3D Toolkit - Rigging Collection

 

Rigging Collection

These Blogs connect all 4 of the sections we went over to compact the blogs for easier access however for my case is whilst we were shown throughout the lessons how to rig , I had to give myself extra time and lessons to figure the controls and process out whilst not being in the lesson so I compacted these blogs together to showcase my personal work on trying to figure out how to create the rig by scratch.

Notes given for the Leg Rig

Before Starting off the leg rigs , since the lesson had passed when we looked over these rigs , I looked through the NOW and read through the notes as my guide to create the leg rig

Whilst designing this rig and placing and renaming all the different IK Handles required for one leg, I realised that the other leg would still be needing the exact same process however my rig for this showcase did not suit the proportions of my character relating to the final project so I continued with this rig as a showcase.

Next Step : The Spine Rig

In my opinion whilst working and rigging onto the spine , I found this section to be the hardest to work with due to the constant backtracking with the controls and losing which controls have been binded to what piece after constant tracking back and forth and hope in the end there are no issues.

Final Steps : Skinning & Weight Painting

When it comes down to Skinning the model to set itself up for the weight painting process, I started by creating a simple model of the joints in the leg with the cylinders representing the thighs and the shins whilst the sphere was the knee joint.

After this model was created and inline with the rig , you have to bind the model to the rig so it is able to have the model itself showcase the rigs functionality with their being two separate types of binding as there's a hard bind which is used more commonly when working with hard surface modelling such as working with mech character whilst there's a soft bind which is used when wanting to give a model the sense of more organic movement.

Model being Binded together

Entire Rig Showcase

Screenshot of the Model in the current state of the rigs entire build

Rig Functionality

Screenshots of the Rig working as intended without an flaws or issues with the rig being able to handle the legs movement without any restictions.

Weight Painting

When looking through how weight painting functions after scanning through the program, I figured out that weight painting works in the terms of values and how much influence is placed onto the rig joints. Looking at our test , we can see the example of weight painting being showcased here as it is split evenly in values at from the top of the leg it starts off with a value of 1 then as the it goes further down lowers in value as it reach's to the lower leg and hits zero value.

Issues with the Spine

Interactive Bind Skin

The Interactive Bind Skin tool inside of Maya is able to create a heat map over the top of your model which is able to be altered and moved to your liking as an alternative method instead of weight painting your entire model however it comes with the drawbacks of not being able to have as much movement in the model.