Learning to Rig as an Animator

===THIS IS UNEDITED / WIP===

Hey there, if you're reading this, you've asked about how to rig, or learning more about rigging.  I hope to revise this in the near future, but the content is still useful.  So until than, hopefully this helps and isn't too confusing :)

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 -gif of Incredibles robot evolution

-thumbnails in order of process - animlab formatting

https://3dfiggins.com/Personal/AnimLab/

-keep all on same page with anchor jumps to bottom

.rig optimizes course from rigging dojo

-add in shipkov shoulders, buried link

-add in mel tutorial

https://www.melscripting.com/book.html

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Rigging Course: https://www.cgcircuit.com/tutorial/advanced-rigging-with-de-boors-algorithm-in-maya

Learning to rig as an Animator can provide a valuable addition to your skill set.  From rigging your own characters, getting on projects sooner, or communicating more effectively with the rigging department, having a basic understanding of how a rig is built will make your life as an Animator that much better. Also, you can use your newfound knowledge to improve your own animation workflow by being able to build small in-scene setups and if you go far enough, you may be assigned a wider range of challenging or atypical shots. I've provided a bit of my own experience with having both an animation and technical skill set at the end.

Before getting started, here are a few things that I wish I had been told when I was starting out

-Rigging is an entire field, so picking it up won't be instantaneous. Rigging can also be (inaccurately used as) a blanket term for simulation, hair/fur, cloth, tools and pipeline

-Save multiple copies of any tutorials you follow or scripts you download, as internet resources have been known to vanish without warning

-Rigging is repetition, so if you plan on doing it more than once, it's highly recommended to learn basic scripting as well, so once you build a component you like, building it again (or the other side) is a click of a button <<python auto rig>>

-Building a rig, by hand, is a lot like following a recipe when cooking, the more explicit the directions the better and more consistent the result. So while you're building your rig, write down your steps. This helps later on once you learn how to script, as the steps are already laid out.

-Start small. Typically the end goal is to have an AutoRig so if you get a character mesh, you can put a quick rig in it and start animating. To keep things manageable, you'll want to start with smaller and smaller components first, such as a simple arm rig. For more information, see the section on <<AutoRig tips>>

-Work backwards, if you know you want to get a character in a game for example, get a single joint and skin working for an export first, then build up, piece by piece testing along the way

-Rip apart rigs you like or find online to see what they're doing and try to replicate those elements.  You can learn a lot from them such as basics like naming scheme and hierarchy to more explicit details like joint placement and skin weights

-Painting weights isn't any more tedious than moving verts when modeling or keys when animating. Once you understand what's happening and what can and cannot be achieved, it's very straightforward. Learn more here <<anchor to paint weight num>>

As for learning to rig for commercial work, it's very handy and does help inch out above others by being able to come on the project sooner, stay longer and mean less scheduling/hiring for the company.  Depending on how you feel about tools and what kind of contract work you've been getting I can help guide you a bit more. The big three that stood out for me when I've done them are:

1.  Humanoid rig.  Obviously this can take a huge amount of time to build your own.  But if you were able to figure out advance skeleton, how to skinning weights, and add a few FK accessories, it would give you a nice boost.  You can check out my skinning process here ( https://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/paintingWeights/ ) or try out ngSkinTools.  As for adding FK controls, that's a separate topic, but boiled down to creating a joint, a control shape, constraining the joint and getting the control into the rig's hierarching (parenting or constraining)  It'd be a good thing to get you learning scripting.  You can see the steps here: https://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/learnMEL/  but again, I'd highly recommend learning how to do it in python not MEL

2. Learning enough about scripting to do a few for loops and variables with alignments and building simple controls (see above).  Creating a locator at every frame, renaming objects, etc are such a time sink but nothing once you know how to loop it in either MEL or python (though learn python as almost everything is python).  Then when it come to rigging, creating an FK chain and Control rig will help a lot since they're in almost every rig, and take a good deal of time to do manually, mirror to the other size, etc.

3. Dynamic motion.  Though not necessarily rigging, having some knowledge of simulation can go a long ways, especially when you combine it with your own animation background.  Having rocks fall down, cloth react, antennas sway will help cut down the time you spend on an animation and allow you more time for the performance and more tools to deal with complex character designs.  You can see my write up here on using nCloth for the broad strokes: https://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/ncloth/  there's also a few tools online for dynamic overlap for FK chains.  Some are better than others, but it's really down to preference.

So, here's a very broad overview on how to get more familiar with Rigging.  Taking you from getting a mesh, building a rig, applying mocap, simulating the accessories and scripting to making it easier next time, along with my own views and examples at the end.

1) Prepping a Mesh for Rigging - Steps I take when receiving a model to process it before starting a rig

http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/meshPrep/

2) Fixing Lost UVs - A common issue when prepping a mesh to rig is once you apply shaders/textures, pieces appear white.  Here's the steps to resolve that

http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/whiteShader/

3) Rigging a Biped, Step by Step - A full, free break down, step by step for building a biped rig by hand from joint placement to corrective shapes

https://caveacademy.com/wiki/post-production-assets/rigging/rigging-training/introduction-to-rigging-course/

4) Painting Weights - An in depth look at the steps, process and basic methodology to make one of the most hated parts of rigging a lot more straightforward and manageable. Also, Maya add-ons like ngSkinTools (https://www.ngskintools.com/) are available to speed up the process even more

http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/paintingWeights/

5) Forearm Twist - An older tutorials, but an overview of one way of creating a forearm twist setup to help with volume preservation

http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/forearmTwist/

6) Corrective Joint Setups - An indepth look at my own approach for volume preservation

http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/corrective/

7) Joints vs Blendshapes - An indepth look into the endless debate of 'Joints vs Blendshapes'

https://sol-g-brennan.medium.com/rigging-tips-methods-for-extra-character-deformation-in-game-dev-e4c0e89e7b00

8) Creating Anim Proxies - If you're planning on animating your character, playback speed is key. Here's an approach to increasing it

http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/animProxy/

9) Mapping mocap to a Rig - Now that your character is rigged and skinned, make it move with a bit of mocap. This can be useful to test the rig, see the skinning in motion or show the client/animators the rig is ready for use.

http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/mocapTransfer/

10) Maya nCloth - With your character moving, learn some of the ways to get their accessories simulated

http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/ncloth/

11) Showing your Rig in Unreal Engine - This video tutorial series is meant to teach folks how to take their rigged mesh, and get it setup in UE4
https://vimeo.com/channels/1726469/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqFjc4xBbPk

12) Publicly Available AutoRigs - If the steps above are too daunting or if you're pressed for time, here's a listing of publicly available (free and paid) auto rigs to help you hit the ground running. If you'd like to build your own, continue below.

<<<LINK>>>

13) Scripting your own AutoRig - If you've followed the tutorials above, you'll have noticed early on how tedious and repetitive rigging can be. Learning to Script will speed up your workflow exponentially and open a whole new world of possibilities from building tools to problem solving. Get started here by learning how to build an AutoRig with Python for free

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rcDrbgD1zI&list=PLUug4IT0YMuEQw4yTyWt6n80QMcHd71kf

14) AutoRig Tips - Having built my own AutoRig tool set, here are a few of the points I wish I had known going into it 

<<<LINK>>>

15) My AutoRigs - Speaking of my own AutoRig tool set, here's an overview of the one I wrote and still use for characters, creatures, cars, props, cameras and more

<<<LINK>>>

16) Additional Resources -

<<<LINK>>>

17) My Rigging Philosophy - Though I consider myself an Animator, I've been rigging for just as long and having worked in games, films and commercials from big studios to solo projects, here are some of my thoughts on approaching rigging and my own mindset.

<<<LINK>>>

18) How I learned to Rig - My own path was nowhere near as structured as the one list above. Here's a brief overview of my own path and things I wish I could have done differently.

<<<LINK>>>

19) How I've used rigging in my animation career - 

<<<LINK>>>

Learning to rig is a great tool to have for 3d animators, especially those who wish to do their own personal projects.  Even a basic understanding can let you experiment and slowly build larger more complex rigs that will improve over time.  So start small, keep your expectations realistic and keep at it!

AutoRig Tips

Having your own AutoRig tool set is pretty great. It's an amazing learning experience and provides the knowledge that if you're put in a situation where you need to rig a character before you can animate, you know you can do so.  One benefit of having built it yourself over using a publicly available one is that when and if something goes wrong, you know roughly where the problem is and how to fix it. You also know the limitations of the rig, maybe it's not built to do quadrupeds or tentacles, and you can plan for this when seeing the character design. There are downsides of course, not everyone has the time or interest to devote to such a large undertaking, also publicly available ones may be able to build a rig outside your current abilities or understanding. Lastly, for both your own and publicly available tools, is upkeep. Staying up to date with the latest trends, optimizations, taking advantage of new software updates and staying on top coding versions, such as making sure the tool works in the latest version of python can be a lot of work.  Also, if you're using someone else's toolset, they may stop supporting it or compiling it to support the latest version of software. Having built my own AutoRig over twelve years, I see large parts of it that have fallen behind the times, but the end results still allows me to build a solid, battle tested rig to get most characters up and moving in a timely fashion, so even though it may not be cutting edge, I know it's still a viable option for the time being. So from those years, here are some tips I found that may help you.

-Write your process of building the rig down in a text document. This way, if you're not scripting the construction of the rig at the same time, you know the steps to recreate your arm setup and can read through it faster and more reliably than trying to remember. You can also write down known errors or possible options or improvements to loop back to when you do script it out. The more detailed the steps, the quicker you can get through it next time.

-Start small with building the tools. The road ahead of creating a full character rig is daunting, so start with something small and manageable to build up momentum, something like being able to select 5 locators, run a script and a basic FK control setup is created, or select 3 locators and an IK arm with pole vector is made. It's clunky and slow, but will give you the basic building blocks that you can improve upon.

-Don't build a 'Biped Rig' first. It's very tempting to start building a single script that when run creates your big rig. However, this tool will likely get very large and unruly and make updating and troubleshooting more difficult. Instead, build individual components like a spine, arm, leg and so on as smaller, separate scripts. Then you can build a wrapper script that ties them all together and goes in order to build the rig.  This way you also have the components to do more atypical characters or creatures. Also, keep your scripts separate, for example kfCharacterSetup_ArmCreate.mel and kfCharacterSetup_ArmUI.mel, is useful as you'll likely swap out, discard or improve pieces of your rig at different rates.

-Comment your scripts. A long running joke in the scripting community, but needs to be said over and over. Commenting not only helps you understand what's going on when you look back years later, but helps others that may pick up your tool. Commenting can also provide additional information such as common pitfalls, why you choose a specific workflow or general ideas for improvements for later versions. So keep commenting, as future you will appreciate it.

-A rig doesn't always need every single option, as the more complex, the slower it becomes. Keep complexity as an option, an add on or even a <<<bolt on rig>>> that an animator can create in a scene.  For example, IK fingers, by default, aren't needed except for rare instances.  So having them in the rig the entire time may be overkill when a bolt on script that can be used when needed may be more effective.

-Most parts of a rig's creation can be automated to some degree. From <<<cleaning the mesh>>>, to building a <<<character template>>> for joint placement, to transferring skin weights from previous characters or shared rig, a lot of steps can be consolidated but may not necessarily fall under 'rig creation'. If you're planning to build several rigs for similar characters, knowing this ahead of time and planning accordingly can save you time and effort.  

-Store your control shapes in a library and use those to keep them consistent between rigs. Control shapes and colors can seem tedious when you're creating them. Far too many rigs I've worked with have been little more than default blue, nurbs circles.  Though technically still as functional, the end user experience for the Animator drops considerably. They'll be staring at this rig for hours so making it as user friendly and appealing goes a long way. So a way to save time for you is to create common controls shapes and save them to a library. Once you build your rig, you can pull these known shapes in without having to create them by hand each time. The rig looks better, is more informative at a glance and a consistent visual style is achieved between rigs so Animators don't need to spend as much time refamiliarizing themself with the next one.

-Build the World control / character hierarchy first to contain your elements as each new component is built and added, this keeps your Outliner clean and saves the headache of cleaning / parenting everything at the end.

-When coloring controls, color the shape node not the transform to prevent the color disappearing when an animator puts the controls on a display layer

-keep a clean list of your tools or you'll end up rebuilding ones over and over again, pic of kfTools

-create a masterUI and use that a template so you can frankenstein future UI's together easily along with the code needed to pull information from those pieces, pic of kfMasterUI.mel

My Auto Rigs

-individual text linked to images

-all being said still old

-brad speed

-take advantage of later additions in Maya such as DG/Parallel evaluation, Matrix Math, fewer constraints, avoiding heavy nodes such as rivets

-image of kfTools Rigging

-biped builder, character setup, sub windows, stills from creation (take last character for store), car, camera, tool list

My Rigging Philosophy

1) Animators will be interacting with rigs for hours, days and weeks on end, so their interaction with the rig in terms of looks, functionality and playback speed are all very important to consider.

-few visible controls as possible that can be easily shown more or less, think of how its going to be animated

-controls shaped and colored in a meaningful way ( should know what the character is doing with the mesh hidden)

-when coloring controls, color the shape node not transform to prevent the color disappearing when an animator puts the controls on a display layer

-rig colors are important, yellow catches your eye, but don't want only yellow controls, avoid pink/white/teal as those are common shown when something is selected

2) I build rigs to be animated in a 'Grab and Go' workflow consisting of controls that represent what the mesh is doing. The goal here is to have the rig convey the motion even with the mesh hidden, while making the controls clear enough so that the Animator doesn't need to take their eye off the character to look at the channel box for custom channels or a separate UI such as a Body Picker.

-I don't build/use body pickers.  Again, this is purely preference and how I started my own career, the characters never had pickers, so I've kept up with it

-I try to avoid custom channels unless it's for less used features, like an IKFK blend or in cases where the Animator requested a group for ease of animation or animation transfer.

-Being able to quickly toggle the controls (I have nurbs curves viewport toggle set to hotkey '4') removes the rig entirely from the viewport

-I have a <<<selection recall tool>>> when I animate more to retain common groups of controls, rather than using to find controls

3) Speed is key, both for building a rig and playback speed for animators.  Scripting your tools as much as possible will save you time and effort from trying to remember how you did it last time, not to mention make the whole experience more enjoyable. In terms of rig playback, understanding what's causing rig slow down and/or having various levels of detail for the character (proxy, anim, render, etc) that Animators can toggle can be really helpful to everyone.

-Rigging Dojo has a great tutorial on improving rig playback speed and optimization: https://twitter.com/riggingdojo/status/1470505337102942219  /   https://ondemand.riggingdojo.com/OptimizingRigsforParallelEvaluation

-Proxy meshes, layered meshes turning on hi at the end for playblasts. http://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/animProxy/

4) Avoid 'rigging for rigging' sake. Just because you can automate an element or add more features, it may be best to hold until they're requested.  As the more complex the rigs get, the harder they are to troubleshoot, the more areas where something can go wrong and the slower the playback speed.

-Here's a whole thread on rig requests that were not taken advantage of: https://twitter.com/riggingdojo/status/1460280057625292801

-I try to avoid automating motion, such as auto clavicles, moving the center of gravity/body to keep between the feet (yes that's been asked for...), etc. Even when I do build in small auto elements I make it so the effects can be dialed down or turned off entirely

-I'm also a big fan of bolt-on rig additions, not trying to solve every solution in a single rig.  A common one is IK Fingers, which are so rarely used that having them in every rig is excessive.  Where as I can provide a tool an animator can run in their scene they need that functionality and be done with it, https://twitter.com/KielFiggins/status/1460549763594698752

5) I prefer joints over blendshapes. The reasons will likely be its own write up in the future but the summary being:

-I can automate joint creation

-I rarely work on projects (outside of films) that have the time, budget or resources for talented modeler, especially for faces

-The popularity of game engines make joints a foundation point while each handle blendshapes differently

-I'm often asked to build a rig while the model is still in progress and the model may change right up till the end

-I'm more confident in my skinning/skin transferring abilities, than my modeling abilities

-Most of the projects I'm involved with are not as cartoonly or stylized 

-fingers overall for shapes for previz/transfer, fk for actual animation, layered to support bolt on IK if needed, work in conjunction can set a pose with finger group and tweak with FK

-prefer prefix for naming schemes, when an object gets duplicated numbers get added on at end, mesh_, CTRL_, rig_, for naming of left and right side, I like to have underscores around it to make search / replace easier for finding the same control on another limb, so CTRL_L_ArmIK and CTRL_R_ArmIK

-avoid custom plugins, may not be avail to client, plugging in on render farm, not compatible with version of maya being used

-build it more than 3 times, automate it - csa

-get animating early, ref the rig, layer on additional controls as needed, ship it with imperfect weights and correct it once called out, gif from incredibles about building for a need, putting it into production and having it run trials by fire. Helps avoids feature creep, don't have to polish what isn't seen, or spend time noodling skin weights

How I personally learned to rig

-4 weeks in school, lowest grade in school, back in 2004

-csa foundation

-rigging own creatures in games gave a wide range of needs (wings, alien limbs, limited joint setups)

-rigging for animation bids in comm (need to be able to rig quickly so you have more time to animate, ie get handed a character on friday night and need a short anim by monday morning)

-rigging for personal, where I went to try new approaches or idea, most do work, but at least I know instead of assuming.

-self taught

-exposed to a wide range of other types of setups and solutions where I tried to pull key bits that I liked and apply them to my own

How I've used rigging in my animation career (gifs?)

-atypical shots

-previz

-ultron dneg first on

-chandeller in king arthur

-rpo coin setup

-puppet strings on aladdin

-IK toes on Deviant on Sac

-personal projects

-stand out on a long list of animators

-put whole characters in a game since I could rig,anim, export

-been the only animator on countless projects for the same reason, nice for smaller studios/self contained projects, but also for companies to hire you back.  Knowing you're able to pull double duty and only needing to hire and schedule one artist, especially nice if there's a tight turn around.

Follow Rigging Dojo ( https://twitter.com/riggingdojo ) on Twitter.  They also offer additional training through their website.

For paid tutorials/resources, check out Gnomon

Master Rigging & Python Scripting in Maya

https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/master-rigging-python-scripting-in-maya

https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/creature-rigging-for-production

https://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/character-rigging-in-maya-for-game-production

AutoRig Options

https://twitter.com/KielFiggins/status/1477735054369509376

You can also read some of rigging tutorials I've written here: http://3dfiggins.com/Resources/

My own free rigs and tools

http://3dfiggins.com/Store/#Tools

If you're a modeler looking to pose a character:

-placing joints

-paint weights

-auto rigs

If you need a character rigged to animate (your own short film, demo reel, bid/pitch), but don't want to learn how to rig (time restraints or simply not interested):

-Auto rigs

-paint weights

Rigging a game asset rip (fbx with mesh,skinning, joints)

-just as time consuming but a nice starting point and lets you see details like joint placement and skin weights

Henning Kaiju - Prepping for Rigging

So with the shaders working and the model ready, it’s tempting to just start setting up the rig and making progress.  However, planning and laying out a road map will help yield more consistent results with hopefully less headache down the way.  So first off, what’s the character supposed to do?  Does it need to do a certain action?  Has the client provided boards or previs to help see what areas are in focus? Is it a background character or a hero asset where the camera will be inches from them?

Since we know this creature is supposed to be big, I want to give the animators multiple levels of controls and details to sell the scale.  Small details and higher frequency motion help reinforce how large something is, things like fatty jiggles, overlap and such.  So when the creature swipes and lands, his primary mass will be slow, but all those secondary bits can jiggle and sway long after.

Knowing how a character is going to be used can help you put the time into the pixels that will actually be on screen or seen by the audience.  Since I’ve rigged a number of characters, I have a rough outline that I use at the start of every new rig.  Some will make sense, others won’t, but the layout should be fairly easy to understand.

General Rig Checklist

-create rig directory

-create texture directory

-model clean up / scale / check sym middle line

-turn on two sided lighting

-map textures from source

-proxy meshes ( https://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/animProxy/ )

-base rig

-post fingers

-check finger control orientation

-shape controls

-dog leg: compression amount, iso ankle angle, knee poles nulled, giraffe stabilize

-neckbase, fingers, toe to yellow

-base bind

-accessories

-breather ( https://3dfiggins.com/Personal/AnimLab/ )

-shipkov

-crotch

-final qss

-biped builder post rig

-check rig scale / adv fk seg scale compensate

-face rig

-teeth tongue

-cheek auto to .5

-post face rig

-mocap nulls ( https://3dfiggins.com/Store/Support/Mixamo/ )

-game ready

-Readme

-Optimize

I’ve made some steps of this public in the past:

So I’ll copy and paste that into a new doc, edit it where needed and then start evaluating the mesh.

With the model open, I’ll orbit around to see what areas I think would be needed, fun to animate, or issues that the modeler may need to adjust.  One such issue I found was that the feet weren’t fully planted on the ground, so I asked Henning to revise the model, which he was more than happy to do.

Animation Elements

When I find an element, I’ll add it to the accessories list. Here are the elements I identified:

1. Anim Muscles (single joints at major muscle groups to allow the animator to jiggle/tense the main volumes)

2. Corrective Joints (especially at wrist and ankles to preserve design and volume - read about correctives here: https://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/corrective/

3. Tail, will need a full IK and FK setup since I want to be able to drag the tail on the ground

4. Tail Tip, rigid with some flairs on the sides. I imagine it being like an ankylosaurs 

5. Spine ridges. Single control per spike, with an twister overlap

6. Neck rig will have built in twisters, but will want to expose them by default - read more about them here: https://3dfiggins.com/Personal/AnimLab/

7. Throat jiggle.  Four single joint fk’s with pivots at the base angled down to help simulate the hanging flesh

8. Face. Custom, since no lips and rather rigid face plate, I’m not too keen to build a full setup.  Will build it piecemeal.

9. Tongue.  6 FK should be fine with more joints at the tip

10. Skull flap. A pivot at the base of the skull bone to allow the top of the head to open up separately from the jaw.  I like these on creatures to add more unique movement especially on roars

11. Mouth tendons. Those fleshy strands at the corner of the mouth again to help scale and high frequency motion to see the intensity of roars.

12. Custom jaw.  Custom pivot and SDK corrective, see below for that process.

Custom Jaw Process

Creatures often get modeled with an open mouth. It makes sense to see the features and easier to work with, but this isn’t really the facial pose the creature will spend the majority of its time in.  As such, the closed shape is more important to me, so I tend to spend a good amount of time seeing what’s possible and providing feedback to the model if that’s still an option, for now though, we’ll work as if the model is final.

1. From the side view, I’ll cut the jaw out, parent the teeth and tongue, rough in a pivot point and animate it from neutral pose to closing on a single rotate X axis and see what the results are

   

   

2. Since this creature seems to be inspired by a crocodile, let’s look at their mouth / jaw / skeleton for some hints on where a pivot could work

   

3. With the jaw mesh selected, enter ‘Edit Pivot Mode’ and on frame 0, I’ll nudge the pivot around from the side view to see if the closed result get any better or worse

   

4. I think this location works well enough

   

5. Next I’ll create a temp Control, aligned to the jaw mesh and placed at the pivot we’ve set

6. Zero out the control and null that so I have a group above for a Set Driven Key

   

7. Animate the control from neutral, closed, yell, neutral using only rotate x

8. From here, I’ll create an SDK based off the control’s rotate X to nudge the translates of the SDK group to help the jaw settle in a bit nicer into its final closed spot

   

9. Looks pretty good on the closed and the yell doesn’t seem to need any correctives at this time

   
   
   

Since this is all temp to make sure the setup I have in mind will work, the only aspect I’ll save from this is the pivot location and the jaw angle.  As we’ll recreate this setup properly when we build the full rig… next time!

Henning Kaiju - Intro , File Structure, Asset Assessment

Intro

I spend a large amount of time lurking online, watching amazing art get created by equally amazing artists. Every once and while a particular design, style or character will really peak my interest and I’ll reach out to those artists to see if I could contribute to their project. 

The most recent example of this was Henning Sanden’s Kaiju project, https://x.com/henningsanden , that I saw over on Twitter. Aside from being a really fun design and having a personal soft spot for kaiju, what caught my attention was his regular posts on his progress and dive into creating a game asset. It reminded me of the old CGTalk forum days where threads and forums allowed more long forum showcases and feedback, let alone history that seems lacking in today’s current social media.

So I reached out to Henning and offered to rig and animate the character, and as such, it gives me a great opportunity to continue his approach of showing updates beyond just showcasing final work. So with that in mind, let’s take this from the very start of a project! 

First off, File structure and Asset Assessment! 

File Structure

Nowhere near as sexy of a topic as what will come after this but vital. I’ve been doing personal projects and commercial work for over two decades, so I have my own file structure and templates that have served well over those times. A few key points regardless of your project: 

1. Actually make a project from the start and try to keep things tidy, it’ll help as the project grows or if you come back after a while 
2. Create a ‘AssetFromThem’ folder and inside create folders named the date you received something, ie 20250524. Create a new dated folder every time you receive an asset from the client. You’ll not only have a history of what you received, but the raw version of any content to refer back to. This is also good if you receive updates to existing assets to prevent overriding older versions

Asset Assessment 

Before starting anything, make sure you have what you’re expecting to receive. The model, textures, reference, movies, etc. After unzipping the delivery and opening the provided Maya file, I got this result

So far, so good. Model’s there and some textures where in the associated directory

Multiple Textures using UDIM

Since this model is setup using UDIM's (A type of tiling UV set), you can set up a similar version inside Maya

1. Select the body mesh
2. Open the body material assigned to the mesh
3. Map a 'File' texture to the diffuse
4. In the Texture settings, select 'body_BaseColor.1001.png'
5. Change the UV Tiling Mode to UDIM (Mari)
6. Then click 'Generate Preview'

And we're good to go!  Special thanks to Josh Thornhill ( https://x.com/Halo_VFX ) for the process.  

If however, you're working with a mesh that's not setup properly, or in a different format but still need to assign multiple shaders to a single mesh, you can use the following approach.

Multiple Shaders on a Single Mesh (Manual)

So let’s try to remap what’s possible. Using Maya’s remapper, Maya > Windows > General Editor > File Path Editor. Seems I’ve already remapped what’s possible, but the other textures are missing or not hooked up. Since the texture files aren’t named, it’ll take some trial and error. I know the model is still in progress and I'll likely redo this anyways, so I’m not too concerned. Typically at this stage, I’ll create a new shader and map it to the entire mesh and see the results

Ahh, that makes sense. Since the mesh has multiple textures applied to it, the shader assignment will be a bit more involved. I swap out the texture file for the next one and note what looks correct, 1001 seems to be the head and next, 1002 seems to be the jaw and so on. Once I figure it out, I create five new shaders, based off those names. Then I select a face on the mesh > ctrl + right click > To UV shell. Yep, the model is broken up in such a way. So instead of trying to find all the UV shells. I open the UV editor and select all the shells there, which then select the corresponding faces.

Then I can apply my newly created shaders directly to those faces for each bit.

Repeat this per section and we’re good to go!

The last step I want to cover in this section is verifying the mesh construction and scale to prep for rigging. For scale, Henning and I already discussed that it would be about 15 feet tall and since it’s a game asset, we’ll use the UE5 man as a base

Next for rigging, the main points I look for are:

1. The mesh is facing forward Z 
2. Standing on the Grid 
3. The centerline is at 0 on the X axis (front view) 
4. The model is symmetrical (not posed or oddly rotated from say a model turn table) 

There’s a lot more you can read on prepping a model for rigging from a previous Write Up I did here if you're interested, https://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/meshPrep/

And that looks like a good place to end for this part. Up next, adding a base rig… stay tuned!