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:
Anim Muscles (single joints at major muscle groups to allow the animator to jiggle/tense the main volumes)
Corrective Joints (especially at wrist and ankles to preserve design and volume - read about correctives here: https://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/corrective/
Tail, will need a full IK and FK setup since I want to be able to drag the tail on the ground
Tail Tip, rigid with some flairs on the sides. I imagine it being like an ankylosaurs
Spine ridges. Single control per spike, with an twister overlap
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/
Throat jiggle. Four single joint fk’s with pivots at the base angled down to help simulate the hanging flesh
Face. Custom, since no lips and rather rigid face plate, I’m not too keen to build a full setup. Will build it piecemeal.
Tongue. 6 FK should be fine with more joints at the tip
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
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.
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.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
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
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
I think this location works well enough
Next I’ll create a temp Control, aligned to the jaw mesh and placed at the pivot we’ve set
Zero out the control and null that so I have a group above for a Set Driven Key
Animate the control from neutral, closed, yell, neutral using only rotate x
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
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!
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