Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
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With the base skeletons in place, we could just bind the geometry to them and begin anim-
ating. At first this would work well, but sooner or later we would start to notice that our
ability to make the character move is heavily restricted. At present, the character is like a
car without seats, pedals, or even a steering wheel. We can get it to move and we can con-
trol it, but not without some difficulty.
This is where adding a rig will help.
Rigging
is the process of adding controls on top of the
baseskeleton.Initiallythesecontrolswillactasavisualaid,helpingusidentifywhicharea
we are manipulating. On a deeper level, they will allow us to move and pose the character
in ways we can't accomplish with just the base skeleton.
As you can imagine, rigging a full character can be a complicated task, and to the novice
it can be quite daunting. You can't simply throw a rig together—you have to think about
what you want each control to do, and whether it will make life easier in the end for the
animator. The key is making a rig that anyone can just pick up and play, enabling them to
get poses quickly and easily, while at the same time making sure no part of the setup can
be damaged unintentionally in the process.
Rigs come in all shapes and sizes, and you will find that everyone has their own way of
rigging. Rigging can be quite a personal thing, so don't be concerned if the rig you will
create during this chapter is not the same as ones you may have seen in other topics or on
the Internet. Once you have an understanding of the fundamentals of rig building, you can
then create your own to suit your needs.
With this in mind, we will take a different approach in this chapter than we have so far.
We'll begin byspending some time learning the underlying theory and new terms involved
before we proceed to the actual task of creating a rig.
