If there’s one job that I hate to do as an animator it’s rigging a character. For any of you who don’t watch the extra features of Pixar DVDs, the rig is the skeleton of any 3d character and it’s what the animator uses to, well, animate the character. But before you get to that part, the fun part, you have to first build your character and then you have to attach him to a skeleton. This is the part that’s called rigging and to me is about as tedious as it gets. A 3d character is made up of hundreds of triangles (called polygons) and each point of these triangles is called a vertex and each of these vertices must be attached to the joints of the rig in such a way that if you move the index finger joint, the index finger of the model moves and only the index finger moves…not the right knee or the big toe. And if you think reading that last sentence was boring just think what it’s like to actually do it!
This process can take days (or weeks if it’s me), and in large games and animation studios there are technical artists whose job it is to do only this. They are usually the nervous, twitchy ones sitting in a corner mumbling to themselves. It means that the animators are handed ready-rigged characters and we can just get on with the animating. So that’s great for the studio stuff but, if you want to do your own animation, maybe for that short film you’ve been secretly wanting to make with dreams of film festivals and Oscar nominations, you’re probably going to have to attempt the rigging yourself, at least if you want to have your own original characters.
Well, I was perusing Keith Lango’s blog and hallelujah but some clever people have come up with a programme that does your rigging for you and they only want $99 for their brilliance.
The Setup Machine is going on my Wish List for this Christmas and if Santa doesn’t get it for me I’m just going to have to get it for myself because this is the one thing that’s been holding me back from making my own film…well, that and the small matter of not being able to come up with a good, simple, witty idea…anyone want to come up with a programme for that?
9 replies on “Character Rigging”
I used to be a games designer, and I can testify for the troubles of rigging. Not that I had to do any of it myself – I was to busy trying to look like I knew what I was talking about to get any actual work done…
… but it is the cries of the artists that haunt me most. The used to call it being maxed (after 3dsMax) and I have actually seen it reduce someone to tears.
Still, if experience is a reliable yardstick I’ll be willing to bet that the rigging is the bit that deep down, you know you’re really good at.
Hi Unityflow, thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment. I took a look at your webpage and I like your artwork. Very interesting stuff.
I do some minor modelling as a hobby, I tried rigging once and gave up after a couple of hours. I suppose if I knew what the heck I was doing at the time it might have been easier 🙂
I’m currently an animation student and have about a year’s experience using 3ds max. I use max everyday now and when it comes time to rig the character it makes me want to run and hide. With the enveloping/weighting process there seemingly is now way to quickly assign vertices to the appropriate bones. Like you said this proces can take weeks to get right, and since I have to do this for classes, the professors want it done in a couple of days and if it doesn’t work right…fail. The main issue is that even if the weighting is done properly, sometimes the bones don’t want to move in the right places. I’m hoping that 3ds max 9, which comes out in about a month, will make this process easier. I’m the first animation class at New England Institute of Art and they use us as guinea pigs, testing us to see if we can do what they ask. Right now, in my 7th semester here, I need to produce a fully 3d commercial, “production quality”, due in 2 weeks, and have a 2 minute animated short done in about a month and a half. I hope that breaking into the industry is somewhat less demanding than this, because this work load is insane.
Sorry to ramble, but I thought other animators might commiserate with me on this one.
Hi Jonny A, glad you found my blog.
I can definitely commiserate although your workload does sound pretty crazy. Most animators I know find weighting to be the most tedious and frustrating part of the whole process…unless they’re just really technical and love the challenge of it. Usually once you’re out in a working environment you can choose (to a certain extent) what you want to specialise in. I hardly ever have to rig these days except for my own personal work so while I’m glad I know how to do it I can avoid it and concentrate on the things I’m better at.
Good luck with your projects, I hope all the stress pays off in the end 🙂
Which kind, mine?
Don’t worry about it Jonny…they’re just spam. For some reason I’m getting a lot of it lately.
I’d like to be able to upload a jpeg of my character, but I can’t so…instead, if you want you can check it out on my a class website I have. It’s actually for an unrelated class, but I used my newly finished character as a background.
Hi again Jonny. Sorry I was away from my computer for the weekend.
I had a look at your character and it looks great. Good amount of potential for character animation there. He reminds me of a baby Huckleberry Finn.
I can see why it would give you rigging trouble though. Generally small characters with short limbs and large heads are the hardest to rig (in my opinion) because the joints are so close together and the vertices are hard to share out in a believable way. Of course this doesn’t mean that we can’t ever make short characters (or fat ones for that matter since they have similar problems), it’s just that they’re more of a challenge.
Goos luck with it and thanks for letting me have a look.