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Earlier this month, I finally completed the rigs for all the characters in the film. I put together this quick animation so I could put them all through there paces. And I'm glad I did. It highlighted a number of bugs that would have been annoying to fix later. Anyway, the animation is pretty simple and not very refined, just a couple hours a piece, and these are all playblasts out of maya, not renders. Enjoy. And if you are so inclined, here are some technical details on each section. Kiana (Crow) - This is the first example of my biggest technical hurdle, the crow rig. You'll see in this shot an example of my proudest accomplishment, getting the crows wings to fold and unfold. The tail feathers have independent conrols and can fold in or out, and bend up or down. As you see also the beak is controlable along with a controlable tongue. The eyes can close and squint using wire deformers. There are controls on each foot control to handle the bending of each toe. And the legs are a normal IK setup. Lastly, you can see in the feathers on the head the first of many examples of dynamic curves (maya hair) at work. They've come in very handy for adding secondary motion, and were relatively easy to impliment. Crow Spirit - The crow rig in action again, here being used for flying. At the end of the shot I fade out to the actual rig so you can get a look at how its setup. Each feather has its own joint to allow me to control them in the folding of the wings. The book, "Character Animation in 3D" by Steve Roberts was helpful in how to approach bird movement. He had a whole section on animating birds which proved to be a very valuable resource. Kiana - The first of the human rigs. Pretty straight forward. Here you see another use of dynamic curves on her hair. And also some of the blend shapes on her face. Security Guards - Again the human rig. I built IK/FK switches into the legs and arms. And so this entire running animation was accomplished with FK control. I also built controllable wire deformers into the bottom flaps of their jackets so they could be keyed independently based on the characters movement. Peter (Crow) - The final example of the crow rig. Note the dynamic curves controlling the tuft of feathers on his head. Also, once the polys fade away, note the difference in the rig now that the wings are folded. Farmer - More of the human rig. This was all done with IK animation on the legs, FK on the left arm, and a switch from FK to IK halfway through on the right arm. Cat - My quadraped rig. I've built two such rigs in the past for different animations and was never never satisfied with the controls. So here I based the rig again on Steve Roberts book, and I found it a lot more user friendly. The mouth opening and closing is a blend shape, and I built two deformers into the tail joints to control the upper and lower bends of the tail. Peter - The human rig, yet again, here with a more extensive example of the facial blend shapes. He's supposed to be saying "Hello" at the end. Kiana's Friend - Mostly just a test of the dynamic curves on the character's hair. Since the strands are longer, they required more constraints to keep them from flying off in this situation. Again a mix of FK on the arms and IK on the legs. Eagle - The eagle's rig is a simplified version of the crow rig, b/c we never see him landing or folding his wings. But his mouth opens, eyes close, and wings and tail include all the same controls as the crows. |
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| By fruehdom on October 28, 2007 at 5:00pm EDT | Topic(s): animation rigging hair maya |
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