Above is a video displaying my successful first attempt to learn character rigging. I’m very proud of the rig and skeleton that I’ve created, and I already know a lot more about Maya itself just by having spent the time to practice this. I predict that in the future my new understanding of joints, IK handles, and NURBS curves will help me solve a lot of my own animation problems, and am pleased to share this clip on my showreel to compliment my animation and motion tracking skills.
A good example of the way this has greatly impacted my animation skills for the positive is that I’ve long struggled with incorrect joint weights deforming mesh inappropriately, and only now do I realize the cause. As I rigged this model, I noticed that the fingers and feet were deforming with movement, and was ecstatic to finally learn how to fix this error.
That being said, in my further experiments in rigging I’d like to set up an arm rig that does not rely on an elbow pole vector to steady the arm, and in the same vein allows for smoother and less hands-on work. I’d also like to explore facial rigging, as I’ve only (as of yet) mastered the use of blend shapes for facial expression.
I must now spend my time diving back into my FMP, as I have been over the past several weeks, but I’m glad that I took some time to get this valuable knowledge and set my eyes on a fresh project for the time being.
As it stands, I’ve got a shot from a cowboy-style Western ghost town beautifully tracked down to a 0.07 and ready to go. My plan for this first scene is to have two shots, one of a cartoonish cowboy with a stylized walk, and one of a hyper-realistic cowboy rig, and contrast the perception of the audience as to how serious/professional each animation is and the demographic they think it’s targeted towards.
My original FMP plan was to have 4-6 tracked shots. I’m debating whether that’s realistic now, as the shot I’m currently working on is a full 635 frames, which is gonna require a 30-second animation for both shots, stylized and realistic, and in both of these I’m planning to have both a character AND a creature animation. So it will take me literally weeks upon weeks just to get the cowboy shot done.
Not to mention how hard it’s been to do my internship full-time, where I am the manager of an animation team and expected to both come in early and stay late every day, as well as make significant progress on my FMP and thesis. As such I haven’t been able to make much progress over the last 2 weeks because I’ve been settling into this role. Nevertheless, I am absolutely determined to do both and know that I can combine the necessity of getting work experience before I finish my degree.
As I’ve said, I tracked the shot very well. I’ve since been spending my nights after work trying to make progress on my first animation. Unfortunately, I’ve run into some troubles.
Parent Constraint Situation
When I worked on my matchimation from last term, I found a godsend in parenting the hand to the subway poles.
I’d been struggling to keep the arm movement from looking robotic and jerky as the character (Santa) tries to keep holding on while the arms, of course, move with the rest of the body’s movement. Parenting solved days worth of frustration.
So I’d assumed that parenting was the solution here, too. Unfortunately, I did not consider that parenting two moving objects is quite different from parenting a moving object to an unmoving one.
The arms have spaghettified.
After trying to break connections as well as trying multiple different kinds of constraints, I’m officially clueless. I had expected that, rather than deforming, the rig would simply aim at the object it’s intended to reach if I try to stretch it too far, like lifting a rig’s feet from the ground. As you can see, stretchiness is applied to the legs, but the arms give me no option to control stretch, so I’m not sure why this is happening.
After asking some of my most Maya-proficient teammates at work, I’ve decided to reach out to Luke for help and hopefully can figure out some way to get this working without having to awkwardly animate the arms to keep them fixed on the saddle and belt at all times.
