CGWorkshops – Quadruped Rigging for Games

Genre: eLearning | Maya 2013/2014 | Project Files Included
Rigging characters for games means trying to create dynamic, subtle, and accurate deformations without the use of tools available for making pre-rendered characters, and mapping them to well-designed controls that empower animators to work as quickly and easily as possible. In this workshop you'll learn how to analyze reference material to help plan your joint layout, when to deviate from the anatomy and why, adjustable squash and stretch techniques, IK/FK switching, tricks to use spline IK more effectively, and mapping joints to surfaces for subtle deformations. Students will be provided with a toolbox of rigging scripts to help speed their workflow.
Each week the lessons will be broken down into a number of short, step-by-step videos, allowing students to focus on each element of the process. The assignments each week should take about 6-10 hours per week, and there will be a live Q&A where Brian will review work and help troubleshoot problems.
This is an intermediate workshop, so students should have a basic understanding of Maya and familiarity with skinning meshes. Students will be provided with a dog model to rig, or they can provide their own quadruped model. If you're taking the 3 course package, you're encouraged to use your completed model from the modeling workshop.