blog 8

PPD2 blog 8

In this blog I am going to rig the bird model I did earlier. I was looking forward to doing this rig as it would be very helpful for my showreel. To start off with I open the file and made the mesh see through so I would be able to see where I placed my joints

I then went into the front view as I decided to work on the legs first

I created a row of joints in the shape of the birds leg

I then went into the normal view to see how the joints line up

I then selected the show local rotations axis, to make sure the joint orientation was correct

After I began to place them correctly

After I rename the joint, as they are important for later

I then started working on the other toes by creating more joints

After I connected them to the ankle joint

I did the same to the other side

I then created the back toe

After I created a box and used it as a template. By using the EP curve tool going over the box, I was able to make a controller, I created one for each toe

I then selected the IK handle tool

I then created an IK handle from the thigh to the ankle

I then created a foot controller using a curve

I realise that I had to place one extra joint in each toe

After I selected the controls I had created and went onto the set driven key option

In the menu I loaded the box as the driver and the joints as driven

For each joint and the controller I selected the rotate z and key the values 

Then I rotated the box and each joint by a certain value and keyed it, until I got them moving in the way I wanted. I repeated this for each of the toes

I selected the IK leg handle and then parented it to the foot control

I did the same for each control I had made

I then mirrored the joint and selected mirror function behaviour

I then created set driven key for each of the toes

After I decided to work on the spline  

In the front view I created a row of joints

I selected the joint and went on to search and replace names, in order to speed up the process

I then went onto the IK spline tool option

I added the handle on the spline

I duplicated the spline and unparented the last joint and deleted all but the first and last joints and rename them shoulder BIND and back end BIND. After I skinned the spline curve to them so they would be able to move the spline    

I then created a control box for the BIND joints

I scale it up and parent the back end BIND to it

Copying the controller I placed it to the top of the spline and parented the shoulder BIND joint to it

After I decide to work on the neck, so I went back to the front view

Creating a row of joints I then rename them

I then added an IK spline handle to them. Using the same method as I did with the spline I created BIND joints

I then created two circle curves and parented one to the bottom neck BIND joint and the other to the top neck BIND joint, after I parented the top neck controller to the bottom one

I then decided to work on the arms by going into the front view

I created a clavicle and row of joints in the wings and named them

I did the same with the other side

I connected the clavicles to the spline

I then create a curve for a control

I reshaped it for the clavicles

I then copied it for the other side

I parented the clavicles to these

After I created the controller for the wings

I also found out I needed extra joints for the wings. After I parented the joints to the controls and added each wings controls to their respected clavicle this was then parented to the shoulder control 

After I created a square curve for a body control

I parent every control except the foot controls to it

After I created a curve for a main control

I the parented every controller to it

After I selected the root

Then the mesh

I then finally went onto the skinning option, set the options and then apply it to the mesh 

The skinning was very straight forward by using a mix between the component editor and the paint skin weight tools, and didn’t take long to finish.

What I thought

The rigging only took a few hours, however a lot of time was spent trying to use the BIND joint mesh for the toe in order to make the motion look freer, however in the end I decide to go to set driven key. I also found that making the bird rig was more complex then what I had first thought.