Hello Guys and welcome to another edition of Animations on HypefroActive. On the last post i hinted that i'll be doing something a little different from what i've been doing but quite unfortunately, i wont be doing that today. Anyways, i'll be giving a quick tip to rigging. At least on how i do mine. So lets do this.
What is a rig or what does rigging in animations mean?
A rig is the structural part of an animation and is responsible for passing the animations or simulations onto the mesh or model, so that it appears like the model, mesh or character is moving. In other words, a rig is like what the bones in any animal is and does. So thinking about it, lets take the bones first. the bones are the structural part of all animals
. Without the bones to hold people up, we'ld probably collapse or not be able to walk. The bones makes us appear to be filled with strength and look firm. When your head turns, or you pick something up, you do that because you are able to coordinate these movements with your bones. If you had a fractured bone, all these would be painfully difficult to achieve and if yo had none at all, then your guess is as good as mine if you thinking blob. There's a lot of deeper medical explanations to this but let's just stick with this for now. So the same goes for the rig. The rig represents the bones that drives the mesh in the 3D world and without the rig, the mesh or model would be what it is, a model. This means that when you've finished modelling your beautiful character and it's all textured up, you still need to add a rig to it that would drive it's motions. Now if this explanation makes any sense at all then let's proceed to the next paragraph.
Consider rigging a leg
Now, the leg has about four major bones that enables rotations which are the upper, the lower, the heel and the ball of the foot. A lot of beginner animators miss the one at the ball of the foot so the walk created becomes awkward. But this is not to say that badly animated human characters do not have ball of the foot bones and that's why they are bad. Rather, what i'm saying is that these bones have to be there if you want a smooth, realistic walk or run. With an understanding of how this works then what's left is positioning these bones in the right places. The ankle bone for instance is located on the foot bone in the rig and it's pivot is what makes all the difference. I am saying that if you have an anklet bone, then it's pivot cannot or should not be in the center but should be located somewhere around the ankle as it is in real life. In rigging, the first thing to understand is not the bones but the hierarchy as regards order and relationship. Softwares like 3dsmax and pretty much other 3D softwares have the hierarchy tab which allows you to manipulate the pivot or center of any object and this helps in placing a pivot exactly where you want it to be so that rotations as you've perceived can happen exactly at that point.
So let's assume we understand the usefulness of helper objects, object hierarchies and let's try setting up a simple leg rig. Thesame
way these bones are setup is the same way you'll be setting up the ones
for you model, regardless of whatever software you use. I use 3dsmax so the procedure is thus,
-) fire up 3dsmax,
-) Go to the command panel, the panel by your right hand of the screen.
-) Click the create tab, then go to the next lines of tabs below it,
-) Go to systems, it's the last button by the right,
-) Click on bones.
Goto the front view and click once to create the upper bone, click again for the lower, the ankle then the toe bone then right click to terminate the command. This finally produces a small bone regarded as the tip bone. So now you have your leg rig. Using the rotation buttons and rotating any single part of the rig will cause it to rotate hence simulate movement. Of course this doesn't look like much right now but this is how it all starts. The leg bone is further driven by ik solvers to make animations a lot easier, with the upper leg bone parented to a helper which in turn is parented to the hip bone. And the additions to making it a complex and more effective rig is endless. But staying and keeping things really simple most of the time is enough to bring the desired results, unless you understand how to really rig by way of adding constraints and writing scripts to make the rig complex but more effective. Now if we are to consider the simple rig above, it's clear where the upper and lower bones will be, but immediately after the lower bone there is the on named tarsal. If i were to create a leg rig, that tarsal would drive the ankle and the next one drives the ball of the foot.
So, this rig integrated into the rest makes up an entire human rig that is animated and makes the mesh simulate it's movements by means of skinning which is the process of attaching the model to the bones.
Before we start, i'ld like to post an update on the head i choose to work with and what i did with the eyes. Animations generally are just simulations of real life actions of humans, animals, plants, machines etc and the same applies to modelling. So in my case, looking at the eyes of the character from the previous post, i think the eyes as at now looks more organic, appealing and human a lot more than the other that looks a bit mechanical or unnatural if you like. And though it's nice to be creative with your work and all that but sometimes it's best to stay with key features of a subject. That way you keep things simple, less exaggerated and you have a sense of what you want to achieve whether or not you have a reference, otherwise you could go on and on for days modelling and continually making modifications to the model. So on mine, i've decided to stick with this character head.
