Motion Flow Rigging in Maya
In this series of lessons, learn the process of rigging with an emphasis on fluidity and natural motion. Software required: Maya 2011.
What you'll learn
In this series of lessons, learn the process of rigging with an emphasis on fluidity and natural motion. In this course, Farley Chery will be introducing extraordinary new rigging concepts to help animators achieve natural fluidity in our body movement. He will cover different theories and methods used in combination to give natural articulation that occurs during body movement. The artist will explain the theory and reasoning through the rig development process. This leads into the creation of an innovative shoulder setup, based on the position of the elbows mimicking the proper actions of human anatomy, which uses the concepts covered to make it intuitive to use in both FK and IK systems. This implementation of a remarkable no flip knee setup, which is used to create an automatic hip system, magically orients itself to the average position of the knees allowing for quick and natural poses for the character. This course is concluded by building a squash and stretch nSpine and an easy method for creating spine twists. Software required: Maya 2011.
Table of contents
- Introduction to the Model and the End Results 8m
- Theory Section: Programming Nodes 8m
- Theory Section: Faux Constraints 8m
- Theory Section: Interdependent Systems 11m
- Creating the Broken Dependency Loop for the Auto Shoulder 15m
- The Dependency System 13m
- Finishing the Automatic Setup 11m
- Adding in the IK Handles 14m
- Building the IK Switches 11m
- Cleaning up the Auto Clavicle Interface 19m
- Theory: Pose Space Tools 14m
- Pose Space vs. Twist Knee Control 4m
- Building the Legs 19m
- Fixing the Reversed Controls for the Legs 13m
- Cleaning up the Leg Interface for Export 14m
- Importing and Setting up Our Invisible Legs 17m
- Setting up the Auto Swivel on the Hips 15m
- Continuing with the Auto Swivel Functionality 17m
- Adding the Other Two Axis to Our Automatic Setup 10m
- Creating a Better Solution to Measure Distance 11m
- Dual Constraints, Exploring and Resolving the Issues 10m
- Cleaning up the System and Creating a Hierarchy 16m
- The Auto Hip Switch 12m
- Re-exploring the Wheel and Swivel: A Better Solution 16m
- Starting the Nspine 8m
- Adding Stretchy Functionality to the Nspine 13m
- Completing the Last Steps to Adding in Stretchiness 13m
- A New Method to Add Rotation to a Spine 7m
- Uniting the Leg System and the Spine 26m
- Wrapping up the Legs and Spine, Looking at Limitations and Issues 15m
- Finalizing the Rig 10m
- Bonus Lesson: Tying the Theoretical Rig into a Model 11m
- Bonus Lesson: A Quick Explanation of the Head Controls 8m
- Bonus Lesson: No-flip Knee Review 17m
About the author
Farley Chery has been working or teaching in 3D for 5 years. His skills were developed by Patricia Beckmann-Welles and Digital Tutors at the start. He has spent the last four years freelancing and creating new techniques and theories to help his students through 3D’s steep learning curve. He first showcased Enhanced IK with Digital Tutors and will be describing his modeling and topological processes in the upcoming book “The Modeler’s Book of Shadows.” He is currently freelancing and writing cur... more