Motivation:Animation
So, being only one week since I technically graduated, I’m still feeling restless without a job. Having been looking and preparing over the last year, doing everything I “should” be doing, like attending conferences and networking events, being in the labs constantly, get to know people in the industry, and such like that, it’s just frusterating to see classmates enjoying themselves, not worrying about a job (or content with freelance and abundant web developer positions, I envy you). Aaron just (probably) got a job in NY doing some 3D modeling and scanning, and he’s super psyched about it, ultra grats to him, he deserves it, as his job hunting efforts rival mine.
So, feeling devoid of motivation, I came across someone on one of the many CGAcademy boards that is new to modeling, but was looking to see if anyone was interested in rigging it it so they could start animating it. Turns out this guy is also a recent graduate and looking to work on some personal stuff, so we’re totally in the same boat it sounds like. I make a rig, he makes some animations, win-win!
He was looking for a cartoony rig with stretch and squash features and such to go with the cartoon-style of his model. Awesome! I’m all over this, I need more practice rigging and this would be a great portfolio piece, and I have never done a full cartoon rig. Let’s do it! He sent me the MooM 4.0 rig for inspiration and said he liked a lot of the features on it. After looking through it, it did have plenty of things I would want in a good cartoon rig:
- Independent toggleable/blend FK/IK controls for arms and legs
- A waist control, separate from the COG node (something I really need to finally do)
- A suitable facial rig (nothing too extrodinary, but works great)
- Foot and hand controls: Your basic heel and toe rolls for the feet and master curl, spread and twist for each finger, as well as individual knuckle curls, in addition to a master hand controller with master controls for all of these things for all fingers. All pretty much the norm, but it’s a good bunch.
- Stretchy arms and legs in both FK and IK modes.. and spine!
So all this is looking great for inspiration, but there was a few things I wanted to add, and after talking to the animator, he was all about it:
- IK/FK snap: I’ve made a MEL script before that autocreates an arm with IK/FK blend and snapping ability, so I can do this and the animator seemed really interested in it as well!
- The FK controllers didn’t move in accordance to the stretches, so I’m gonna try to add this if I have the time.
- The MooM rig had a disconnected hierarchy, also, something I’ve never done before, so going to give that a go. After talking to my Character Animation Professor-Grad Student-Mentor, Matt Smith, he gave me some tips so hopefully it’ll all be good.
Even if I make a rig for this bear almost identical to the MooM rig, I’ll still be proud of it: It’s a nice cartoon rig. If I can add those additional features, I’ll feel like a rigging badass. Will post updates as they come!
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