techniques for reusing control rigs in Maya

techniques for reusing control rigs in Maya

you will learn techniques for reusing control rigs in Maya to work more efficiently. Throughout the tutorial you will learn techniques for re-purposing rigs to save time in your character setup pipeline. We'll start by merging a completed rig into our character's scene. At that point, we will start modifying the rig to match the proportions of our character. Moving on from there, we will then add controls that are necessary to accommodate any new accessories that require controls.ted & Numbered List tips
Character Rigging In Maya Continued
Select the LHip joint, and then Shift Select the COG joint, now press P to parent the LHip to the COG Joint, a bone will appear between them : - 
Now do the same with the Left_Clavicle and Neck joint, and then again with the first joint on each of the fingers and the thumb and parent to the Left_Hand joint, you'll end up with something like this : -

Ok, we've now set up and parented all of our joints, now there's one last thing to do now before we've finished with the skeleton, and that's to Mirror our Joints from the Left Side over to the Right Side. Select the Left_Clavicle joint and then from the menu select Skeleton > Mirror Joint and open the options box, within the options, select YZ as the Mirror options and Orientation as the Mirror Function : -
Select Mirror, and you should now have the right arm set up, including the parented joint :-

Do the same now for the LHip and then again for the LReverse_Foot, that's it, we now have all of our joints mirrored across. We don't need our Local Rotation Axes displayed anymore, so select each joint one by one, and then issue the command DISPLAY > COMPONENT DISPLAY > LOCAL ROTATION AXIS, or press G to repeat the last command. Once you've done that to all the joints, open up the Outliner. We need to rename our joints that we have mirrored across, essentially we need to differentiate the two sides, so Left and Right is enough to do that, so rename all the mirrored joints so that they are R - Right related, as in

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re-targeted character HumanIK in Maya

re-targeted character HumanIK in Maya 

Developments in CG animation technology are rapid.

Startup developers frequently purport to be bringing to market the next groundbreaking suite of software that will create movie-quality motion at the press of a few buttons.

With such bold claims, it's important to see if such assertions stand up in the real world.

Guildford-based IKinema is one such startup. Armed with tech reportedly distilled from research into spacecraft control, it's developed a plug-in for Maya that boasts true full-body animation of any hierarchy, without the need to go through an intermediary rig or characterisation process (à la HumanIK).

Coupled with this, a straightforward retargeting interface and real-time streaming from popular mocap packages makes for an impressive résumé.

Not to leave game developers out in the cold, runtime implementations for consoles and the ability to add physics constraints to dynamically alter existing motion are also on offer.

Physics infl uences allow characters to react dynamically to real-world forces in a lifelike manner, both at runtime and offl ine

A quick set-up process first creates an instance of the solver at the root of your hierarchy.

Once populated, you can specify what IKinema calls tasks (essentially constraints), which drive a particular joint in position or orientation.

For a generic biped, this would amount to position tasks at the hips, hands, feet, shoulders and neck base, plus an orientation on the head.

The simple workflow is akin to setting up standard chain IK.

If desired, task nodes can be parented under primitive control objects of the kind one might find in a traditional rig.

Tasks are manipulated in the viewport, and the solver determines the most believable pose over the full-body rig while satisfying these tasks.

The end result is of course tunable: you have the ability to set limits restricting movement on a given axis, and sliding an additional mobility attribute has the effect of stiffening the joint up or allowing for more flexibility.

Tasks can also be assigned differing priorities: the solver will bias the posture to satisfy any tasks that you've awarded higher importance.

The benefits of this workflow are clear compared to traditional character set-up, which demands highly specialised skills to build complex rigs with myriad controls.

Being able to work on unconventional hierarchies is a major advantage too.

In this Maya tutorial we will be learn techniques, workflows and best practices for use with Maya's HumanIK (HIK) toolset. Throughout these lessons we will be learning some of the MEL commands needed to add HIK to a character rigging pipeline. Along the way we will look at some of the limitations with the HumanIK toolset and how we can work around them. By the end of the this tutorial, you will comfortable with HIK whether you are an animator with no rigging experience or a TD looking to add HIK to your rigging pipeline. About Digital-Tutors Since 2000, we've been a dedicated team of artists, professionals, representatives and problem-solvers who are truly passionate about teaching the people around the globe who make movies and games. But enough about us, let's talk about you. No matter your skill level or experience, you need an educational resource that helps you conquer complicated topics so you can focus on your future. So whether it's graduating from school, advancing your skill set or getting a promotion, you can access the world's largest online CG training library and find the solution you need in seconds.

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Creating and Animating Fur in Maya

I want to have a look similar to Kungfu Panda's
The fur is really packed to the character skin . . . And they're quite stiff, not swing around when the panda moves. I played around with maya fur and shave&hair cut a bit but I can't get them to be that thick and sticking to the surface like that. I always end up with fur pointing out of the character more or less, and they swing around like crazy.You should use shave and a haircut - or any decent fur / hair solution (yeti etc). Probably not Maya Fur, but if you don't need it dynamic, you might even be able to pull off something similar with it.

If you're not getting the result you're after, you need to keep trying. There's absolutely no reason (other than you don't know how) you can't achieve that look.

If it's too "swingy", make it stiffer.
If it's not thick enough, make it thicker.

There's no magic piece of software for you that has a "Kungfu Panda" preset. You're going to have to work at it. But rest assured, you can achieve this with S&H.I have been dealing with this issue for sometime as well. Gettin results like this I have found just require long render times. Remember you are comparing personal computing to that of one of the biggest studios in the industry. 5 mill fur to them isn't the same as it is to you. They have warehouses of renderfarms that can work on these shots, you most likely have a beefy home machine. Like the other comment said shave and hair cut or maya fur can in fact give you these results its just trial and error. something that might help is keeping the hair on the short side, and keep the stiffness up. Also make a good base shader under the fur that will mimic the look and possibly let you get away with less hairs.

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how Motion capture file into custom rigg in maya

how Motion capture file into custom rigg  in maya 

Animating a character flipping or spinning around can be a hurdle in 3d. A character will forward flip over a different center of gravity then if it were to spin around 180 degrees on its right heel. Typically the solution is to set up a hierarchy of groups with pivots at different locations in which the animator can choose to rotate individually as needed. The problem with this solution, besides the redundancy of having so many group nodes to dig through, is that it takes a heavy amount of preplanning to pull it off cleanly. The idea here is to make one control that will easily move around the character's center of gravity in order to rotate the character as a whole around that center.

Let it be clear that this is a MOVABLE pivot not an ANIMATABLE pivot. What that means is that it is generally a one time deal per shot. Once the control starts rotating, translating it can cause some very funky results. If you have a character that is walking and then you use the movable pivot to make it turn left 90 degrees on its heel, trying afterwards to move the pivot over to the right heel will cause the character to translate oddly. However, if the character does a forward flip 360 degrees (essentially rotating the control back to its initial orientation), then the control can be moved and used again.

1. Create a locator (create > locator), name it "objectLocator"
this will represent the character rig or object to be rotated at different centers

2. Group objectLocator to itself and name the group "locatorBuffer"
this is where the movable pivot will do its work leaving the objectLocator free to be transformed as needed underneath

3. Create a nurbs circle (create > nurbs primitives > circle), name it "movable pivot"
this will represent the movable pivot control that is simply translated into place and then rotated4. Open the connection editor (window > general editors > connection editor), select the movablePivot control and click Reload Left in the connection editor then select the locatorBuffer group and click Reload Right in the connection editor

5. Find and click the translate attribute on the left side to select it and then find and click rotate pivot on the right side to make the connection. This will lock the Rotate Pivot of the buffer node to the translate values of the movable pivot. Next we need to connect the rotation of the movable pivot to that of the buffer node so find and click rotate on the left side to select it and then find and click rotate on the right side to make the connection | save my driven keys?

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