Saturday, August 31, 2013

1 Hour Quadruped Rig Goal Part I

Hi,

Here are some thoughts on making a quadruped rig in 1 hour.  The idea is to make a dog game/film character with a few cycle animations (idle, walking, running, happy, sad, upset)  and that texturing, design, animation, layout, modeling, lighting, compositing, rendering are major components so the rigging time needs to only meet the animation requirements as best it can in the time requirement.

I'm imagining to meet the 1 hour rigging goal, skinning is not an option, I don't think fk/ik switching is an option either, also I don't think any face rigging is an option too (which may make the happy,sad,upset without face emotions a little challenging to achieve), and I don't think modeling additions/re-design of character is an option or adding stretching.  I don't think a body animation graphical ui is an option either.  I don't think any new scripting during time limit is an option either.

Also I think it needs already built a tool to orient/position joints effectively, and add fk/ik controls to joints (automatically set whats keyable or not),  a tool that can allow the spine to rotate from two targets,  a tool that can make basic splits of geometry quickly (i think by working off a face selections may make the tool more versatile to use for face/neck, hip/shoulder areas), and a tool that can place and remove geometry from rig quickly, a tool that can tweak twisting and bending of a joint chain so some areas bend/twist more than others.   A quadped 1 hour limit rig document thats easy to read and find examples showing how to use tool of interest (geometry, skeleton, controls, spine).
 



















cheers,
-Nate