Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Credits

Copyright

Publisher's Note

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Introduction

What You Will Learn from This Book

Who Should Read This Book

How to Use This Book

How This Book Is Organized

The Book’s CD

Chapter 1: The Vehicle to Get You There: Applications and Approaches

Planning Your Rig

Creating a Character

Finding What the Animators Need

Conclusion

Chapter 2: Getting to Know You: Maya’s Interface

Working with the Maya Interface

Using Editors

Getting to Know Hotkeys and the Hotbox

Deconstructing for Learning and Fixing

Organizing Your Rig

Conclusion

Chapter 3: Rigging That’s Right: Rigging Concepts You Need to Know

Working with Joints

Working with Controls

Conclusion

Chapter 4: Torso Rigging Techniques

Planning the Spine Rig

Using Body Root vs. Free Root

Learning the Isner Spine

Creating a Basic Spine

Stretching Along a Spline IK Curve (Used in Spine Wave Setup)

Adding Spine Controls and Enabling Compression

Conclusion

Chapter 5: Creating Contrapposto: Perfecting Pelvis Rigging

Pelvis Rigging

Setting Up World-Relative Controls

Conclusion

Chapter 6: Arms of Mass Deformation: Real and Unreal Arm Creation

Approaching the Shoulder and Arm

Rigging the Shoulder

Creating the Arm

Conclusion

Getting a Leg Up on the Competition: Understanding Legs and Feet

Planning the Legs and Feet

The Classic Reverse Foot Setup

Creating the Advanced Leg

Conclusion

Chapter 8: Hands That Grab Your Attention: Hand Rigging Techniques

Planning the Hand Rig

Secondary Control

Hand Rigging Techniques

Adding Finger Animation Controls

Enabling Bend/Lift, Spread, and Palm Bend Controls

Constraining a Hand to a World Object

Conclusion

Chapter 9: A Head above the Rest: Controlling the Head and Neck

Planning Ahead

Setting Up the Neck

Rigging the Eyes

Rigging the Jaw

Controls for the Head

Secondary Items on the Head

Conclusion

Chapter 10: What Are You Looking At? Realistic Eyes

Planning Eyes

Eye Targeting Techniques

Squashing and Stretching Eyes

Lovely Lacrimals

Eyelid Morphs You Will Need

Conclusion

Chapter 11: Show Your Teeth: Creating the Mouth and Jaw

Jaw Rigging Techniques

Shapes for the Jaw Rig

The Master Morphs

Using Morphs in Your Setup

Conclusion

Chapter 12: Can’t You See What I’m Saying? Logical Viseme Creation

Speaking without Saying a Word

Phonemes and Visemes

Creating Visemes

Viseme Reference

Secondary Issues

Conclusion

Chapter 13: Control That Face of Yours: Working with Expressions and Facial User Interfaces

Facial Expressions

Planning the Deformation Control System

Joints, Influence Objects, and Morphs

UI Controls, Attribute Controls, and Facial Representations

Creating Facial Control Systems

Conclusion

Chapter 14: Deforming and Organizing Your Rig

Stretchy IK

Rivets

Influence Objects

Riggable Joints and Broken Rigs

Final Organization

Conclusion

Chapter 15: Mel Scripting: An Introduction

Good Things to Script

The Basics

Planning a Script

Basic Procedural Rigging Pipeline

Conclusion

Chapter 16: UV Mapping and UVLayout

UV Mapping Applications

Using UVLayout

The UVLayout Workflow

Conclusion

Chapter 17: Maya Muscle

Basic Muscle Theory

Introducing Maya Muscle

Creating a Muscle System

Conclusion

Chapter 18: The Skinny on Skinning: Effective Surface Attachment

Planning the Skin

Binding the Skin

Painting Weights

Establishing the Deformation Order

Working with Vertex Weight Maps

Bomb-proofing Your Rig

Final Testing

Conclusion

Chapter 19: Implementing a Character Pipeline: Pipeline in a Box

Organizing Maya Projects in a Pipeline

The Necessity of a Versatile and Reliable Character Pipeline

Some Basic and Essential Building Blocks

Special Solutions

Extensions and Further Recommendations

Conclusion

Appendix: About the Companion CD

What You’ll Find on the CD

System Requirements

Using the CD

Troubleshooting

Index

End-User License Agreement

Acquisitions Editor: Mariann Barsolo

Development Editor: Mary Ellen Schutz

Technical Editor: Geordie Martinez

Production Editor: Christine O’Connor

Copy Editor: Kim Wimpsett

Production Manager: Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley

Vice President and Executive Publisher: Joseph B. Wikert

Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde

Media Associate Project Manager: Laura Atkinson

Media Assistant Producer: Josh Frank

Media Quality Assurance: Kit Malone

Compositors: Chris Gillespie and Kate Kaminski at Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Proofreader: Nancy Bell

Indexer: Nancy Guenther

Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed

Cover Images: Eric Allen

Cover image “Rosie” by Jan Jureczko. Copyright © 2007 by DAZ Productions Inc. www.daz3d.com

Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-0-470-17387-9

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN 46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Allen, Eric M., 1976–

Body language advanced 3D character rigging / Eric Allen and Kelly Murdock ; with contributing authors Jared Fong and Adam G. Sidwell.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-470-17387-9 (paper/cd-rom)

ISBN-10: 0-470-17387-4 (paper/cd-rom)

1. Computer animation. 2. Characters and characteristics—Computer simulation. 3. Three-dimensional imaging. I. Murdock, Kelly. II. Title.

TR897.7.A455 2008

006.6’96—dc22

2008008484

TRADEMARKS: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and the Sybex logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dear Reader

Thank you for choosing Body Language: Advanced 3D Character Rigging.

This book is part of a family of premium quality Sybex books, all written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than thirty years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at nedde@wiley.com, or if you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

Best regards,

Neil Edde

Vice President and Publisher

Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley

This book is dedicated to my wife and kids for supporting my efforts of turning my dreams into reality.

—Eric

There are bodies of water and bodies of air

And bodies of knowledge of which we can share.

There are heavenly bodies that shine from afar,

Like galaxies and nebulas and a distant shining star.

Courtrooms often see, bodies of evidence and law,

From which there are conclusions that you can draw.

There are bodies of doctrine and bodies of time,

And bodies of art with contents sublime.

There are bodies of civilians and bodies of state

That keep bodies of rules first on their slate.

Of all of these bodies, we each have just one,

That enables us to walk, to jump and to run.

And the body that we most often curse and bless,

Is the one in the mirror we daily assess.

This book is dedicated to my dynamic cousins, Chad and Randy.

—Kelly

Acknowledgments

Huge thanks to my wife for allowing all of this work to take place and for being one of the best editors on the planet. Thanks to Jared Fong and his huge contributions to the technical aspects of this work. His late night discussions were lifesaving. Thank you, Geordie Martinez, for the amazing technical editing. He polished the rough edges in a way I wasn’t even expecting. Thank you to Adam Sidwell, who brought the great chapter on referencing into the work. Adam’s knowledge and skill is legendary. A big thank you goes out to Seth Hippen, Enrique Gato, Adam Sidwell, and Stephen Candell for their time helping with the interviews. Thank you to Jacob Speirs and Taylor Eshelman for their rigging discussions and contributions. Thank you to all of the artists whose artwork is showcased in this work. You inspire me. A big thank you to Kelly L. Murdock for working alongside me all through this process.

A huge thank you goes out to Phil Dench, creator of UVLayout, for his editing help in this work. Thank you to Daz3D for allowing the use of the Victoria 4 character in this book. Thank you to BYU for allowing some of their great work to be shown here before their short Pajama Gladiator is even available.

A special thank you to my family, who supported me and even sacrificed to get this book here. A big thank you to God for blessing me with an amazing family and a profession that I love.

—Eric Allen

Huge thanks to my co-author, Eric Allen. This book is really his vision and he’s been wonderful to work with. Thanks as always to my dear wife, Angela, and my sons, Eric and Thomas, without whose support I wouldn’t get very far.

Thanks also to Eric’s wife, who really pitched in and helped us out of a tight spot. Thanks also to Geordie Martinez, who handled the technical editing.

—Kelly Murdock

Eric and Kelly would both to thank Mariann Barsolo, acquisitions editor, and Mary Ellen Schutz, developmental editor, for their help with the editing and their patience in coordinating with the authors. Thank you to Phil Dench, creator of UVLayout, for his editing of Chapter 16. Phil has single-handedly made the best UV software to date. Thanks also to Kim Wimpsett, copyeditor, who made sure grammar and spelling were picture perfect; Nancy Bell, proofreader, for catching those last little “oops,” and Christine O’Connor, production editor, who also had to work with the authors and made sure everything flowed through the production process. Thanks also to our compositors, Chris Gillespie and Kate Kaminski at Happenstance Type-O-Rama, and the indexer, Nancy Guenther. The book couldn’t happen without them.

—The Authors

About the Authors

Eric Allen is currently the Modeling Lead at Daz3d. Besides creating and managing the creation of the figures, he is in charge of the creation of hundreds of deformer and viseme morphs for the Daz3d figures. He also oversees the creation of the joint controlled corrective morphs. These can add up to hundreds of shapes that work with each other to produce realistic deformations. He helped create Victoria 4 (Daz3D female model found in the book) and rigged her in Maya for this title. He also built and rigged the “Runner” character which is used for most of the advanced examples. His figures are used in everything from movie content to graphic art. They have been used for the covers of 3D User, Popular Science and Scientific American and have been used in the digital art Exotique publications. He has also worked as a freelance commercial animator where he has created medical and other types of animation using mainly Maya. He has studied Maya rigging and experimented with various techniques for years.

Eric graduated from BYU and worked on the first short film “Lemmings” to win both a student emmy and bronze student academy award.

www.ericmatthewallen.com

Kelly L. Murdock has been authoring computer books for many years now and still gets immense enjoyment from the completed work. His book credits include various 3D, graphics, multimedia, and Web titles, including seven previous editions of his book, 3ds Max Bible. Other major accomplishments include Edgeloop Character Modeling for 3D Professionals Only (also with Eric Allen), Maya 6 and 7 Revealed, LightWave 3D 8 Revealed, Poser 6 and 7 Revealed, 3D Game Animation for Dummies, gmax Bible, Adobe Atmosphere Bible, Master VISUALLY HTML and XHTML, JavaScript Visual Blueprint, and co-authoring duties on two editions of the Illustrator Bible (for versions 9 and 10) and three editions of the Adobe Creative Suite Bible.

With a background in engineering and computer graphics, Kelly has been all over the 3D industry and still finds it fascinating. He’s used high-level CAD workstations for product design and analysis, completed several large-scale visualization projects, created 3D models for feature films and games, worked as a freelance 3D artist, and even done some 3D programming. Kelly’s been using 3D Studio since version 3 for DOS. Kelly has also branched into training others in 3D technologies. He teaches at the local university and is a frequent speaker at various conferences.

In his spare time, Kelly enjoys the outdoors while rock climbing, mountain biking, or skiing.

Contributing Author Jared Fong has a profound ability for Maya rigging. He brought us Chapters 15 and 17 as well as many of the scripts included on the CD. He has been a major influence on the rigging of the projects at BYU and part of the thinking that went into this book. Jared is currently working at Pixar as a TD resident.

Contributing Author Adam Sidwell has traveled the world spreading his 3D talents. He has worked at such studios as Digital Domain, ILM, Sony Imageworks, and Weta. He has presented at Siggraph and is very proficient in the studies and methods of the “back end” of the production pipeline. Adam contributed the brilliance of Chapter 19, the “Pipeline in a Box.”

Introduction

Character rigging is one of the most difficult tasks in the production pipeline. It is also one of the most essential. Failure to correctly rig a character will frustrate animators and lead to delays or, even worse, unrealistic results.

Although the rigging tools are getting better all the time, it still takes a lot of patience and know-how to be able to make a complex rig work well. There are a multitude of effective rigging techniques and it can often be confusing to know when to use which one. The goal of this book is to cut through all the clutter and present a clear path to follow when rigging characters. Along the way, we’ll share the wealth of information on the subject that we’ve gathered.

What You Will Learn from This Book

Whether you aspire to create your own animation or work in the animation industry, Body Language: Advanced 3D Character Rigging will be a tremendous resource for multiple parts of the production process that goes into 3D animation. Mainly focusing on the foundation and more advanced concepts of character rigging, this work will give you a secure base setup as well as teaching some interesting and unique ways to deform a 3D character.

Some of the more difficult aspects of the 3D pipeline are also discussed. Adam Sidwell joins us with his “Pipeline in a Box” method of referencing. This self-contained workflow is perfect for small projects to large productions. Phil Dench helped with the editing of a chapter covering UVLayout. The new Maya Muscle systems are covered, as well as some great beginning and advanced scripting techniques. Body Language: Advanced 3D Character Rigging is a great resource for anyone creating and learning about effective 3D character setup.

Who Should Read This Book

Body Language: Advanced 3D Character Rigging will hone the beginner to advanced artist by teaching standard as well as unique principles about the more intricate parts of 3D character setup.

This book is really geared toward the intermediate to advanced rigger. It assumes that you are comfortable with the basic rigging tasks and jumps right into several advanced techniques.

Although the book uses Maya for its examples, you can apply the principles in the book equally to other software packages.

How to Use This Book

This book is intended to follow the typical production pipeline. If you follow the chapters in order, you’ll be taken through the entire process of rigging a character.

How This Book Is Organized

The first three chapters of the book cover the basic concepts of rigging and show some of the basics of Maya that are used throughout the examples.

Next, we present all of the rigging techniques to rig an entire character from start to finish. Chapter 4 begins the rig with coverage of the spine and we then continue in the subsequent chapters to cover the pelvis, arms, legs, feet, hands, neck, head, eyes and jaw.

We then look at the details of working with visemes and facial expressions that enable the character to speak and show emotions.

The last chapters conclude with some specialized miscellaneous chapters on MEL scripting, efficient UV layout, building control interfaces, skinning, and finally referencing.

The Book’s CD

The included CD has many examples and files to glean from. It includes a fully rigged figure which you can pick apart to see how the advanced figure techniques actually work.

You can also utilize the many mel scripts that are covered in this book.

There is also a digital copy of this book in the files.

Lastly, Adam’s “Pipeline in a Box” is there as well. It is a valuable resource for those looking to create a referencing pipeline or those just looking to study industry procedures.

Chapter 1

The Vehicle to Get You There: Applications and Approaches

Rosie by Jan Jureczko Copyright © 2007 by DAZ Productions Inc. www.daz3d.com

Rigging is the process of endowing a character with a set of controls that make it easy to animate. These controls can consist of simple joints, handles, or even separate character selection windows. A character’s animation is going to be only as good as the rig that controls it.

As you approach the rigging process, you will find that there are different ways to rig each different body part. Some are simple; some are rather complex. The rigging method you choose depends on the type of motion you want to convey with your character.

Chapter Contents

Planning your rig

Considering your time and needs

Choosing an application

Preparing for character creation

Making your wish list

Discovering what the animators need

Rosie

The opening image for this chapter is Rosie, originally created by Jan Jureczko, which is now owned by DAZ Productions Inc. Victoria 4, the character who is the base figure used in this image, has a morph-based facial rig and joint-controlled morphs for more realistic deformations.

Planning Your Rig

Setting up a rig can be a time-consuming process. But time spent planning the rig prior to the building cycle will save time when you actually start the rigging process. During the planning phase, you should identify the following:

The types of movement the character needs to perform

The look of the character

The body parts that need to move

Any specialized body parts

If your character is a female action character, then the work you do will be very different than it would be if you were animating a very soft cartoon character. Good planning allows you to predict the needs of your rig before you get there. Figure 1-1 shows a runner character and his controls.

Figure 1-1: Runner character and his controls

What Constitutes Advanced Rigging?

Throughout the book we’ll be walking you through a variety of rigging techniques. Some of these techniques are considered basic—they enable the most common types of motion, such as walking, bending at the waist, and reaching out to grab a weapon. Other techniques are considered advanced—they are more complex and enable specific motions that aren’t as common, such as acrobatic or ballistic movement, or something even more specialized, such as swinging from a vine.

We’ll show how to build an advanced character rig that includes some complex controls. For example, we will show you how to build a double compression wave spine that can be animated to squash and stretch portions of the torso, and we’ll show you how to build an advanced wrist control that enables forearm deformations. We will also show you how to break that arm without breaking the IK chain.

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!

Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!