Semester 2 W4 | Character Rigging
- Soo Zhi Jing
- Dec 5, 2020
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 6, 2021
I had no knowledge on how to rig characters at all at this point. I was never taught to do so in my previous semesters, it was only simple animations introduced to me. So I decided to pick it up myself for this project. I have to admit, I was very intimidated by it because it is not easy at all, even lecturers I approached to ask for a heads up, the timeline he showed was super complicated even for a simple movement. I head over to YouTube to learn myself and came across this video teaching the method of rigging with Duik Bassel rigging tool, acknowledging the timeline of my project and my knowledge of rigging, using this tool will be more efficient for me. The video teaches me how to use Adobe illustrator to create the character, how to chop up the necessary parts of the character's anatomy and where to place the bone of the rig. I followed its directions and created the character according to my character design as well as placed the bone onto my character in After Effects. The video also taught me how to parent the character's anatomy into the bone so that I can control it later on.
(Creating the character in Adobe illustrator and chopping up the anatomy into different layers)
(This part is where I inserted the bone in and parented the boning to the respective character parts)
(The rigging tool's interface, it has a lot of functions to learn about but I'm only learning the basics at the moment)
Once I downloaded the the rigging tool, the version I downloaded was very new as compared to when this video was published so I searched for another video to learn from it. In this video, the interface was same as mine so it was easier to follow. I already had base knowledge from the previous video and now it's time to make it move! The video taught me how to add controls after attaching the character with the bone. The great thing about this tool is that I can automatically press one button and it triggers a walk cycle. the outcome was very surprising because who knew it was this simple! I clicked on it and there we go! There's a walk cycle, but it looks a bit wonky and the limbs don't look very natural. I has a big part to do with me not attaching the joints properly. I was trying to get familiar with the tool and adjusting the bone according to my character was not easy because there were quite a lot of confusing buttons but at the end I got the hang of it and readjusted it once more before trying the walk cycle again. The results:
After checking the parents accuracy once more and we have a successful walk cycle! The walk looks much more natural and this being my first success I kept replaying it again and again. Although this is only a small achievement (the tool helped me rig this!) but seeing my character come to life is very rewarding. The result:
Now that I'm more familiar with the tool, I shall take on more animations for my projects! I believe I have much more to learn from this experience hehe.
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