Essential Skills in Character Rigging

Essential Skills in Character Rigging

by Nicholas B. Zeman
Released October 2015
Publisher(s): A K Peters/CRC Press
ISBN: 9781498788120

Read it now on the O’Reilly learning platform with a 10-day free trial.

O’Reilly members get unlimited access to books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.

Start your free trial

Book description

A beginner's guide, this book presents basic theories and lays out a series of steps for constructing a human character rig from the ground up, just like in a professional studio. It gives hands-on experience with taking a completed character model, setting it up with a skeleton with kinematics and soft-skin deformation, and using data management to animate the character. All this is done while keeping technical and mathematical jargon to a minimum. The book also includes video tutorials corresponding to specific modules.

Table of contents

  1. Author
  2. Introduction
  3. Section I: Rotation
  4. Chapter 1: Hierarchies
    1. 1.1 What Is a Hierarchy?
    2. 1.2 How Do You Make a Hierarchy in 3D?
    3. 1.3 What Does “Inheriting Transform” Mean?
      1. 1.3.1 How Does the Parent/Child Relationship Affect Global/Local/Object Transforms?
      2. 1.3.2 What Are Hierarchies Used for in 3D Computer Graphics?
  5. Chapter 2: 3D Rotations
    1. 2.1 What Is a Rotation?
    2. 2.2 What Are Euler Rotations?
    3. 2.3 What Is Rotation Order?
    4. 2.4 What Are Quaternion Rotations?
    5. 2.5 What Rotation Types Do I Use? Why Have Two Types of Rotations?
  6. Chapter 3: Joints and Joint Orient
    1. 3.1 What Is a Joint?
    2. 3.2 What Properties Do Joints Have That Other Types of Transforms Don’t?
    3. 3.3 What Is a Joint Orient?
    4. 3.4 How Do You Set Joint Orients?
    5. 3.5 What Is the Best Configuration to Set Up Joint Orients?
    6. 3.6 How Do Joint Orients Relate to Rotation Order?
    7. 3.7 Does Translating Joints Affect the Joint Orient at All?
  7. Chapter 4: Primary Skeleton
    1. 4.1 What Is a Skeleton?
    2. 4.2 What Are Skeletons Used For?
    3. 4.3 What Is Forward Kinematics?
    4. 4.4 What Different Poses Are Characters Modeled in, and How Does That Affect the Skeleton?
    5. 4.5 What Is Skeletal Alignment and How Does It Relate to the Character Model?
    6. 4.6 How Do I Assess a Character Model for Skeletal Alignment?
    7. 4.7 Lesson 1: Creating the Basic Skeleton
      1. 4.7.1 Step 1: Load the File
      2. 4.7.2 Step 2: Create the Template Joint
      3. 4.7.3 Step 3: Expose the Joint Orients
      4. 4.7.4 Step 4: Create the Spine
      5. 4.7.5 Step 5: Create the Legs
      6. 4.7.6 Step 6: Orient the Leg Joints
      7. 4.7.7 Step 7: Create the Arms
      8. 4.7.8 Step 8: Orient the Arm Joints
      9. 4.7.9 Step 9: Mirror the Limbs
  8. Chapter 5: Intermediate Skeleton Setup
    1. 5.1 How Do I Orient My Joints Properly? How Do I Determine Rotation Order?
    2. 5.2 When Do I Need to Customize My Joint Orients? How Do I Set Custom Joint Orients?
    3. 5.3 What Are Twist Nodes? How Do I Put Twist Nodes into My Skeleton?
    4. 5.4 What Twist Nodes Do I Need to Create for My Human Skeleton?
    5. 5.5 How Do I Insert a Twist Joint If I Need One?
    6. 5.6 Do I Have to Do All This on the Other Side?
  9. Chapter 6: Inverse Kinematics
    1. 6.1 What Is Inverse Kinematics?
    2. 6.2 Why Do I Need Inverse Kinematics?
    3. 6.3 How Do I Create IK Chains?
    4. 6.4 What’s the Difference between Single-Chain and Rotate-Plane IK? What Is a Pole Vector?
    5. 6.5 How Do I Edit IK Chains and Their Parameters?
    6. 6.6 What Are the IK Essentials for the Humanoid Body?
    7. 6.7 What Is Spline IK?
    8. 6.8 Lesson 1: Building Standard IK Chains for a Human Arm
  10. Section II: Deformation
  11. Chapter 7: Introduction to Deformation
    1. 7.1 What Is a Deformer? How Do Deformers Work?
    2. 7.2 What are the Different Kinds of Deformers?
      1. 7.2.1 Node-Based Deformers
      2. 7.2.2 Point-Based Deformers
      3. 7.2.3 Lattice Deformers
      4. 7.2.4 Curve-Based Deformers
      5. 7.2.5 Geometry-Based Deformers
    3. 7.3 How Are Deformers Used in Modeling, Animating, and Character Rigging?
  12. Chapter 8: Skinning a Character
    1. 8.1 What is Skinning?
    2. 8.2 How Does Skinning Work?
    3. 8.3 What Are the Different Types of Skinning Methods?
    4. 8.4 What Are the Important Parameters of Binding a Character?
    5. 8.5 Can I Let Maya Do My Skin Weights for Me?
    6. 8.6 What Is Artisan?
    7. 8.7 What If I Need to Move a Joint after Skinning My Character?
    8. 8.8 How Can I Save My Skin Weights so I Have to Do Them Again?
    9. 8.9 What Is Secondary and Tertiary Deformation?
    10. 8.10 Lesson 1: The Zeman Skin Weight Method
      1. 8.10.1 Step 1: Binding the Character to the Skeleton
      2. 8.10.2 Step 2: Blocking Out Skin Weights
      3. 8.10.3 Step 3: Blending the Weights in the Seams
        1. 8.10.3.1 Don’t Lose Volume
        2. 8.10.3.2 Weight for the Primary Axis of Motion First
        3. 8.10.3.3 Avoid Unrealistic Ranges of Motion
        4. 8.10.3.4 Don’t Get Too Caught up in Detailed Areas
        5. 8.10.3.5 The Wrist
        6. 8.10.3.6 The Forearm
        7. 8.10.3.7 The Elbow
        8. 8.10.3.8 The Humerus
      4. 8.10.4 Step 4: The Clavicle/Humerus/Upper Spine
        1. 8.10.4.1 The Spine
        2. 8.10.4.2 The Head and Neck
        3. 8.10.4.3 The Leg
        4. 8.10.4.4 The Knee
        5. 8.10.4.5 The Ankle and Ball
        6. 8.10.4.6 The Fingers
        7. 8.10.4.7 Adjusting the Joints after Weighting
  13. Chapter 9: Relationships
    1. 9.1 How Do You Make Relationships between One Node and Another?
    2. 9.2 Why Do You Need to Make Relationships between One Node and Another?
    3. 9.3 What Are Constraints and What Do We Use Them For?
    4. 9.4 What Are Expressions?
    5. 9.5 What Are Math Nodes?
    6. 9.6 What Are Driven Keys?
    7. 9.7 What’s the Best Method of Generating a Relationship? What Are the Differences between One Method and Another?
    8. 9.8 Lesson 1: The Reverse Foot
      1. 9.8.1 Step 1: Create the IK Handles
      2. 9.8.2 Step 2: Creating the Reverse Foot Structure
      3. 9.8.3 Step 3: Parenting the IK Handles
    9. 9.9 Lesson 2: The Pole Vector
    10. 9.10 Lesson 3: Driving Hand Poses with Driven Keys
    11. 9.11 Lesson 4: Driving Corrective Blend Shapes
    12. 9.12 Lesson 5: The Twist Rig
  14. Chapter 10: Conclusion

Product information

  • Title: Essential Skills in Character Rigging
  • Author(s): Nicholas B. Zeman
  • Release date: October 2015
  • Publisher(s): A K Peters/CRC Press
  • ISBN: 9781498788120