Character Rigging - Game Character Development with Maya - page 790

Hair and Wings
The final areas we need to rig are Kila's hair and Grae's wings. You should by now
have a good grasp of the tools that are available to help you rig these areas, so take
a stab at it yourself and see what you can come up with. If you have trouble or are
struggling with something, you can always refer to the files called Kila_XtrasRig.mb and
Grae_XtrasRig.mb on this topic's CD.
Ideally, a dynamics engine will drive animation of Kila's hair. This would provide the best
resultsandfreeuptheanimatorstoworkonotherthings.Unfortunately,wedon'thavethat
luxury for Kila, so take the opportunity to try and add your own, simple rig.
Here are a couple of suggestions:
You might give the hair a very basic rig, forcing the animator to supply every
movement the hair needs. Simply implement some basic icons that will control the
hair joints' rotations. This approach has its advantages, since there will be occa-
sions where the animator needs complete freedom over the way the hair moves.
You can use IK handles to control each joint. This technique allows you to pull the
hair around from the base—it's a more user friendly way of animating.
Rigging Grae's wings can be approached in a much easier way: Import the file
Icon_Wings.mbintothescene.YouwillfindthatIhavealreadysetupaseriesofattributes
on the icons for you to use. Then use Set Driven Keys to generate poses for the wings,
which correspond to each attribute.
Both Kila and Grae's bodies are now fully rigged, head to toe ( Figure 12.72 ) . The only
other main controls we need to add are those to control facial animation, which we will
discuss in the next chapter.