MAYA
RIG A MULTI-JOINTED ROBOT LEG
Part Two in our tutorial series; this month, we focus on rigging
Antony Ward Be it game development, rigging or recording in-depth courses for his YouTube channel, Antony boasts experience in most areas of 3D. www.antcgi.com
AUTHOR
When you search for tutorials on rigging, the majority tend to focus on more organic, biped type characters and creatures. If not two legs, the next common limb type is a quadruped one, with tutorials on limbs constructed with more than four joints being rare. This is mainly due to the popularity of more conventional characters and creatures seen in today’s films, TV shows and games.
One request I receive more than any other are for more mechanical rigging tutorials. Now this can range from something as simple as a vehicle or a piston, right up to a more complicated robot with lots of moving parts, like a Transformer for example.
What I have wanted to do for a while now is get my teeth into a robot rig. Not something as intimidating as one that turns into a vehicle, but one with lots of interesting interlocking parts and pistons. So, when 3D World approached me about creating a workshop that involved rigging a pre-made robot model, I eagerly agreed. Unfortunately, as much as I would love to rig this robot in its entirety, a workshop covering each element would likely end up being about ten hours long, and take up a lot more space than I have over these few pages. So, what I decided to focus on instead are one of its limbs.
I chose the leg because of its many pivot points; so instead of working with a traditional three-joint biped setup, we will be looking at rigging a limb with seven main points of rotation.
DOWNLOAD YOUR RESOURCES For all the assets you need go to https://bit.ly/3D-world-matrix
Enable the Spring IK solver
By default, the Spring IK solver isn’t available, but it’s easy enough to activate. Simply type ikSpringSolver into the script editor and it will become selectable in the IK options.
01
TALK TO THE ANIMATORS
Before embarking on any rig creation, talk to the people who will be using it. You may think that one rig will suit any project, but each animator will have their own systems and tools that they prefer to use. It could also be the case that the project requires a specific naming convention or joint setup; maybe the controls have to be configured in a way that means motion capture data can be applied. There’s simply no point rushing ahead and building what you ‘think’ the animators want based on previous rigs. Each project is unique and requires its own, tailored assets.