Blog 9

PPD2 blog 9

In this PPD2 blog I am going to talk about rigging the dog model I have made. To start off with I went into the front view in maya

I then created a row of joints in the shape of the back legs. I decided to start from the legs, as I find it easy to work my way up from the bottom. I then added an IK handle for the upper leg to the ankle  

The from the ankle to the toe I added another IK handle, after I created a control curve and parented the leg IK handle to it

I then made another curve for the paw and parented the second IK handle to it. I then parented the paw control to the leg control. After I mirrored the joints with their behaviour and copied the controls for the other legs

After I went to work on the front legs by going back into the front view

I reapeated the same process as I did with the back legs

It was now time to work on the spline, so I went into the front view

I created a row of joints in the shape as you can see in the diagram

I then selected the IK spline HDL to add a spline curve to it

I duplicated the spline and kept only the first and last joints and rename them Bind joints. I then selected them and the cuvres

I then went onto the bid skin option and set the preferences and then applied it

After I created a box, and then I went round it using the EP tool in order to create a control

I placed it and then parented the Hip BIND joint to it and I did the same to the shoulder control

I then parent the legs to the bottom of the spline

I then work on the neck by going into the front view and creating a row of joints in the shape of the neck

After I added an IK spline curve and then copied it and kept only the first and last joints and rename them Bind joints

I selected the bind joints and the neck curve and clicked smooth bind

I then created a curve

I then moved and scaled it and parented it to the neck base bind joint and I also create one for the neck top bind joint

I parent the neck top control to the bottom and then the bottom to the shoulder control

I then started work on the tail by going into the front view

I create a line of joints in the shape of the tail

I click on the IK spline tool to give it an IK spline HDL

I copied the joints and kept the first and last two, then rename them bind joint

I then selected the bind joint and the curve and then I smooth bind them together  

After I created a box and I went round it using the EP tool to create a control box

I placed it and parented the bottom tail bind to it

I also did one for the top

I parented the top of the tail control to the bottom one

I then connected the bottom of the tail to the back end of the spline. I then parented the end tail control to the hip control

To finish the joints off the last piece was the ear

In the front view I created three joints

I then copied them for the other ear

I then created a curve for a control

I lined it up in the front view

I then reshaped it and copied it four times, so I would have a control for each joint in the ear

I parented each curve to the joints and then parented the bottom ear control to the top

I then parented the ear control to the second neck control

I then created a plane

I went over it with the EP tool to create the body control

I then position it

After I parented every control except the leg controls to it

I then created a circle curve for the main control

After I parented the body and legs controls to it

Finishing the rig and then selected the root

I then selected the mesh and went onto the skinning options and set the preferences and click bind skin

To do the skinning I used both the component editor and the pain skin weight tool

Reflection

Unlike what I first thought the dog rig was easier to make than the bird rig, however the skinning was a lot harder, this was mainly due to the ears being closer to the head. However looking at other four legged animal’s rigs, in my opinion my rig was a lot easier to use than most of them, which I think is a very important part of rigging as an animator needs to be able to work the rig without too many learning issues. I feel I did very well as I have not done animals rigs before .