This weeks task in Animation 102 was a simple introduction to biped characters (two legs). We were shown how to use the stop motion armatures and a maya rig named Buckid which would be the main tool used. Johny our tutor, advised "playing with the armature is a very useful experience". We were divided into two groups one looking at stopmotion and the other Maya. I was in the Maya group, and I was felling slightly nervous as I thought the process would be more difficult than first imagined. James was with us to cover the basics of using the Buckid rig. I experimented at home with the rig and found it hard to use as it many moving parts and was difficult to position.
In the next lesson James explained the basics of the rig and how to move and pose it.
The first element was the display layer and by clicking the empty box it would deactivate the mesh that appears when we select the whole figure with the selection tool. This frees the use of the control points in the rig, he highlighted the key points of movement in the rig was in the hips this made the legs move and bend allowing for positioning. The channels would be different than the cubes or pendulum all of them are custom set.I was beginning to get confident with using the rig after the explanation from James. He also explained that the head would be the last part of the rig to consider.
In the movements of the rig it would be similar to the arcing movements we were shown in Animation 101,this enabled me to use what I had learned in that module. In this case we would be focusing on the posing of the rig rather than animating them.
There was, however, a risk when using two rigs because this meant that two layers needed to be controlled instead of one. James then introduced "the most scariest element" of the character rig. This was the node editor comprising of all the moving parts which was more complicated than the graph editor. Whilst the rig was overall simple at first we were warned that the knee of the rig model would be a problem and to be cautious.
We were then given a chance to play with the rig in terms of
the posing, however I couldn't resist having a try at animating the rig, using what I'd learned from 101 in terms of key framing and from what James had just told us. I began moving the hips first followed by the legs, I tried moving the arms slightly but it didn't work and then James showed me a trick and using a method called FK set or forward kinematic as its known as in full. I saved this as a play blast to show people what I'd attempted to do in Maya as we were told earlier was a good suggestion as whilst we can work from home we can't do it without showing off our work to get a second opinion as Joe put it " a Second pair of eyes."
What I took away from this tutorial was that the rig wasn't as complicated as I first thought, however perhaps what I should do over the next week is play around with the rig in more animations.This would be to see if I can generate a more smoother or refined walk and gain feedback on the animation before the session starts next week. For future reference I would possibly do a little more research into the idea of 3d rigs and how to generate movement. From this tutorial on Buckid I have learned a lot from the session on this rig and could be of much use to me in the coming weeks of the module.
In the next lesson James explained the basics of the rig and how to move and pose it.
The first element was the display layer and by clicking the empty box it would deactivate the mesh that appears when we select the whole figure with the selection tool. This frees the use of the control points in the rig, he highlighted the key points of movement in the rig was in the hips this made the legs move and bend allowing for positioning. The channels would be different than the cubes or pendulum all of them are custom set.I was beginning to get confident with using the rig after the explanation from James. He also explained that the head would be the last part of the rig to consider.
There was, however, a risk when using two rigs because this meant that two layers needed to be controlled instead of one. James then introduced "the most scariest element" of the character rig. This was the node editor comprising of all the moving parts which was more complicated than the graph editor. Whilst the rig was overall simple at first we were warned that the knee of the rig model would be a problem and to be cautious.
We were then given a chance to play with the rig in terms of
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