Digital Creature Rigging

Book description

Get an inside look at the creation of production-ready creature rigs for film, TV and video games.  Garner strategies and techniques for creating creatures of all types, and make them ready for easy automatic use in many different types of media (transmedia): film, TV, games - one rig for all.  You will move step by step from idea, to concept, and finally to completion through a proven production-pipeline. "Digital Creature Rigging" gives you the practical, hands-on approaches to rigging you need, with a theoretical look at 12 rigging principles, and plenty of tips, tricks and techniques to get you up and running quickly. This is the definitive guide to creating believe production-ready creature rigs with 3ds Max.

The companion web site has all scene files, scripts, tutorials from the book.

Table of contents

  1. Front Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
  7. Acknowledgments
  8. Chapter 1: Introduction
    1. Why a Book?
    2. Custom Rigs vs Auto-Riggers
      1. Biped
      2. Character Animation Toolkit (CAT)
      3. Custom
    3. Who Should Read This Book?
    4. Who Should Not Read This Book?
    5. Chapter Overview
    6. Companion Website
    7. Qualities of a Good Rig
    8. Qualities of a Great Creature TD
    9. The Best Piece of Advice Ever
  9. Chapter 2: Foundations
    1. Art and Science
    2. Principles
    3. Tools and Workflows
      1. Viewports and UI Setup
      2. Modify Panel and Modifiers
      3. Hierarchy Panel
      4. Motion Panel
      5. Display Panel
      6. Utilities Panel
      7. Time Slider and Animation Tools
      8. Bone System and Bone Tools
      9. Skinning Tools
      10. Constraints
      11. Wire Parameters
      12. Reaction Manager
      13. Schematic View
      14. Layers
      15. MAXScript Windows
      16. Joints and Bones
      17. Transformations
      18. Scale
      19. Position
      20. Rotation
    4. Models and Modeling
      1. Reference
      2. Default Pose
      3. Edge Loops
      4. Uniformly Spaced Geometry
      5. Topology
      6. Hierarchical Structures
      7. Broken Hierarchies
    5. Icons and Controllers
      1. Colors
    6. Kinematics
    7. Skinning
    8. Blends and Morphs
    9. Layered Rigging
    10. Naming Conventions
  10. Chapter 3: Research and Development
    1. A Quick Disclaimer
    2. Creature Overview
      1. Creature Brief/Information
    3. Anatomical Research
      1. General Creature Attributes
      2. Head and Face
      3. Upper Torso
      4. Central Torso
      5. Lower Torso
      6. Tail
    4. Biomechanical Input
      1. Head and Face
      2. Upper Torso
      3. Central Torso
      4. Lower Torso
      5. Tail
    5. Planning and Preparation
      1. Print Screen
      2. Thumbnail Sketching
      3. Joint Placement Diagrams
      4. Controller Diagrams
      5. Topology and Looping Checks
    6. Model and Scene Clean
    7. The Final Save
  11. Chapter 4: Base Rig
    1. The ROOT Node
    2. Custom Attributes
    3. Joint and Bone Placement
    4. Location Information Data Node
    5. Test Skinning
    6. Save Skinning
    7. Bone Shaping
    8. Range of Motion (ROM) Files
    9. Motion Set List (MSL) Files
    10. Shot Specific Rigs
    11. Control Creation
    12. Exporting and Saving the Base Rig
  12. Chapter 5: Animation Rig
    1. The Connection
    2. The Setup
    3. Skeletal Duplication
    4. Hip
    5. Chest
    6. Spine
    7. Neck and Head
    8. Tail
    9. Limbs
    10. Upper Arms
    11. Upper Arm Hands
    12. Clavicle
    13. Lower Arms
    14. Legs
    15. Feet
    16. Making Sure It All Works Together
    17. Making the Connection
    18. Animation Test
  13. Chapter 6: Face Rig
    1. The Aims of Any Face Rig
    2. Style Thoughts
    3. Face Rig Systems
    4. Meet Quoobe
    5. Face Rig Controls
    6. Joint/Bone-Driven Facial Rig System
    7. Morph Target/Blendshape-Driven Facial Rig System
    8. Hybrid Joint/Bone and Morph Target/Blendshape-Driven Facial Rig System
    9. Additional Deformers and Systems
    10. Expression Creation
    11. Facial Action Coding System (FACS)
    12. Anatomy and Biomechanics
    13. Creature Adaptation
    14. The Setup
    15. Animation Input
    16. Rig Attach
    17. Additional Facial Rig Systems
  14. Chapter 7: Deformation Rig
    1. Advanced Skinning
    2. Corrective Shapes
    3. Muscle Systems
    4. Muscle System Skin Deformations
    5. Pose Space Deformation (PSD)
    6. A Skeleton with No Control
  15. Chapter 8: Finaling
    1. Finaling for Real-Time Engines or Crowd Simulation
    2. Geometry Cache
    3. Cleaning and Correcting
    4. Cloth, Hair, and Fur
    5. Dynamics and Particles
    6. Lighting and Rendering
  16. Chapter 9: Streamlining and Automation
    1. How Can We Streamline Our Rigging Approach?
    2. What Is MAXScript?
    3. Programming and Scripting… The Same Thing?
    4. My Thoughts on Scripting
    5. Scripting Basics
    6. Pseudo Code
    7. An Introduction to MAXScript Tools
    8. How Can We Streamline the Production for Others?
    9. Let Us Make Something!
    10. Visual MAXScript
    11. Practical Scripting
    12. A Creature GUI Picker
    13. Adding Custom Attributes
    14. Expanding Individual Scripts into a Toolset
    15. MAXScript Quick Reference Guide
  17. Chapter 10: Outro
    1. Additional Workflow Enhancements
    2. Chris Rocks
    3. Modeling and Surfacing Workflow—Chris Rocks
    4. The End
  18. Index

Product information

  • Title: Digital Creature Rigging
  • Author(s): Stewart Jones
  • Release date: December 2012
  • Publisher(s): Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781136146138