Today we were introduced to the basics of rigging.
What is Rigging?
We were introduced to what rigging is: Turning models into puppets that have functionality and ease to control, it is all about problem solving and knowing your tools.
Good rigs make good animation more effortless,
bad rigs make good animation almost impossible.
One of teh most important things to note is that there is no one size fit all for every rig, each are about building up what u know depending on what functionality or what movements you need for your model.
Global vs Local Space and Axis Orientation
The transform channels of objects in 3D are all relative, depending on their axis orientation and what space they are in they will move in different ways.
When an object has no parent it is thought of as being parented to the world, and thus follows with the Global Space, When an object is parented (without inverse in Blender) it follows the local space of the object it is parented to.
There are also different types of axis that you can use to help move your objects in 3D space:
View is aligned to the screens orientation, the axis remaining flat against it.
Gimble is a rotation based movement, acting on a hierarchy ( see the XYZ Euler to change this). Sometimes Gimble Lock can occur, and this can be troubleshooted by taking a look at the graph editor or by changing the hierarchy of the axis. To avoid this weird movement that it creates to reach the same end goal, just make the bottom axis the least likely to move and the top the most likely.
Empties
Empties, also known as locators, are objects that only have transform data.
They are used to create a local space, or can also be used to create controllers that then move our models, and this is achieved by parenting. To create a controller you simply create an empty to base your 0 from, parent another empty, your controller, to this and then u can move this to your desired location to control and then apply the object constraint of the model based on this controller.
Basic Constraints
Then we were introduced to basic object constraints that can be used to control certain rigs. I wanted to try these out for myself so I could remember how to set them up a bit better than just seeing it happen. For this I set up empties for each of the objects to create a local space, then using primitives so my movements would be visible for the controllers I added different types of constraints. The first was a Copy Location, only on the z axis, with a limit to the movement on this axis. The second was a Copy Location but only on the X and Y axis, Finally the Copy Rotation on the last object.
‘Look At’ Controller
I set up these eyes by establishing a ‘Look At’ Controller, two empties on the same axis as the eyes that I have parented to another empty that I would move to control where the eyes looked. With this you can also do funny things like having those spun out crossed eyes. My end result ended up reminding me of that one Mario Party 8 Minigame haha.
Child of Constraint
This constraint is necessary for allowing characters to be able to interact with objects around the scene. It essentially creates a temporary and animatable parent-child relationships. The only thing that makes this constraint a bit complicated is that once you turn this influence off, it goes bakc to its original spot, and this is just fixed by keying in its original location, its new location and applying the visual transform.
Robot Arms Exercise:
Mike had set up a puzzle for us involving these robot arms. We had to go and ‘fix’ them by looking around the file and finding the problems. This took me a little bit of time but eventually I worked out how to fix and move them smoothly with a combination of axis adjustments, turning on influences and unhiding constraints.
This was pretty fun task to do and it helped me understand the things we were taught a bit better.
Ferris Wheel Exercise:
Then we were given a Ferris Wheel model and we had to rig it by ourselves. I actually had a fair amount of trouble with this, particularly with the copy rotation, it never seemed to go the right way but thankfully I had some help with Tori sitting next to me as well as Jessica who helped me sort this out. The master control set up was just done with parenting without inverse, meaning I could move the whole model with this controller. Then the wheel I made a circle empty and used a copy rotation object constraint, and I did this again but for each of the buckets to sway side to side. I then just quickly animated these moments and that was it!
Looking back on this exercise after watching the recorded videos after class, I found approaching this task better as I found it easier to understand and follow what Mike was covering easier, I definitely think by practicing setting more simple controllers up that I could learn more problem solving techniques and get good and rigging.
Overall I found rigging quite interesting and fun. It is definitely an area I see myself stressing over but I can also see how rewarding it can be and I can’t wait to learn how to move my character’s about and animating with controls. I hope to practice using rigs a lot more throughout my time studying and push my knowledge as far as I can to create some cool characters!