skinning

now comes the part where every rigger has there problems....skinning

skinning is where you combine the skeletal rig to the mesh so that when you move the rig it influences the mesh also this can be done through either two way or a combination of both methods and those methods are paint weight and component editor

paint weight is where you literally paint the vertices that you want to influence so in this case i have paint weighted the head the white area is is where it will be heavily influenced and the black area is where there will be no influence at all originally i had a problem with this because when i created the original skin cluster when i moved the head the collar of the characters clothing moved with it this obviousdly doesnt happen do i painted out the vertices so that they were not influenced by the skin cluster

the other method is a little more mathmatical which is using the componant editor so what would happen here is the the amount of influence is measured between the value of 0 and 1 so 0 would be no influence and 1 would be heavy influence therefore a value of 0.5 would be medium influence#

through a combination of these two mnethos i have created a reasonable edited skin cluster that influences the character in a good way

head

now here is where things get interesting because up to this point i have been given guidance by my lecturere on how to rig but then when asking about how to rig the head i was on my own and had to find out for myself so after a bit of searching around i managed to find a way to rig the head

so first i linked both clavicles of both my arms to the spine and then created two bones one for the neck and one for the head and then i created and orb type controller and parented that to the bottom of the head bone so that whenever i move the orb i can rotate the head and move it up and down

spine

for rigging the spine you need to create a rough spine type shape consisting of 3-4 bones  and 3 controllers to control the top, middle and bottom of the spine

once thats done move the pivot points of the controllers to where the joints are and then orient constrain them to that joint

once the controllers are constrained parent the top controller to the middle and both of those controllers to the bottom so that they each have there own individual influence

legs

so first off again use the joint tool to create a leg and duplicate it (keeping to naming conventions left lef right leg etc.

once that's done create a foot controller and name it and duplicate it and name the duplicated controller depending on which leg your going to use it for.

create ik handles on each leg from the top of the leg to the ankle and then parent the controller to the ik handle.

again going back to the attributes we need to create a toe bend and a heel roll this is the same process as what we went through for the finger curl

finger curls

for the finger curls this is done through attribute and set driven keys so first off create a controller symbolising  which finger it will control in my case ive used letters to indicate the allocated finger it controls

once the controls are made you need to create an attribute for them to do this, select the control go to modify > add attribute >  and name the attribute keep the number as float and set the minmum value as -1, the max value at 10 and the default value at 0

next up comes the tricky part creating the restrictions of the values through set driven keys so you go to animate > set driven key and a menu will appear 

this is the menu now even though this menu doesn't say it you should select the control and then the attribute you created as the driver and the the correspondent finger as the driven, so first you want to set the default value so you key everything and the value of 0 will stay at the default value then you set the attribute to -1 and then select the finger to rotate up a bit on whatever axis your fingers rotate nicely on and then key that once thats done you need to set the value to 10 and curl the fingers round to however far you want them to curl

IK handles

next up create an IK handle (make sure its a rotate plane IK) from the wrist to the shoulder and then add a controller maybe a circle surrounding the wrist and orient constrain the controller to the ik this will mean that when you select the circle it will select the ik in effect making a controller for the arm/wrist

making the bones

first off there is making the arm here is a simple start of using the joint tool to make a rough depiction of the arm

note: you can always put your desired mesh in first so that you can get a good idea on how well the bones fitinside the mesh

starting from the clavicle (shoulder bone) all the way down to the five fingers

in order to make the fingers you need to keep re-selecting the wrist joint and create a rough finger/thumb bone

once your hand and arm are complete NAME THEM! this will help later on

character rig

so here is a full finished character rig and from here on im going to show you the process in a nutshell how to go through making a full body character rig :)

so now i have a good amount of controls for my car i need a way to select my entire car through one click, this is done by adding a master controller that has priority above everything in the group hierarchy

this is a simple process first create a suitable controller that surrounds your entire car

I've moved the vertices a bit to fit around my car nicely but this is'nt necessarily a requirement it just looks nicer 

next up we're going back to constraints except this time we're using a point constraint unlike orient constraint it only affects one point to the other whereas orient affects axis moved

point constrain on all the axis the entire car including controllers to the nurb circle (group select in the outliner and make sure the controller is outside the hierarchy before constraining.

so now suspension as a whole is complete next up i think im going to do the doors so that i can open and close them again this is done through the use of expressions

so following similar guidelines before make the controller and place in the desired area ideally near the object you want to influence

then depending on how you've named you groups add the expression so that when you move your controller along one axis the object transforms on another axis in my case:

Lft_door_grp.rotateY = -Lft_door_ctrl.translateX*15

notice the "*15" at the end this is because i dont want the controller to go further then when my door rotation is complete (again fortifying this in the limit info editor from attribute editor

so now ideally your door should go from this...

to this....

and there you have it a moving door

so we have our wheels and our main suspension sorted but now its time to add our front and back suspension, the reason for the other types of suspension is for the different types of animation like i said before the previous main suspension is for rough roads or possibly sharp turns where as this part of the rig could be used to show acceleration or possibly hydraulics use (think snoop dog and his low riders ;)

so in order to make this type of suspension work for the front and the back this is going to need the use of expressions.

expressions are like scripts of code that make a cause and effect like manner on two individual objects i'll demonstrate this through showing the front suspension

so first of make a controller without a deformer (or with depends on how your doing your control layout) and this is where grouping each body part and naming them comes in handy because you'll be using specific parts of the car to operate in certain ways desired.

once the controller is made you go into the expressions editor (window>animation editor>expression editor)

so here we have the expression editor here you would select the object and its transformation value (also here is where the outliner and you will become very best friends) so right now i want to have my front suspension be affected by the use of my controller this is done through the following expresion

Frnt_Susp_grp.rotateX = -Frnt_Susp_Ctrl.translateY

so this expression is telling maya that when my front suspension controller moves along the Y axis the front of the car will rotate ever so slightly on the X axis 

Note: remember to move you pivot point on the body group so that maya knows where the pivot is to rotate

so the desired effect is that the car goes from this.....

to this...

the same is done to the back using a similar expression

Bck_susp_grp.rotateX = Bck_Susp_Ctrl.translateY

OK so next up is the suspension in my case I've made three different types of suspension; front, back and main suspension to start i'm gonna go through the main suspension seeing as the process is very similar to making the wheel rotation.

repeating the same process as earlier with the arrows except changing the curve so that it bend deformer goes down instead of a circle like so....

and again using an orient constraint except this time adding all axis to the constraint so that it affects all the axis (remember its the object to the controller not the other way round)

next up i need to limit the information of any transformations or rotations made (this also goes for the wheels previously)

to do so go into the attribute editor and scroll down to limit information this allows to in effect make it idiot proof (as my lecturer adequately puts it)

the idea here is to add restrictions on the controller as to how much you can move the controller so ideally you would want to move the controller (in effect moving its influence too) to the minimum amount of how much you want to move it check the box and then set its maximum to its opposite, in my case ive set the suspension to move as little as possible on all axis and then checked the box so that the value of the transformation will not go further then the value that's been locked in.

now that ive done that my body of my car will only rotate around all axis a slight amount in effect giving it body suspension that you would use if you were say animating the car going over a bumpy road.

Here is my blog to show my a 3D rig of my car (not actually my car but y'know)

Note: make sure that the different parts of the car need to be assigned to their own groups doors, individual wheels, windows, wing mirrors etc. whatever you want to animate put it in its own group!!!

First up wheels I need to add a controller to my wheels that will control the rotation of the wheel through the animation

so first I make an arrow using the EP curve tool, once the arrow was created i made a copy of it and parented one arrow to the other. once the arrows are parented they become one movable object

next up i added a deformer to the arrows to make them curl around each other indicating the direction of the wheel rotation, now that my controller is set up and ready to go i need to connect the controller so that the roatation of the controller influences the rotation of the wheel.

To do this I use and orient constraint and check the y and z axis this means that it can only rotate on the x axis (the wheel is constrained to the controller)

as a result here is the desired effect now to do this for all four wheels :)