Animator Friendly Rigging
Animator Friendly Rigging is one of the top training tools available to learn the ins and outs of creating character rigs that your animators will enjoy working with.
Based on the same principles that animators use when animating, these tools will teach you not just how to create one particular type of rig, but they will help you develop a systematic and creative approach to solve almost any rigging problem.
In the visual effects and animation world, artists are often given new and exciting challenges that have never been done before. Quite often the first thought any artist has is “That’s cool! How the heck are we going to do it?”
This 8 part series helps teach the rigger to look at a problem, get reference, analyze it, try some ideas, generate a toolkit of techniques, and apply them in a way that will make their animators more productive and more creatively satisfied.
Part 1 – Introduction To Rigging
What is “rigging”? How should I approach it? What does the animator want?
This section discusses all these things, and dives into creating your first rig.. the bouncy ball!
Part 2 - The Biped – Torso and Head
Now that we have a good idea of what rigging is and how to systematically approach it, let’s get started on what everyone wants to rig – a human!
This section is broken into two parts and discusses how to rig a character’s torso and the head.
Part 3 - The Biped – Arms and Hands
Continuing our discussion on Bipeds, we move on to the arms and the hands of the character. Arms can be creatively challenging since they need to gesture and move naturally, as well as grab onto things and support the character’s weight.
Broken into three parts, the first two sections cover forward and inverse kinematics, shoulder control, removing counter-animation, and more. The third section delves into hand controls with simple yet powerful rigs.
Part 4 - The Biped – Legs and Presentation
Broken into two section, part 4 of the series finishes up the biped. The first section creates a intuitive and powerful leg system. We also get into more of the animator-friendly aspects of setting up your rigs, such as matching, UI, and more.
You can also purchase the entire bundle with all the training materials at once!
Find all the posts that are related to the Animator Friendly Rigging Series here:
http://jasonschleifer.com/tag/animator-friendly-rigging/
There were a number of fixes on my old site relating to the Animator Friendly rigging DVDS.
Javier Solsona was kind enough to compile them into a handy PDF. Enjoy!
Animator Friendly Rigging Fixes
Listed below are the mel scripts associated with the PDF.
Hi ,
AFR Fixes says you have to go one section up the download section to find “js_getAttachedObjects”. But I can’t find it on this website. Am I look at the right place ?
Many thanks,
Samba
Hi there… I have the same question as Samba…
I’m Almost Done with AFR!! Woohooo! just that last snag. could we please get a link on this site to js_getAttachedObjects…
-I see the downloads link does not have it…
oops… I just saw that Samba posted today aswell – you might need more time to reply
-but i’ll post anyway:)
hah! okay, I have created a downloads page now that should have the files there.. if you find anything missing, let me know!
Great timing !
Thanks a lot, Jason !
Your dvds really opened a new world to me, just go on …
Thank you!
Your dvds have opened a whole new world for me. Still refining my rigging skills.
Thanks Ali! I am glad that they are useful for you! Our skills continue to refine as long as we live, so keep going!
Thanks a lot Jason.
I love your way of teaching , clear, direct, deep info and interesting …
really you’r the lord of ring
every time I see the DVD I learn new things ,,, thanks
Awesome!!
I Finished!
I Finished Animator Friendly Rigging! AAAAAAAALLLLLLLLRRRRIIIGGGHHHHT!!!
-i only got one (or two) minor tweaks, and then its completely done!
I’ll post Carmen (the character i did my rigging on) for you as soon as i’m done with those minor tweaks. (or i’ll beg for help with these last few blerrie bugs)
Either way, expect her up soon!
Thanks, Jason.
I learned more from you in these past few months than i did in the past 5 years of using maya.
Rock on.
heya Lens!
cooooool! Congrats man! I’m glad that this stuff was useful for ya! it makes me very happy.
hmmm where can i upload it? I dont have a site unfortunately. can i email it?
hmm.. I think there are a few sites you can use to host your own content. Anyone know of any?
this is nice option :-
http://www.mediafire.com/about.php
Hi all
I’ve found a pretty good site i can load files up on.
Sorry about the ads! -i can’t help that! but here’s the file.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/47l7vw
Ps. the UI is exactly the same UI script Jason gave with AFR.
The UI does not work if you reference the character unfortunately. (one of those bugs i couldn’t get right)
enjoy!
i don’t know what to say;;
during every minute of your dvds
i learned something
its just a huge pakage of knowledge
thanks Rakesh! that means a lot to me!
Hey there i was just wondering if i can get some feedback on the rig i created… bad feedback is welcome!
I’m working on a 20 second animation with it now, and i have found some more bugs with it. But ‘d still like to find out what people think…
thanks!
where can i find the fix for the getstretchaxis script?
i’ve been looking on the site but can’t find it.
it is listed in the fixes updates.pdf.
thanks.
love the dvds!!!
hmm.. get stretchaxis.. I’ll look for it.
@jason
thanks.
It’s a fix for the stretchy IK creation when the axis is a negative.
Hi Jason, great dvds!!!
Question regarding the afr shelf… my file does not have the ’2′ at the end, as mentioned above, but still it doesn’t load correctly. I copied the images from the ‘support files’ folder into my icons folder and the shelf is empty. Any ideas of what the issue could be??…thx
heya dave!
thanks for the kind words!
are you getting any errors in the script editor when you try and load the shelf? are you on windows or mac or linux?
cheers!
Hey Jason, thank you for your amazing dvd’s.
I have a problem though, I’m looking for the fix for the stretchy IK creation when axis is negative, on my mirrored joints.
Could it be found somewhere to download?
Thanks in advance.
Don’t worry, I took care of it thanks to the fixes.pdf.
Thanks a lot again, you really learned to me how to rig.
Hi Jason,
I might have a problem with my js_matchObjUI. It launches fine and I have the option to load an object but all the options/settings below that are missing their options (Match Object Options, Match Iteration Options…). I am running on a Linux. Have you heard of this issue before or have any ideas how to fix it?
Thanks in advance.
The rigging tutorials are great.
-Mike
Heya Mike!
I haven’t heard of this issue before… are you getting any errors in the script editor?
thanks man!
Hey Jason,
The Shelf button launches it with no errors:
source js_matchObjUI;js_matchObjUI;
I can load an object into the first field but then I get no other options (nothing under Match Object Options, Match Iteration Options…etc).
Hi. Same problem here to the letter. I thought about hacking things and building a tabless interface but the prospects upon opening the two scripts seems a little daunting. For what it’s worth I’m running 9.04 ubuntu. I’m thinking it’s a motif problem. I’ve had issues with custom UI’s in general. But I’m a bit of a linux noob. If I manage something useable I’ll drop a line.
Thanks Ben! Let me know if you find anything.
[solved]
Hi. Seems windows dynamically resizes stuff to fit the content but Linux requires that you dictate it so just add the flag for height to the frameLayout command in the js_matchObjUi to something useful we found -h 120 for the $fl1 and -h 200 worked well for all the others. You won’t be able to collapse the tabs but the script now works fine.
Works like a charm. Thanks very much Ben.
Hi Sir, I’ve set up the elbow-pin method that u have explained in AFR , and it works fine on the left arm. but when i put it on the right arm, it flips out the geometry of the upper arm. Any solutions?
Hello Sir, I’m done with the whole rig was able to apply it to a sample character I made, how do I bind it to the high-res mesh, its a broken rig, do I select all joints and smooth bind it? many thanks, by the way great work with dvd tutorials
Hi, I’m having some trouble with the right arm of my rig. I assume this is because the mel script I have is not the most recent one, but I can’t find the link to the update that is talked about in the pdf above js_getStretchAxis.mel Can anyone point me in the right direction.
Never mind, fixed it =D
Hi Jason,
Today from AFR 03A, I saw that I do not have sdk copy,sdk auto,sdk length,mel blend,add A,mel match in my Animation Friendly Rigging shelf. If I put them in the script folder, well they appear in the shelf with the remaining or I should do something else. Thank you sir.
Sapphire ( same person from cgtalk ).
@Sapphire
Heya sapphire! if you have the scripts and put them in your script folder, they won’t necessarily appear on the shelf. But you should have recieved a shelf when you purchased AFR 03A that has those scripts on it.. did you check your prefs directory? the shelf.mel should be in there.. please let me know if you do or don’t find it!
Hi Jason
Yesterday only I found this page, I was searching for it.
I was thinking that the shelf is same in all the folders, but now I removed the previous shelf and I use the shelf in AFR_04B and it is having the scripts ready
, thanks again.
Helooo Jason Sir
Im Big Fan of you , im really happy to say i met in abai fest 2008 ,, it was happy movements i didn’t took picture but i still i remember few words wat u said …and Oops sorry let introduce myself
Im Balaji,Rigging Artist from Bangalore,India nothing question i want critics abt my Work but i have Small (WIP) Video abt my rigging stuff …i have to add few stuff like Quadruped n Hanuman(INDIAN HULK) soon i’ll upload n send to you
i don’t know whether u have time to reply may be im wasting ur 4 mins time of me im sorry for that ..
But i just waiting for ur reply sir
Thank you & regards
Balaji