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so you want to be a rigger huh? 9

Animation / Education

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so you want to be a rigger huh?

Keith Lango Zootrigger setup

The same way it is important for a modeler to understand part of the rigging process, a rigger should also get a grasp of the animation workflow.

So how can you become a rigger that animators are happy to work with.

Well you can obviously start with a good attitude. Ask for feedback from the animators and be willing to discard that crazy automated function you created but animators find unusable.

Read rigging books and dvds, post on forums, check other rigs and even students showreels, talk to people. Personally I have learnt rigging through several dvds and those should be compulsory if you want to be a good rigger so here they are:

Jason Schleifer “Maya Fast animation rigs”. The DVD is well over 5 years old and only 1h20 but still is a must for someone who want to be liked by his peers.

Jason Schleifer “Animator Friendly Rigging”. That set will take few hours to go through but expose the most important concepts.

Fahrenheit DVDs. I actually started with those which was really hardcore but that was a very good experience.

Jason Osipa “Stop starring, facial modeling and animation done right”. A third edition just came out and I should probably get that one too. Jason goes in length about facial rigging and you should definitely spend some time understanding what he is talking about.

So you have ordered them all? okay while waiting for them I want to mention few things that irritate me when I use a new rig.

1. Slow rigs.
If your rigs are very slow, make sure it is not because you are using expressions where you could use nodes.
Create a low poly or proxy version the animators can work with otherwise.

1.Weired and default rotation axis.
Head and torso should have the Y rotation carry all the other axis, X should be carrying Z and Z the last one. Basically, the rotation order should be something like ZXY but certainly not the default XYZ (remember, you read the axis order starting from the end)
Jason Schleifer pays special attention to the rotation orders in his DVDs so take notes when watching them.

2. GUIs
Well, not everybody will agree with me but ….. I can’t stand GUIs. Maya viewport is so poorly designed that I can’ t see the point of adding an other window cluttering my screen real estate even more.
I will share with you one of my latest setup very soon. It is a rig where instead of hitting the usual nurbs controls, you select an invisible polygon encompassing the surface of the limb. Keith Lango posted a similar setup a while ago using Zootrigger,, myself I just parent constraint the Nurbs control or the joint to an invisible proxy box instead.

[update]GUI are not so bad when they are truely necessary. To drive complex or additive blend shapes for examples (ala Jason Osipa joystick) but certainly not for selecting the lower or upper arm.

3. IF/FK switches WITH no-pop
It is obvious that animators need IK and FK for legs and hands but you should also consider a script that would allow the animators to switch very easily from IK to FK and reverse without going back to the T pose

4. Elbow and Knee lock. The animators should be able to lock an elbow to a table

5. Scaling! The rig should be scalable!!!!

6. World orient head, spine, arms. I want them all or I want to be able to set this up using constraints

7. Bend bow and noddle arms. I am liking this more and more and should certainly investigate into that

8. cluttered vieworts. Nurbs controls don’t need to cover the entire model, make it clean and simple, if possible, make it invisible (cf GUI)

9. non consistency in the boolean channel control. 0 should mean no and 1 should mean yes. ie Shoulder parent 0 should mean that the IK hand is not parented to the shoulder. You could actually do the opposite, but as long as it it consistent throughout the rig.

10. Set me free. Animators are artists and they might want to break an elbow or pull fingers to stylise the motion so don’ restrain them to what is anatomically possible unless you want them to come up with really stiff animation.

Alright, that’s it for now and as a treat for reading such a long post, check out some really cool rigging showreels and making of

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/15396945[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/3265412[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/5344666[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11648356[/vimeo]

Related posts:
Kaelou
ESMA
World orient Head and shoulder
Norman World Align spine

Alright, that should be enough for today. I will come back to this post an other day.

Have fun rigging!

Sketching with Jason Seiler 0

Animation / Character design / Drawings / Painting

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Sketching with Jason Seiler

The jury is still out there on the importance of being good at drawing for CG animation but to me, being able to quickly convey my ideas through rough sketches or a series of thumbnails is one more tool to a CG animator toolset therefore acquiring drawing skills should be one of our goals. It is also a great party trick! 😉

I lived in West Africa for a while and there were many circumstances where I couldn’t pull out my camera but no one minded when I fired up my pens and pencils. My skills weren’t that amazing at that time but once I have a bit more experience with watercolours or maybe gouache, I am hoping to travel again for a month and fill up an entire sketchbook.

This brings me to great video I just found on Schoolism.com:
“Sketching with Jason Seiler”.

There are thousands of free sketching videos on Youtube but they are always too short or not exactly what I am looking for so $25 for looking over Jason’s shoulder and listening to his process is a bargain. It is also a great introduction to the great training Schoolism is offering.

The video is a bit less that 2 hours long and you see him sketching in the street and at his desk, demonstrating the importance of breaking down the subject into simpler forms and shapes, thumbnailling, crosshatching, digitally painting on a TabletPC, ballpoint sketching and applying watercolours.

On a minor note, each artist has their own style and I prefer cleaner lines to the more fiddly Jason uses when sketching, in the watercolours section he didn’t really explain his thought process and how he selected his colours however, I would still highly recommend watching those videos if you are trying to develop your sketching abilities.

You will probably need to register to access the website but don’t worry it is really quick.

Related posts:
My drawing category

ESMA 11

Animation

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ESMA

For the past few years some new animation schools have emerged in France and competing with worldwide famous Gobelins and Supinfocom. Among them is the ESMA, a school based in the south of France.

Here is a shortfilm you probably missed last year: Oedipe. Ok it is a student film and the animation is not quite in par with Dreamworks or Pixar but the production values are very, very impressive and unlike other french student short films it is not just about wild chases, there is also a fair amount of acting so it is interesting they still felt the need to make fun of Gobelin’s 2009 Oscar nominated Oktapodi in one of the shot. It was quite unnecessary but well, this probably tells about the fierce competition between the different french schools.

http://www.oedipe-le-film.com/


Oedipe
Uploaded by Esma-Movie. – Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

You can find more shorts from last year at the following address:
http://productions.esma-montpellier.com/ and you might recognise Hugh, Tong and Exit but keep your eyes open for this years ESMA best short film http://www.mytho-logique.com/

Related post:
You want to be a rigger huh!

“Design outside the box” 1

Game design / Life hack

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“Design outside the box”

Probably the best 30 minutes of procrastination you will spend this week.

Very interesting talk by quirky Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell on the unexpected success of Facebook and other products. What about getting an Xbox achievement brushing your teeth or being on time at work? With comedic timing, Jesse Schell demonstrate the power of External Rewards.

and on the same topic, check the official EpicMix website and the related Kotaku article.
Level up and unlock achievements pins by skiing in Colorado

Last day at EA Brightlight 1

EA / Video Games

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Last day at EA Brightlight

Friday was my last day at EA Brightlight and I received some really really cool presents! One of them was a Moleskine sketchbook with an 8 Bit version of me on the cover, an original “Spare Parts” drawing by Ross our concept artist extraordinaire and nice words from my teammates inside. My time at EA had been really good.

After a great experience in Angouleme and 2minutes last year, I wasn’t too keen on coming back to the UK and the insane cost of housing but working on “Spare Parts” and moving to Guildford was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I have met some incredible artists and improved my skills tremendously.

Working on a downloadable game with such a small team allowed me to understand the intricacy of how a game gets done and this was a very challenging but enjoyable experience. Unlike my experience at Rare, I was entirely involved in the whole process and tackled in-game cycle, marketing videos and cutscenes (those look amazing by the way). I really want to make my own game now! 😉

“Spare Parts” comes out this winter and you should definitely keep an eye on it, at around $10 it is one of those must buy games for the whole family to enjoy. Thanks you EA Brightlight and my team for such an awesome experience!

Related posts:
“Spare Parts” gameplay
“EA” blog category

“Listen Philbin” 0

Animation / Animation Mentor / Portfolio

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“Listen Philbin”

While polishing the spine of Bishop in that shot I realised that I had completely lost the original acting idea and I would probably be better off restarting from scratch but I still think it is still worth posting it.

Yes the right forearm intersects with the body and the left hand is still really rough, I have never said it was finished! 😉