Nathan demos rigging ‘Rinky’ the Squirrel
Posted in Development, Media Gallery, Production by campbellIt’s magic to watch Nathan (aka Cessen) rig the 3d characters.
He uses various methods, depending on the kind of movements we want them to make and their body type.
Brecht, Ton and Joshua Leung (from New Zealand) have been writing features and addressing bugs Nathan found… These will get their own blog post soon!
Nathan can’t hold back a hug when us TDs code an especially useful feature :)
For a look into the rigging process, watch Nathan demo the rig for ‘Rinky’ the squirrel.
November 6th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Faaancy. Hope these’ll be easier to toy with than ED models.
November 6th, 2007 at 12:30 am
whoaa! :D
very nice, cool controls.
for facial animation you guys gona use bones or shape keys? thanks for this video i enjoyed it!
November 6th, 2007 at 12:41 am
amazing! what a great rig! it deforms incredibly well! it looks so easy to manipulate! All of this is looking reaaaly good!
November 6th, 2007 at 2:00 am
Just a question… do work even the weekend? :)
How do you manage your time?
November 6th, 2007 at 3:06 am
Quite Nice!
November 6th, 2007 at 3:22 am
Wow. I wish I could rig as well as that. Looks like it’ll make everything a lot easier.
November 6th, 2007 at 3:57 am
It would be great if you also posted a video download link for all your videos as its a pain to do it for youtube.
November 6th, 2007 at 5:18 am
Cool! I was just trying this same hand rig type with the latest SVN and the transformation constraint. It is very sensitive, but works great and has lots of potential for many other uses.
It’s good to know I’m on the right track in rigging;)
November 6th, 2007 at 5:22 am
Try this Firefox extension called Download Helper.
http://www.downloadhelper.net/
I use it all the time, and now I can’t live without!
November 6th, 2007 at 6:03 am
That’s an awesome rig! I love that bone on the hand that ‘curls’ the hand round from the little finger side! That is excellent. Can’t wait to see how it works.
Great stuff!
November 6th, 2007 at 6:19 am
That’s really awesome! The bone in the hand near the pinky finger that ‘curls’ the hand is really amazing. Can’t wait to discover how it works and have a play with it!
Great stuff guys!
November 6th, 2007 at 6:52 am
That was awesome.
Ive been rigging in blender for a bit now and i never thought about that curl bone in the hand.
Ill definitely be trying some of that in my next rig.
Also having the finger curl only work the end of the finger is a nice touch too.
Cant wait to see it in action!
November 6th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Nathan’s rig looks awesome. True magic – I really wish I’d even got started with them.
Thanks for sharing
/ Mats
November 6th, 2007 at 10:25 am
That is utterly awesome. It’s cool how you just doodle the poses and it looks so natural. No matter how odd the pose, it looks like cartoon-doable.
Again, great work!
November 6th, 2007 at 11:05 am
gaalgergely: we’re using shape keys for the main face shapes, but we’ll also be overlaying additional deformation controls for larger over-all shape changes. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to make those additional controls, though. It might be lattice-based or mdef-based, but I’m not sure yet.
November 6th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Heyho Nathan ! great job you’re doing there, give me a hug !
November 6th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Yeah! Cant wait to see more,
really good ideas :)
November 6th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Really awesome rig ya got there! Peach looks better every day^^
November 6th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Genius improvements Nathan! Hope this will be able to do in next blender version.
November 6th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
Nathan, since the characters will be doing a lot of evolution I think, will you have some sort of pivot that you can move everywhere in the character to make him spin let’s say from the head ?
November 6th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
ooops another question. Are you thinking about something to store facial poses with a little thumbnail to quickly recall them ? It’s very useful as a starting point with the face…
November 6th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
@ros, yes, these will all be in the next blender release, you can even use them in recent test builds now.
For people who have video trouble, Ill try and set up an automatic way to do ogg-theora as well as MOV or Youtube. so far we have just done whats easiest.
Btw, this was my first attempt to edit DV in linux + blender, and it went pretty well ;)
November 6th, 2007 at 7:46 pm
haha, that guys fake beard is soo funny!
November 6th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Concerning the rolling fingers – just tried this in 2.45:
Is it already possible in 2.45 to use a bone from the same armature as a driver? I always have to use extra objects like empties.
Or is this one of the new features in svn.
But maybe I just imagine things and Nathans rig uses extra objects as well ;)
Werner
November 7th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Wow Cessen! You’ve really outdone yourself this time! Congratulations! That hand curve bone is something I never knew about!
(Hahaha the related movies were Conjuctival brown tumor sugery…???)
November 7th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Höhrer: the finger rig uses action constraints instead of drivers.
Cuby: The hand curl is done with three bones in the hand (one for each finger; it would be four for a real hand). The middle bone then has a copy rotation constraint on it with a little less than half influence, linking it to the hand curl bone at the pinky finger.
November 7th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
wow are we allowed to have sneak peaks at the .blends with the rig? or do we have to wait for the DVD?
November 7th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Thanks so much Cambell for committing to providing download links. I know how to download youtube videos and convert them, but it takes extra time and results in a loss of quality. It might be good to use archive.org They automatically convert your files to many different formats like .mp4, mpeg1/2 and flash streaming
November 7th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Now I’m getting excited! Can’t wait to see some quality squash n stretch work in blender. The character concepts look great too.
Thanks for keeping my hopes up guys!
November 7th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
@Nathan: Thanks for the info – that sounds _wonderful_ :D
I completely misunderstood that in the beginning – should’ve listened more carefully. Thanks for clearing that up for me ;)
Werner
November 8th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Really great, I do like a lot how the rig looks! simple controls, good actions (backward bending fingers are cool!), This short movie will be way great! ED set a very high level (specially on visual polishing) and Peach will be even better. :)
jedihe
November 8th, 2007 at 8:18 am
The great Nathan at work! It was nice to meet you on the Conference.
November 8th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Awesome. Can’t wait for… well, more!
November 8th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
WOW ! I love this post !! I hope to see alots of video like this !
Thanks !!!!!!
November 9th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
sacha,
my friend thinks your cute..she has no legs.
November 13th, 2007 at 12:35 am
That was sweet! @ Jedhide. I agree the rig look simple. The foot setup was clever too.
November 13th, 2007 at 12:39 am
That was sweet!
November 13th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Great work guys.. keep it coming.. interesing to read and see anything related to peach {ths one was special though =)}
November 13th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
This seems really nice. Maybe Peach team would be interested in these improvements of IK/FK smoth blending made by Malefico and his friends:
http://www.malefico3d.org/principal-en.html
November 13th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
http://www.malefico3d.org/blog-en/?p=22
November 13th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
really nice set on Malefico’s rig. This little helpers are pure gold for an animator :D
November 16th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Do we really need to wait till the DVD goes out to get our hands on that rig ? Oh please man! please!!!
November 22nd, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Wow…this is too cool. I can’t wait to see what the final movie is like!
December 29th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
Amazing!
I’m currently studying animation, and won’t learn about rigging until the upper tier classes, however, if I do say so myself, GOOD job! It looks like you’ve made him as simple as possible to pose, while maximizing the number of poses possible! *is jealous*
Can’t wait to see the end film. :D
April 14th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
If I could have a tutorial, especially on the hand rig, I would be be happy for ever.