RIGGING
Overdrive Rig
A full breakdown on one of my most recent rigs, Overdrive, a character in my final capstone student group project, 'Hero Forged or Forgery'. As a team we modelled and textured the character ourselves, it was then rigged by myself, before being used in production by a team of 6 people. Check out the description section of the above Youtube video for modelling, texture and test animation credits.
Overdrive has custom attributes controlling hand and finger animations, blinks, and the ability to have the eyes follow the head or not. There is IK / FK blend in both arms and legs, being controlled by colour coded custom controls for each. And finally, reverse foot IK and the ability to switch between showing IK or FK controls, or both.
The project, 'Hero Forged or Forgery' is currently still in production, stay tuned for updates of any animations using this rig that will appear soon!
A full breakdown of another main character, Dr Rodere, a rat character still to come!
Mike Rig
Check out the full breakdown on another one of my most recent rigs, Mike, the main character in my final capstone student project, 'Hero Forged or Forgery'. As a team we modelled and textured the character ourselves, it was then rigged by myself, before being used in production by a team of 6 people. Check out the description section of the above Youtube video for modelling and texture credits.
Similar to Overdrive, Mike has custom attributes controlling hand and finger animations, blinks, a clothing control to switch outfits and the ability to have the eyes follow the head or not. There is also IK / FK blend in both arms and legs, the arms being controlled by a slider. And finally, reverse foot IK and the ability to switch between showing IK or FK controls, or both.
The project, 'Hero Forged or Forgery' is currently still in production, stay tuned for updates of any animations using this rig that will appear soon!
A full breakdown of another main character, Dr Rodere, a rat character still to come!
The Chase HIK Rigs
The Chase is a group animation I completed, see the clips in ANIMATIONS.
This video shows how the controls of each character rig moved within our scene, affecting the character in a series of hand keyed animations I created, and how they connected to a working HIK System.
Our characters were re-rigged for real time export using Unreal Engine, utilising Maya's Human IK (HIK) System with a base body rig from Mixamo, with additional facial joints being added to the structure and skinned, along with some body skinning cleanup. This was a challenging process, but allowed me to gain an in depth knowledge of animation within Unreal Engine and the details of Maya's HIK system and how to set it up, while troubleshooting helped me gain a deeper understanding.
Check out below for a closer look at each stage of completing these rigs!
Rayla Class Rig
This video shows my first experience with rigging, creating IK/FK Blend joints - including reverse foot IK - and completing all components of a functional rig; including skinning, creating custom attributes and controls.
I enjoyed the process of creating this rig and took pride in seeing realistic results and deformations on the model. I still had much to learn including individual finger controls, and more custom controllers.
