An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging

1. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging by Cheryl Cabrera Chapter 8 Control Rig Setup for a Biped Character: IK and FK

2. BoBo- Character by Cheryl Cabrera (2007).

3. Mr. Hyde – Bat rig by Tonya Payne (2006) for the short film Bait by Luke Nalker.

4. Skinning Workflow

5. FuMan by Chris Beaver (2007).

6. Smooth bind (left) compared to rigid bind (right).

7. The Smooth Bind option box with suggested settings.

8. Character by Tim Robertson (2005).

9. The Component Editor showing several vertices and which joints affect them.

10. After smooth binding, you may have undesirable deformation (left). After applying the smooth skin weights, the results are much better (right).

11. The Add Influence Options.

12. The Paint Skin Weights Tool.

13. The Mirror Skin Weights Options.

14. Mr. Bojangles by Luke Nalker (2006).

15. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging by Cheryl Cabrera Assignment 8.1: Skin the Character

16. Setting the geometry layer to NORMAL.

17. Skinning your character.

18. Geometry moving with double transformations.

19. Turning OFF inherits transform on the geometry or the geometry group.

20. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging by Cheryl Cabrera Assignment 8.2: Fix the Skin Weights Using the Component Editor

21. In this example, the toe geometry is being affected by both the left and the right toe joints, so there is a pulling of the geometry when the feet move.

22. In this example, the right toe geometry vertices are selected. Work only on one area at a time to avoid confusion.

23. Highlighting the column of influence on the joint that should NOT be affecting the area.

24. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging by Cheryl Cabrera Assignment 8.3: Fix the Skin Weights Using the Smooth Skin Weights Tool (New in Maya 2008)

25. In this example, the movement of the foot control is collapsing the pelvis region.

26. Selecting the points in the problem area.

27. The results look MUCH better!

28. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging by Cheryl Cabrera Assignment 8.4: Adding Influence objects

29. Creating and positioning the knee influence joints.

30. Creating and positioning the elbow influence joints.

31. Adding a new joint as an influence. This must be repeated one at a time.

32. Adding a piece of geometry as an Influence Object.

33. Grouping the influence object and base.

34. Adding the attribute “Breathe” to the upperBody_ctrl.

35. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging by Cheryl Cabrera Assignment 8.5: Fix the Skin Weights Using the Paint Skin Weights Tool (optional)

36. In this example, the movement of the arm shows that the shoulder geometry is not moving with it, causing it to crack slightly.

37. Selecting the points in the problem area.

38. Painting skin weights in a problem area.

39. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging by Cheryl Cabrera Assignment 8.6: Mirror the Skin Weights

40. Mirroring the Skin Weights from positive X to negative X.

41. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging by Cheryl Cabrera Assignment 8.7: Create a Breathing Expression (Optional)

42. Adding the attribute ‘BreathSpeed’ to the upperBody_ctrl.

43. Creating the expression for breathing.

44. An Essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging by Cheryl Cabrera Assignment 8.8: Create a Smooth Switch for Polygonal Characters (Optional)

45. Adding the attribute ‘SmoothSwitch’ to the Master_ctrl.

46. Loading the Set Driven Key window and setting the first key so that when the SmoothSwitch_is set to ‘0’, the Polygonal Mesh will not be smoothed.

47. Setting the second key so that when the SmoothSwitch_is set to ‘2’, the Polygonal Mesh will be smoothed.