Indie Game Development Pipeline Volume 7: Boss Character Rigging and Animation
In this volume of the Indie Game Development Pipeline, we'll learn about the process used to create animated assets for Unity with the help of Maya LT, a version of Maya specifically geared toward artists that would like to build their own games. Software required: Autodesk Maya LT 2015.
What you'll learn
In this volume of the Indie Game Development Pipeline, we'll learn about the process used to create animated assets for Unity with the help of Maya LT, a version of Maya specifically geared towards artists that would like to build their own games. In this series, we'll focus on the rigging and animation process of the boss character. We'll learn how to approach building skeletons and control systems. We'll also cover skinning techniques for polished deformations. Once the rig is finished, we'll jump right into animation and learn how to create appealing performances with time-saving techniques that really work. By the end of this volume, you'll have the understanding you need to rig and animate boss models of your own. Software required: Autodesk Maya LT 2015.
Table of contents
- Setting up the Scene and Adding Leg Joints 8m
- Quickly Modifying the Orientation of Joints in Maya 8m
- Finishing Our Initial Joint Chain and Mirroring It to the Opposite Leg 8m
- Creating Joints for the Root and Upper Body 7m
- Creating a Jaw Bone 3m
- Setting up Joints for the Boss's Eye and Eyelids 8m
- Adding Joints for the Eyebrows 5m
- Creating Joints for the Trees on Top of the Character's Head 4m
- Segmenting Joint Chains in Maya 5m
- Starting on the Character's Arm Chain 7m
- Adding Finger Bones 8m
- Cleaning up Our Finger Bones 4m
- Checking the Arm Chain's Orientation and Using MEL to Reorient Joints 7m
- Finalizing the Orientation of Our Finger Joints and Mirroring Our Arm Chain 7m
- Skinning the Boss's Eye and Eyelids 5m
- Skinning the Eyebrows 2m
- Skinning the Trees on Top of the Boss's Head 2m
- Binding the Character's Body 5m
- Painting Weights 8m
- Mirroring Weights 3m
- Using MEL to Search for Skin Clusters and Skin Joints 7m
- Maintaining Volume in the Forearms 3m
- Mirroring Our Twist Joints 2m
- Completing Our Forearm Twist Rig 6m
- Adding Influence Objects to a Bound Mesh 8m
- Creating a Global Control 6m
- Creating Leg Controls 7m
- Adding Inverse Kinematics to the Legs 5m
- Finishing Our Foot Controls 6m
- Controlling the Knees 8m
- Setting up a Center-of-gravity Control 5m
- Controlling the Jaw 3m
- Controlling the Eyelids 7m
- Removing Offset Values on Constrained Objects 3m
- Creating Brow Controls 4m
- Finishing Our Brow Controls 5m
- Controlling the Trees on Top of the Boss's Head 7m
- Setting up Controls for the Arms 7m
- Adding Elbow Controls 4m
- Starting on the Boss's Finger Controls 7m
- Completing the Layout of Our Finger Controls 8m
- Finishing the Fingers 2m
- Double-checking Our Rig and Creating Selection Sets with MEL 8m
- Setting up Our Scene for Animation 6m
- Blocking in the Boss's Intro Sequence 7m
- Roughing in the Boss's Reaction to the Player 8m
- Blocking in the Boss as He Loosens up His Rigid Form 8m
- Animating the Boss's Roar 7m
- Finishing the Extremes for the Boss's Roar 8m
- Finalizing Our Initial Blocking Pass 7m
- Second Round of Blocking 7m
- Re-timing the Boss's Performance 7m
- Finalizing Our Timing Adjustments of the Boss's Opening Animation 6m
- Our First Polishing Pass 8m
- A Second Polishing Pass 8m
- Eliminating Rigid Movements and Fine-tuning Arcs 8m
- Finalizing the Animation 8m
- Animating with Efficiency in Mind 2m
- Pushing Appeal and Exporting Our Animations 9m
About the author
Delano works avidly as an animation author at Pluralsight. Starting his career at animation studios like Shilo, Delano has developed a strong passion for his talents. His animation and rigging background help him teach and create some of the most-watched training on Pluralsight. A few of his favorite projects that he has contributed to include: Character Interaction in Maya and in Softimage, Rigging the Human Face in Maya, Rigging Sea Creatures in Maya, and Rigging and Animating Transforming... more