License-Free Maya Rig Testing **Update 2013**

Rigs, rigs, rigs....
They're all similar but oh, so different.
A great way to get ready for rigging your own characters is to try a LOT of rigs.  Learn what you like and don't like. Peek into the Outliner and see how organized it is (or not!). Check out how usable it is for animation.  Then you'll be ready to borrow ideas for your own rigs.

Please note if you use any of these rigs they are not for commercial use and must be properly credited!

3 sites with lots of rigs for you to try:
Animation Buffet

Creative Crash Maya Rigs

22+ of the most fun rigs for maya

FLOUR SACK:

Beautifully made flour sack rig (at last!) Created for Maya 2013 by Joe Daniels - check out his cool video clip as well!

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/jd-floursack

ELEVEN:
Created as a group collaboration project by members of the 11SC community!
I love the look of this super cute girl/guy rig!
It looks like a lovely rig so far. Very teensy compared to some other rigs. Fast, easy to use. Nice rig. We use this rig a lot at school.
http://elevenrig.blogspot.com/



NORMAN:
by Leif Jeffers, Morgan Loomis, Peter Starostin, and Neal Thibodeaux

This rig isn't much to look at but it's packed with features -- maybe too many? He's even got 'bend bows' for arcing limbs, sweet! The GUI is totally customizable and you really ought to be able to do anything with this rig.
Only a couple of problems -- the head CTRL -- you know, the one you might need to grab like 1000 times a day, is on the BACK of his head ??? So, unless you love working in XRAY mode or wireframe, you have to do a little tumbling every time you want to grab it.

People have customized Norman into all SORTS of amazing models. Check them out!
https://sites.google.com/site/normanrig/

MORPHEUS:

by Josh Burton 

Wow. Just wow. This is a very distinctive.. and unique GUI.  Is this a good thing? I'm not sure. I find it distracting.  Good news -- it's just to customize the rig into all sorts of different 'looks'. Then you can hide that sucker.

The rig is very slick and there are more ctrls than you can shake a stick at.
http://www.joshburton.com/projects/morpheus.asp

MOOM:
by Ramtin Ahmadi

This ugly-on-purpose rig has a very slick GUI and it's easy to find your way around right out of the box. *NOTE* - one of the arms was IK and the other FK (perhaps purposefully?) but the switch turned out to be not that hard to find (on the ground).  My favorite so far for ease of use.
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/moom-v4-0-3-by-ramtin

MAX: (Maya or Max)
by Peter Starostin and James Hunt

Last but not least, this well-used rig has a lot to recommend it.

I liked how easy it was to find everything ... except one very important thing... the MAIN CTRL!
I'm used to seeing, 1, 2, or 3 big, obvious ctrls somewhere in the area of the character's feet.  I see a ROOT but it's in his middle and with IK legs, it only moves the middle. My apologies if it's staring me in the face and I just can't see it!
http://www.bockstyre.com/james/maxformaya/

HEAVY: from Team Fortress - might be some copyright infringement going on here but it's fun to play with.
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/heavy-character-rig

SQUIRRELY by Josh Burton:
This is a great opportunity to test out Anzovin's popular autorig, the "Setup Machine".  Very quick and easy to use, also the setup machine rig can be purchased and used with any of your own characters. 

http://www.joshburton.com/projects/Squirrely.asp

Lovely rigs but not recommended for school:

STEWART: *NOT FOR SCHOOL USE :(
Meet Stewart, Animation Mentor's new rig from their "Tribe" family. It's a very versatile athletic rig with lots of bells and whistles like bend bows, stretchy everything, double gimbals, IK/FK switching and more.
Be sure to include their attribution for non-commercial use. Download it here: http://www.animationmentor.com/free-maya-rig/

MALCOLM: * NOT FOR SCHOOL USE :(
AnimSchool has a very cool rig up for grabs as well: Malcolm. Its only 2 negatives are that it is a fully-decked-out feature rig complete with 1000 ctrls and it might be a bit over the heads of students just learning Maya. The other negative is that it's the ONLY free feature-quality rig out there, imho, which makes it extremely popular. The 11-second club winners use it almost exclusively.
I am using it myself, but the female mod which looks a bit like this:
http://www.animschool.com/DownloadOffer.aspx

BUCKID: Buckid is a super simple Maya rig for people just starting out.  1 major flaw: lack of independent hips. The one hip CTRL drives all the ones above. That means if you use hip rotation in your walks, you will need to counter animate the upper spine and head. But aside from that it is a fun, snappy, simple rig with stretchy limbs and spine that is really fun to work with.
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/buckid

Conclusion:

Well, the jury's still out. People have certainly created some fantastic animation with all of these rigs.  

I'm looking for a simple interface like Moom that has a neater look like Eleven.

I'd have to vote for either ELEVEN or MOOM.
Morpheus is also worth another look if you don't mind that interface.

Try-em out for yourself and let me know what you think!

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom was an educational theorist, Taxonomy just means classifying. This hierarchy of learning objectives is common to all post-secondary institutions. In a nutshell, it means your job is to move as quickly as possible from absorbing new information to using it creatively.

The highest form of any skill is art.

EXAM TIME!! DESN2022-A, Rigging 101 with Phil Bonner

This exam is now closed. Your marks will be available shortly.

_____________________________________

Welcome to your Final Exam.

You may use any reference material to complete this exam but it should be entirely your own work. Please guess if you're not sure. No marks will be deducted for wrong answers.

The form can only be submitted once. You may want to construct your answers outside the form and paste them in.

If you have any questions, let me know: tDonovan@georgebrown.ca

This exam is due FRIDAY, APRIL 22 at midnight.
Good luck! :o)

Click here to go to the exam: 

 https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dDJXZlNucjZXSmg3TTZ2LS1HTVhZQ0E6MQ

WEEK 14: Rigging, Part 4

Review - Creating an IK/FK blend behaviour using a 3-joint chain.
We'll use the Connection Editor to use a change on one object to drive a change on another object.
 (similar to a set driven key)
-Demo of one method of setting up limb arcing
_________________________

Creating complex CTRL objects with nodes hidden on the Outliner using MEL
_________________________

Setting up spines suitable for broadcast:
-Animators want independent hips & shoulders and stretchiness
-Spline IK spines have some limitations
-We'll talk about the problems with the joint-scaling method used in some tutorials to stretch the spine.
-Using Up Vectors & Aim Constraints to avoid shearing.
_____________________________________
Further study:
Try out various spline IK tutorials to see if they’re stretchy, if they have geo pushing back, or other problems.

Everything stretches in Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

WEEK 13: Rigging Part 3

We'll review the leg -- you should be able to rig it from scratch in about 15 min, including setting up CTRL objects for the Heel, Tip, Toe, Ball, Ankle

Keep practicing this until you have it down in 15 min
____________________________________________________













Let's get into skinning, starting with some notes about constraints.

Next: painting weights.

Practice skinning and be very comfortable with it by next week.
____________________________________
*Note - this method is quickly becoming obselete -- nowadays it’s increasingly common to use influence objects to add corrective blend shapes to the geo instead of skinning and painting weights
____________________________________

New topic: SPLINE IK

Homework Challenge -- Create an IK/FK blend behaviour (without using the Maya automatic blending) using a 3-joint chain (looks like an arm with a bend in the elbow)


Your Final Exam will be posted on MONDAY, April 18, due FRIDAY, April 22nd.

Thanks for being such a great class! 
Enjoy your break!

WEEK 12: Rigging, Part 2

Continuing with Rigging the Luxo,

We'll parent the Geo to the rig & test everthing to make sure it's all working. 

Next step: Renaming using a standard protocol
A few housekeeping tasks and your Luxo is done.
Get the rig all ready for animation being sure to lock and hide non-keyable channels and set up display layers.
________________________________________________
On to our next challenge -- The Leg

A leg is a lot like an upside-down Luxo.
How do we create the correct behaviour in the leg so moving the hip doesn’t move the foot?
We need the foot to be able to move in many ways - ball roll, toe roll, ankle rotation, etc..
Once this is set up, we'll add CTRL objects. This can be trickier than you might expect

Homework -- come back next week with
A fully rigged foot
Add another attribute to Luxo
If you are finding this all really easy, add a challenge by adding a look-at control or other fancy control.

WEEK 11: Rigging Low Poly Models, Part 1

This is the first of 4 classes on low-poly rigging.You have a guest instructor:

Phil Bonner, CG supervisor, TD, animator, modeller, rigger, etc. -- and an amazing teacher.
pbonner@georgebrown.ca  philfix.com 

• If you're stuck, remember -- there are resources all around you -- your classmates, Google,  Digital Tutors, email  Phil your questions, etc.  

• If you're advanced, just ask and a challenge will be granted to you.  Also consider helping bring others up to speed so we can get into some more advanced concepts quicker.

Rigging of a different feather

We'll compare the differences in the 3 main levels of rigs: bare bones, decent, and triple-A (and beyond!).
The focus for all levels of production rigs should be SPEED -- rigs must be fast. One key is reducing details like unecessary automation (or at least allowing it to be switched off.)

We'll start with a basic Luxo lamp rig -- review for some and a simple intro for others.

By the end of this class you should be familiar with joint placement, setting up IK, and adding CTRL objects properly so all controls are at "0", ready for animation. We'll learn some tricks for aligning CTRL objects, learn how to avoid some common mistakes, and work on getting faster at simple set-ups like this.

Ideally, you should be comfortable rigging this simple Luxo in under 5 minutes.
To get there, you should practice a dozen or so to be sure you've got it down.


HOMEWORK :

• be able to rig the Luxo in under 15 minutes with IK and CTRLs
• try to figure out how to add a pole vector to orient the butt.  
• come up with a list of new behaviours you could add to this rig

Next week we'll tidy up the naming conventions and skin the rig to the geo before moving on.

WEEK 10: Blending Animation

We're going to 'blend' our cycles together using the simplest tools in Maya.  Blending between different actions may involve adding extra details between cycles.  For example, a walk to a run requires a tricky middle action where the character gathers energy to move more quickly. 

Homework, due Mon March 28:
Blend 3 game cycles (eg, walk-run-jump, or idle-crouch-walk).

We'll also look at automatic retargeting systems such as the ones used here by Havok:

CASO invites you to hear Rango's TD Doug Sutton, on Thursday, March 31st: Reserve your seat today!

 Thursday, March 31st, 12 pm - 1:30 pm 

at the Scotiabank Theatre at John & Richmond. 

$10 including a brown-bag lunch

(you get the GBC deep-discount - regular price: $40!).  

"Rango: A Lizard's Journey of Self Discovery and a 

VFX Company's Journey into Feature Animation" 

presented by Doug Sutton, Rango's Technical Director.

Doug Sutton's other credits include Star Wars I, II, III and the Transformers movies.

If you haven't yet seen Rango I urge you not to miss this extravaganza of eye-popping visual effects and superbly detailed character animation.  It's ILM's first animated feature.

Everyone is welcome but CASO would like to know how many to expect.

PLEASE SIGN UP HERE:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHd2ZWpxZHUtNWVLdUwxLVh4VjdYX0E6MA

WEEK 9: Review of Exam & Assignment Outcomes

Grades a little lower than you were expecting? Me too.

As second year students in the Animation stream, it's rather important that you have a strong grasp of all the basic concepts we've been exploring so far -- the principles of animation as well as the use of Maya tools like file referencing, setting up cycles, offsetting overlapping action using the graph editor, etc.

We're just about to wrap up our animation lessons for the term and head into the technical twilight zone of rigging.  And I want you to be animation-savvy riggers!

So... I'm giving you another chance to solidify key concepts and  pull up your marks a little bit if you need it.
 
This new assingment should be a bit of review. You'll probably find much easier and faster than the first one now that  you know the tools. Please go back over the blog for the key concepts, and look to Digital Tutors for more support if you need it. Always feel free to ask me questions.

Homework due Monday, March 21st:

WEEK 9: 'Field Trip' Friday, March 11th, 12 pm - 1:30 pm CASO presents Paul Griffin_Animation 2.0 "The Next Level" on March 11th! Reserve your seat today!

Hey, everybody -

Hope you had a great break and aren't as sick as I am right now!

There's a very cool event happening Friday and with Jean-Paul's permission I've decided to make it a "Field Trip". For the DESN1119C class, this means this event IS your class, so you are expected to be there unless you can't afford it.
For the DESN2022A class, I realize you may have another class at this time. Please let me know so I can contact your teachers to find out what they think.  I would definitely like you to be there.

CASO (Computer Animation Studios of Ontario) has invited all of you to to a lunchtime talk:

"Animation 2.0 "The Next Level" with Paul Griffin.

You may not have heard of Paul Griffin, but you've definitely seen his work.  His credits include:
Animation Supervisor :
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter video game, cinematic sequences,  Benjamin Button, The Mummy, Pan's Labyrinth, King Kong, Fantastic Four, Mr & Mrs Smith
Lead Animator:
Star Wars, Ep I & II - ILM
Animator:
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - Weta

WEEK 7: Midterm Exam

This exam is now closed.

If you were away for the exam, please contact me to arrange a make-up time.

tDonovan@georgebrown.ca

Week 6: Idle Cycles + Animation Madness from Blur

Your last week before MIDTERM EXAMS (moo hahahaha...) we'll delve further into the most subtle of the animation principles -- overlapping action, which is paramount to creating weight.  We'll take lots of cues from the Pixar of Game Animation, Blur Studio in California.

Idle Cycles:
We'll be working on the Rubic's cube of cycles -- the humble "Idle".  How your character behaves when he's just waiting around conveys a lot of attitude. You'll need a lot of subtle control to keep a character alive.  Too little movement and they'll just look dead, too much and they'll appear to be having a seizure. :o)

I must warn you that as simple as it may seem to make a character 'do nothing', it is most diabolical!  With great subtlety you must add some movement to every part of the character. Nothing should bump or pop, everything should have a nice smooth arc and you should not really be able to pick out where the cycle starts and stops -- it should be a loop about 1-2 seconds long.

Week 5: Crouching Cycles (Hidden .. Squirrels?)

More cycles! Moah! ha! ha!

Now you'll need to apply your subtle overlapping action skills to a crouching idle.

Homework:

* Crouch cycle  -- idle in a crouch position. This cycle will eventually have to transition back to a regular standing idle
* Due next class

Surly's New Rig -- File Referencing Updates

We have an updated rig for Surly with knee controls (pole vectors) -- located on the foot controls.

Click here to download the new Surly Rig

This is a great next chapter in the wooly world of File Referencing.

Without file referencing, every time a rig is updated, you would have to restart your animation using the new rig.  With a referenced rig, you can usually just replace your reference and keep on trucking...

But what happens when you open your animation file and something has changed that breaks your animation?


This is about to happen to YOU!! :oD

Week 4: Jumps! Digging into Secondary Action

Cycle of the week:  Jumps!

Click to view the incredible video of a fox hunting through snow

We'll take a look at some different styles of jumping, leaping, hopping, bounding characters and study live action for inspiration, and analyze the way secondary and overlapping action works.

Showing the effort characters take to move their own weight is paramount to creating believable animation of any style.

It's one thing to make the up and down motion read as 'heavy' and affected by gravity. It's quite another to master the mechanics of looping overlapping/secondary action with the character's arms, legs, and .. tail!

If ever the devil were in any details.. it's animating secondary on a looping action!

Creating Image Planes From Video Reference

Thanks to both my classes for shooting some fantastic video reference in class!!

Click here to see one of you as a lamp.

It's relatively easy to bring this footage into your animation files. You can easily follow the frame-by-frame reference, ie, rotoscope, but you'll quickly see that with just a little exaggeration you can make your animation even better, heavier, and snappier than the live action footage.

While I've worked on many projects that used live action reference, this was my first experiment animating directly over live action footage in my viewport. I spent about 5 minutes on this test & I simply could not believe how easy and quick it was to get the keys down & tweak it to bring out the emphasis I wanted.

So from now on, I'll be expecting even GREATER animation from all of you, hehe..

Check out the video to see how I turned one of you into a lamp...

Here are the instructions on how to view an image sequence in your viewport:

Week 3: Running with Squirrels

Click here to view a Run Cycle by Michael Sabalvaro

You may be relieved to note that animating a RUN cycle is much easier than animating a WALK cycle.
That's because one of the key difficulties is removed -- ground contact.  Just like a bouncing ball, however, the running character must show the effects of gravity through your control of spacing and timing.

Previewing Animation in 3dsMax

Well, well, well...

Click to view larger

Switching from Max 2010 to 2011, I had trouble finding "Preview" in the usual spot.
Turns out, they've moved it! Again!
It used to be in Render, then Animate, now in TOOLS... hmm..

Previewing Animation in Maya

Click to view image larger

In Maya, animation previews are called "PLAYBLASTS"
Go to:
Window > Playblast >

Or: