Rig It Right! Maya Animation Rigging Concepts

by Tina O'Hailey

Rigging a character can be a complicated undertaking. Move from a bi-pedal character to a quad- or poly-pedal and, well, things just got real. Where do you begin?

Unlike all of those button-pushing manuals out there, Rig it Right! breaks down rigging so that you can achieve a fundamental understanding of the concept, allowing you to rig more intuitively in your own work. Veteran animation professor Tina O'Hailey will get you up and rigging in a matter of hours with step-by-step tutorials covering multiple animation control types, connection methods, interactive skinning, BlendShapes, edgeloops, and joint placement, to name a few. The concept of a bi-ped is explored as a human compared to a bird character allowing you to see that a bi-ped is a bi-ped and how to problem solve for the limbs at hand. After you have moved beyond basic bi-pedal characters, Rig it Right! will take you to a more advanced level where you will learn how to create stretchy rigs with invisible control systems and use that to create your own types of rigs.

280 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2013

About the author

Tina O’Hailey is an animation professor, a caver, and an occasional mapper of grim, wet, twisty caves (if she owes a friend a favor or loses a bet), whose passion is to be secluded on a mountain and to write whilst surrounded by small, furry dogs and hot coffee. Tina was once struck by lightning.

She has served as an artistic trainer for Walt Disney Feature Animation, Dreamworks, and Electronic Arts. Any movie credit she has is minimal and usually found in the special thanks section. The meager credits do not account for the great honor it was to teach talented artists who worked on numerous feature films and games.

She has authored animation textbooks “Rig it Right”, “Hybrid Animation” published by Focal Press, and the Darkness Universe novels “Absolute Darkness”, “When Darkness Begins” published by Black Rose Writing.

Her favorite motorcycle is her BMW R1200C—mathematically perfect for her short legs, turns on a dime, and is the ugliest bike ever.

Reviews

[Jack Asher · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been about four years since I had to rig anything, and that class was crammed into a strange schedule (don't go to a for-profit college, anyone on the fence about it). So I'd lost almost everything I knew about how to do it. When you look online for rigging advice, you get a bunch of tutorials, which are less than useless. If you're still learning and you watch the tutorial, you have to go around an pause it, and scrub back any time you miss something. They always take a good minute to introduce themselves, tell you about other tutorials that they've made, and most of them will make you wait while they load the program, and go over the basic information. Because I'm usually just checking to see where I've screwed up a single setting, this means I'm watching a six minute video for, literally, six seconds of information.

So I ordered this book, really out of desperation, and I have been delighted by it. It covers the basics for anyone who has just opened maya, and then isn't afraid to get technical with the information.

Most importantly to me, O'Hailey has bolded all of the menu items and settings that you need. I can't stress how wonderful this is. Because you end up doing most of your rig twice, once on each side, she makes it easy to just skim the chapter on the second pass. All you have to do is glance at the page, see the setting you want, and keep going. That alone is almost worth more than the book itself.

Anyone who is looking to get more than a cursory education, I would skip the gnomon tutorials and just buy a hard copy. You absolutely won't regret it.

[Malkhaz Shonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for those who have no idea about rigging and it's problems. In case of rigging you should remember: knowledge comes with experience. You'll need alot of experience to understand how it works, and this book will provide you with basics and advanced information about rigging.

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really saved me in my rigging class. Definitely a must have reference if you ever want to rig something. Even if you think you've got it you'll probably find something in here you didn't know you needed.