn more about rigging workshops at Puppeteer Lounge.

Check out this rigging reel by Damien to see the driven wrinkle maps in action (2:20)

DemoReel 2014 - Damien VIE - TD Rigger - Part 1: Rigging from VIE Damien on Vimeo.

SHAPES Webinar with Andrew Silke Teaser "Demo" (21-9-2014)

SHAPES Webinar with Andrew Silke Teaser "Demo" (21-9-2014) from Puppeteer Lounge on Vimeo.

In this Exclusive Webinar, Andrew explains all the insides and secrets of setting up corrective shapes using the SHAPES tool by brave rabbit. Learn to setup an expressive facial rig and create anatomically correct articulation for the body!

Special thanks to Puppeteer Lounge's guest instructor Andrew Silke from Create 3d Characters for sharing such brilliant tips and trickery on using SHAPES and Ingo Clemen the master behind SHAPES who was present the whole time answering questions and sharing his insights

SHAPES 2.0 is a really powerful tool that let's an artist to focus more into the creative side or process of character setup and speed up the workflow exponentially.

More Info: puppeteerlounge.com/webinar

Get SHAPES: braverabbit.de/shapes/
Andrew Silke (Create 3d Characters): create3dcharacters.com/
Ingo Clemens (brave rabbit): braverabbit.de/