Looking for feedback on a rig

Rigging
#1

I recently set up the character rig for another students model and though she and the lecturer seem to be happy with it I’d appreciate some feedback from the members here to see how I could improve it and where I’ve made mistakes.

Linky: http://db.tt/BUvOkcVZ

There are a few areas that I know already are a bit weak:

  • the control shapes are all just circles reshaped. They don’t necessarily give any indication of whether they should be moved, rotated or both.
  • The weighting on the spine joints stop a little abruptly and could be faded out a little better.
  • The blend shapes aren’t actually symmetrical where they should be. They’re close enough to not seem obviously out of place though.

Any feedback, be it positive or negative would be great. :slight_smile:

#2

Hey James!
Nice rig, interesting setup of the back legs.

Personally I’d prefer having the leg controllers in world space so they won’t follow the spine controllers. A space switch would be nice for this.
The banking of the legs works a bit unpredictable.
I’d look into finding a faster solution for animating the tongue, IK maybe?
A quick GUI for driving the blendshapes would add a lot.
I think the tail would be a bit better of being driven at the jnt_tailBase instead of ctrl_spine_bot.

Then just cleanup the controllers, color code, finalize the weighting and this little creature would be really fun to animate! : )
Good job.

#3

Other than the things that’ve been mentioned:
1)Scaling the SRT isn’t uniform across all controllers(the cubes on the back legs)
2)Your back legs have keys set by default. Not sure if that’s just a distribution error, but might be worth going through and checking everything for clean, unkeyed connections.
3)You should probably turn off the visibility of the joints group, and/or set them to referenced in the properties of the top group. This will make it easy for you to manage, and also prevents the user from modifying anything by accident.
4)Your head controller needs its translations disabled, since it just moves the teeth and eyes, but not the head.
5)Seperate your knee rotation from your foot rotation. IE: the Pole Vector position shouldn’t change how the feet are on the ground, just how the knee orients.
6)I don’t see a need to have two SRT controllers, unless he’s built with specific rotations in mind.

Blendshapes:
1)Your eye closed might be nice to be split to each lid, and it’s currently a little flat. depends on the animation level required though.
2)The right nostril-flares need a little work. The mesh compresses and inverts a bit at full intensity
3)You could push the angry pose way more. It’s kind of just concerned right now.
4)Your smile, bring the mouth ends back a bit. Or have a blendshape to bring them and back and forwards(would be an ‘ee’ and ‘oo’ shape on a human)

Otherwise it’s pretty good!

#4

Thanks for the feedback guys. I’ll go back and have a look through the rig and see if I can impliment some of your suggestions. This is the second thing I’ve had to rig and it’s easily the part of the animation process I enjoy most while studying a postgrad in Dundee (though that may have something to do with my undergraduate degree course’s version of rigging being “draw joints > smoothbind skin > Animate!” leading to some incredibly frustrating and ugly animation)

@Emil
I’ve never heard of space switching but I’ll look into it as it seems like it’d solve a lot of problems for me when animating. Anything that helps modularise my rigs is also a great thing. I’m not a fan of huge joint trees.

@dgovil

  1. The SRT controller… SRT stands for scale, rotation, translation or something like that? I’ve no idea why those cubes don’t scale, or really what they are. I probably should.
  2. There are 2 SRT controllers? What’s the second one?
    On the blend shapes, Thankfully the animator I was working with didn’t need many expressions as in the storyboards the puppy is a perpetual bundle of happiness. I’d added a few extras so that she’d a few extras in case she needed a change in expression somewhere along the line. :):
    I should probably take more care on blends next time though, and make them symmetrical, something I didn’t know how to do at the time but for my current project I really have to.

Thanks both for taking the time to look at my work, I really appreciate it.

#5

Yeah,SRT is basically the global placement controller. dunno what the cubes do since I can’t select them in the viewport, but then it might be a good idea to hide them if possible. ie anything that the animator isn’t supposed to touch directly should be set to referenced, and hidden if they’re not supposed see it.(Or do it on a group above it, so it’s easy to modify later)

The second SRT for me was the one above the spine, think it was called COG ALL, but it basically duplicates the functionality of the main SRT/placement controller, which can be useful if you’re planning to account for Gimbal locks, or rotating from a different pivot, but it can also be annoying to troubleshoot later when the animator will(inevitably) key both the global controller and this, and then will end up with a mess of keys. << worst case scenario, but as rigs get more complex, it pays off to take care of things like that, unless it’s desired. (Not sure what the boards call for in that regard)

Generally, I’ve adopted the zen of python for anything that involves designing for other people: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/

and your undergraduate rigging course sounds surprisingly like what my rigging courses were like too :stuck_out_tongue: probably the only reason I taught myself to rig was out of frustration from that.

#6

The main problem with the course was that it was “Digital Art” and did so little of any one thing that by the time you graduate you’re unemployable at a whole bunch of stuff you thought you might be. The course claimed decent employment rates after graduation but as I now know they count any kind of employment even if it’s not relevant to the course. Hooray for post-graduate courses and second chances I guess. :):

http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/ <- Bookmarked!

#7

Yeah, I hear you. A lot of colleges/unis that I got into were the same: guaranteed employment.
Ended up going for the places that were honest about my chances after. Don’t know if the education was significantly better, but it kept me working hard.

Just keep pushing forward mate and make good impressions on people and you’ll have a job sooner rather than later.

#8

Hi jameskyle. Good job on the rig. Here are some of my notes on the rig.

  1. First of all you need to have a proper anatomically correct joint position. You may search some images on quadruped skeletal setup. Remember this is very crucial.
  2. Make the rig as simple as possible at least for the beginning phase. I can see that you have placed two IK handles at the hind limb. I would prefer a single IK handle. You can use spring IK solver for better joint posing. IK Spring solver is normally hidden. You can turn it on by checking on the tick mark from the plugin manager of ikSpringSolver and then executing… ikSpringSolver …in the mel script editor. You will find a new handle in the IK settings :slight_smile:
  3. Adding a shoulder/clavicle and a hip joint will greatly aid in proper deformation.
  4. When the spine controllers are moved the limbs are dislocated. You may need to limit that.
  5. Lock and hide unnecessary attributes.
  6. You might also want to add more joints along the spine and the neck. These are the most flexible part of the body.

Anyways, the best option for you or any rigger is to study and implement from existing rigs, go over and dig some really nice rigs. Here is one of the coolest quadruped rig, check the skeletal structure, the controllers, etc. You don’t need to think complex at the moment, just keep it simple and go over the outliner : http://www.rigging101.com/free/rigs/greatdane.zip

Enjoy Rigging!