Spider Gwen Rig Now Available!

In the meantime of graduating, going to the beach and freelancing here and there over summer I have been working on creating a rig for animators to use for either show reels or personal use.

I have decided to start with a model provided by Brian Bedford and that being Spider Gwen! She was bit of a pain as she was one mesh with freakishly long legs and massive knees! Following from that I used digital tutors for the rigging tutorials Here it was a learning experience and was different to what I was used to. I'm always trying to up the quality and usability of my rigs and am determined to figure out how Animschool rig theirs! 

For my next rig I will change the fingers to having FK fingers and a finger control for ease of animation and reversing back to the old foot rig that I was using (maybe), I will also look into creating a different spine with IK/FK  controls. Although from this I have learnt a lot about expressions and a slow understanding of coding whilst learning about the Flexi plane approach to rigging with stretch and squash for IK and FK switching. From this I will bring all this information together for a music video which I am working on and hopefully can show you sometime in the future! Here is a link my gum road to download the Spider Gwen rig and feel free to use it for practising animation, show reels and anything else you want to use it for! 

Whilst I really enjoy rigging and enjoy characters coming to life I also want to improve on my modelling skills and character work. So hopefully in the near future there will be some more characters and models to see!

  

Skye: Facial Rig Update

Finally after going through the trouble that rivets had caused me I decided to change my facial rig altogether to more characterful and artistic rig and that being blendshapes but I also wanted the deformation that rivets allowed you to have. So I found a tutorial series and redone my rig, I am really happy with the overall face rig even though the trouble it had caused but the deformations are a lot nicer now and I can achieve the different expressions which I couldn't of done with the previous rig. 

After a long process of setting up the joints and the different rigs (local rigs) and sculpting the blendshapes that she needed alongside the correctives too, she is finally animatable ready! Here are just a sample of the blendshapes that I needed to create. Oh and Shapes is a really good plug in for anyone needing to do correctives and blenshaping. 

Here are some of the expressions  I managed to achieve with this rigging style: 

 And finally here is a quick video I put together showcasing the rig in its complete state.

 

Now onto finalising the environment block out so I can start the prevising and animation!

Skye: Stretch and Squash

Skye's stretch and squash is finally complete and ready to use! I also had some problems with the FK/IK setup so I fixed the flipping in the wrist and got the dynamic hair working again. Hopefully she will be done by the end of the week so I can start some animation tests and get going onto the environment too whilst not forgetting to the story updates as well.

Skye: Low Poly Model Compelte

The low poly model is complete and ready for animation use! There is a few more things I would like to add to the rig, that being squash and stretch in the spine and arms, and a few final tweaks to the rig too. 

Major: Skye Eye Rig updated

After finding a cartoony eye rig, I decided to blendshape the eyes for more controls to add a bit of character to her when animating. I feel this is a nice addition to the rig :)

Major: Fk/ Ik Switching

FK/IK Switching is done for Skye too!

Major: Corrective Blendshapes

After causing a lot of pain and issues the correctives are done for the arms and Cog control. There is a big difference in quality and I am glad I have done it and thankfully the legs seem to be fine for now and not really needing correcting with blendshapes.

Skye: PJ's Turn Around

Unoftunatly the hair did not simulate for the submission for some reason but regardless im happy with the overal outcome.

Skye: Rigging Complete for both outfits

I managed to fix the problem in the wrist with help from Ayunie by changing the expression in the forearm to link up to the wrist controller instead therefore stops the flipping from happening. The body rigs are complete with both of the outfits, I used rivets for the dress instead of a seperate controller so its easier to animate. I am now going onto the facial rigs and then I shall work on detailing the model, textures and the base for their turnarounds.

@Alan: Wrist rigging problem

I have no idea what is going on here, but I can rotate the wrist and the arm works fine but as soon as I  make a controller and orient constrain it to the wrist the gemoetry in the arm seems to twist around and deform?

All the skinning is the same either side and it only happens on the right hand side of the character either when the rotation on the controller reaches a 45 degree angle or it rotates upwards. I'm not really sure what to do here so I have completed the rig now and everything else seems to be fine within the rig.  

 

Adaptation B: Irish Rig Complete

Here is the completed rig, although my scene seems to be lagging when I move my character due to amount of wrap deformers in my scene, is there any way of preventing this? I rigged the eyebrows a slightly different way with joints as my mesh seemed to of moved during rigging process somehow

@Alan Narrative: Hyena Progress - Rigging

When rigging I have treated the front shoulders and the back pelvis both as pelvis joints. Afterwards I have parented the back pelvis to the tail control so the tail will rotate with the back of the pelvis and the front shoulder joint to the chest control to make the spine interact with the pelvis and shoulders.

I was thinking about rigging the ears like the tail rig but was unsure whether to or not. Also when I scale the back of the tail doesn't seem to scale with the rest of the geometry it seems to move instead and I am unsure why. The same happens when I move the Hyena in the translate using the world control too.