Rig it Right – Done in December !
Well. I’m ahead of schedule. Every book—I get antsy, push and then end up finishing months early. All chapters have been rewritten with the images redone. Now, I can spend some time testing and making sure I’ve not left in some old name to a tool. Time to hire a technical editor and get another set of eyes. This will get turned in before March and should be released sometime after. I’m guessing October 2018.
What chapters did we do this month:
Chapter 16 OMGimgle.
Well since the fundamentals of math have not changed neither has the issues of gimble lock. We go through importance of rotational axis order.
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We also look at what is sometimes mistakingly thought of as gimble lock but is only key interpolation problems – and look at ways to fix those issues.
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That was a fairly easy chapter to go through.
Chapter 17 Advanced Controls
This chapter is probably one of my favorite chapters since we just start to scratch the surface of “Hey, what if I made a rig like …”. For example – what if I wanted to make a transform node have multiple shape nodes? Can I do that? What if I wanted to make a transparent controller system overtop of the rig? Can I do that? Makes me want to dig into advanced rigging topics to the tune of a whole book – because it is just such fun. [image error]
Chapter 18 Stretchy Rigs.
Also a favorite chapter of mine and an interesting one to update. We go over creating automatic corrective blendshapes for stretching joints based on the scale of the joint or the translation of the controller. Using the shape editor we find that the process of creating corrective blendshapes is much more streamlined now since Maya 2016+. We had to do some jumping jacks to get it working in the first edition of the book. We also explore using the pose editor for auto corrective blendshapes driven by joint rotation.
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We also dive into multiple ways of creating stretchy joint systems. We use different joint systems, lattice systems and then some node based solutions. Then I give you a “Make it Stretchy” script that auto creates the node based stretchy solution – because it was fun to write and most happily still works in newer versions of Maya.
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Chapter 19 Dangly Bits. (it was a productive 18 days)
We explore “broken” rigs where non-connective skeleton structures give auto stretchiness. We also look at creating animatable constraints to have hands, hats, heads, etc. follow or not follow each other. Good fun.
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That rounds the bend to Chapter 20 Autorigging which was completed during the summer. Hazzaah! I’ve been marching down this road so steadily since the summer I don’t know what to do now that I see the finish line. Well. Ok then. I do have a new class to teach next month. Well, one I haven’t taught in a while:VSFX tool building!!! I’ll move somethings over from Mel to Python. Heck some of it might even make it back into this edition. We shall see.
The cover has been turned into me and I just need to add the illustration of the rig controls that go over top of it and that will be done too! I can’t show it to you yet though. I like this one. It matches the cover from the first edition. What a great month. I think I might take a weekend off and read a novel or two.
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Joyous New Year and happy whatever you celebrate.
-tina
