Rigging and Skinning - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 159

Summary
Rigging and skinning is the most technically demanding task in the short animation process, even if you
choose to use someone else's rigs. An effective rig consists of three sections: controls, deformers, and help-
ers. A rig's controls should be simple but provide intuitive freedom for animation. When building a rig, it is
best to work in stages, testing along the way. First, a bare bones rig is created. Then the rig is cleaned up and
bound to the character mesh. Animation testing proceeds from there with further refi nements as problem
areas are identifi ed.
Weight-bearing extremities will probably be rigged with inverse kinematics. Other portions of characters may
be rigged with other tools, including both targetless and automatic IK. Areas of high but compact functional-
ity, such as feet and fi ngers, will require more complicated solutions than other areas of the rig.
The controls will deform the character through the use of modifi ers: Armature, Mesh Deform, and Lattice.
Armature modifi ers work through the creation of vertex groups on the character mesh, which are directly
driven by the corresponding bones in the control armature. Lattices provide a limited ability to warp and
smoothly bend portions of a character. The Mesh Deform modifi er provides a fl exible method for smoothly
deforming high resolution characters while retaining the ease of driving a low resolution mesh. The results of
these modifi ers can be combined in the modifi er stack for a fully controllable character.
Outbox
● BLEND fi les that are ready to be used as character libraries in scene fi les
● A headache
The Peach Perspective
On rigging: Do you think you would rig a character differently if you knew that you were going
to be the only animator using it, i.e., a one-man project? How do you change your approach
when you know a whole team will be using your controls?
Nathan: Well, I'm no expert on this, honestly. Big Buck Bunny was my fi rst time doing any really
serious character rigging. But yes, I do things differently. Namely, when I'm rigging only for
myself, I only have to please myself. When I'm rigging for others, I have to at least try to please
them as well, even if I sometimes disagree with what they want. I suspect the rigs for BBB
would have been somewhat simpler if I had only been rigging for myself. There's a bit of bloat
that comes with trying to please everyone.