Maya Rigging Fundamentals
Maya's rigging toolset is one of the most powerful aspects of Maya. The course will teach you the fundamental tools and skills for rigging in Maya 2017.
What you'll learn
While skillsets, such as modeling, enables you to create the physical form of a character, having the ability to rig in Maya enables you to bring those models to life by giving them powerful and robust animation controls. In this course, Maya Rigging Fundamentals, you'll be introduced to the fundamentals of rigging in Maya 2017. First, you'll explore the character rigging pipeline and Maya's rigging toolset. Next, you'll discover how to rig your own character by creating joint hierarchies, IK based legs with reverse foot setup, IK spline spine setup, and IK/FK switching arms. Then, you'll get a better understanding on how to rig the hips, chest, shoulders, neck, and head. Finally, you'll learn how blendshapes can be used to create facial expressions. By the end of this course, you'll have the knowledge and tools to begin rigging your own characters in Maya. Software required: Maya 2017.
Table of contents
- Creating a Rig Hierarchy 6m
- IK vs. FK 5m
- IK Chain Basics 7m
- Creating the Reverse Foot Joints 7m
- Connecting the Reverse Foot Rig 5m
- Creating the Foot Controllers 9m
- Creating Toe and Ball Foot Controls 10m
- Creating Banking and Heel Controls 8m
- Creating a No-flip Knee Setup 8m
- Cleaning up the Foot Rig 8m
- Separating out the Spine Joints 5m
- Basics of Spline IK 4m
- Adding Spline IK to the Spine 4m
- Creating Clusters for the Spine Rig 5m
- Creating Upper and Lower Body Controls 8m
- Connecting the Controllers 9m
- Creating a Stretchy Spine 9m
- Creating Spine Twist Controls 3m
- Creating Hip Controls 6m
- Cleaning up the Spine Rig 8m
- Creating 3 Seperate Arm Chains 10m
- Adding in Bicep Twist Joints 5m
- Creating the FK Controls 11m
- Completing the FK Controls 3m
- Creating the IK Controls 9m
- Tying the IK & FK to the Result Chain 7m
- Creating the IK FK Switch Attribute 8m
- Setting up the Wrist Controls 8m
- Creating the Shoulder Controls 9m
- Setting up the Arm Twist Controls 6m
- Cleaning and Simplifying the Arm Rig 8m
- Fundamentals of Skin Binding 4m
- Overview of Different Bind Methods 10m
- Overview of Different Skinning Methods 5m
- Interactive Skin Binding 4m
- Creating the Initial Bind for the Character 6m
- The Weight Paint Interface & Weight Normalization 7m
- Painting Skin Weights - The Jaw 8m
- Painting Dual Quaternian Weights and Painting the Shoulder 11m
- Painting Weights on the Leg 8m
- Using Mirror Weights and Weight Hammer 9m
- The Basics of Blend-shapes 6m
- How to Avoid Blend-shape Problems 5m
- Creating Facial Blend-shapes 9m
- Attaching Blend-shapes to the Rig 12m
- Creating Corrective Shapes 9m
- Creating a Parent Control for the IK Arms 9m
- Making the Rig Fully Scalable 6m
- Creating a TRS Node 5m
- Cleaning up the Rig Controls 8m
- Course Wrap-up 7m
About the author
Peter is a CGI artist with many years of experience in the Film, Animation, and Video Game Industries. Some highlights include Fox's The Simpsons, The Fantastic Four, Discovery Channel's Shark Week, Sex and the City, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and more! Peter has been working in higher education for the last 8 years teaching a variety of topics that include Digital Sculpture, Dynamic Simulation, Traditional Modeling, Character Rigging, MEL Scripting, Lighting, Texturing, and more. He also s... more