[Blender 2.8/2.9] Rig ANYTHING with Rigify #2 - the Rigify Workflow

in this chapter I would like to give you a brief overview of the Auriga 5 workflow that we'll be following in this course the first step that I outlined is not really related to reify it's just a general thing that we do when we rig any character and that is to ensure that the character itself is properly set up these are not absolute rules they're just my personal guidelines that I use to make sure that my character is prepared for rigging we'll explore these in the next chapter so let's move on step two is the step that I really want to talk about in this chapter and that is creating a so-called metric a metric is a simplified version of your final rigged metrics are constructed from standard blender armatures there's nothing really special about them except that some of the bones in this metallic armature are tagged with a special property and that property tells rigify that this is one of its building blocks so if I go to blender and I just create a single bone this single bone can be a metric can become a metric that rigify can work with I mentioned building blocks in so let's explore what those are building block is just the word that I use officially inside rigify they're called rig types rigify offers four categories of rig types there are limbs spines basic building blocks and there are two other presets that we will look at under limbs there is an arm preset which is basically a human arm there is a palm preset this preset helps create a very subtle but important deformation in in the palm of the hand there is a finger preset and these three connect and work together we'll see how that happens later on there is a human leg preset there is a preset called paw but really it is used to rig animal legs and there is a tentacle preset which obviously can be used to rig a tentacle but it is a really useful preset that can be used in a variety of situations we'll see how we can use it to rig the face of a character and we'll even use it to simulate simple muscle deformations under spy's you have a basic spine a head preset with which also includes the neck of the character and also a tail preset and head and tail often connect to the spine we'll see how that works later on there is a group called basic in there you have a single bone property this is a really straightforward building block sometimes you want a single bone without any automations to carry over from your metric to your final rig when you do use this property and it's going to work similar to the single bone there is a bone chain property times you just want a chain of bones without any automations then you would use this preset the next two are called pivot and row copy and even though they are under basic they are very advanced and we'll talk about them later in the course there is a face building block it is a very versatile face rig which can be used to rig a human face but it can even be adapted to animal faces the experimental chain preset is a chain of bendy bones and since it is experimental you should use it with caution and then there are the pre-built metrics when you activate rigify and will activate rigify together in the next chapter here I'm just going to demonstrate but when you activate rigify and press shift a under armature there will be a couple of additional armatures that you can choose from one is called human metric there are a couple of animal presets and under basic you have basic human and basic quadruped it many people think that this is what rigify is all about but really the metrics are nothing more than a predefined combinations of the building blocks that I just talked about here I have a special scene that I have prepared in this scene I have created some of the pre-built metrics and if I go to pose mode I have color coded there Ric types or building blocks using bone groups so you can see that the human metric consists of two legs highlighted in blue this red chain of bones is the spine preset then in yellow we have a head and neck preset these bones here are an arm preset attached to the arm is a pal preset in green these light blue bones are finger attached 2d to the pump reset this pink structure here is the phase preset that I just mentioned the purple bones are single bones so basic single bone and these single bones can be manipulated by the user in the final rig the black bones down here in the pelvis area are also single bones however the user won't be able to manipulate those in the final rig they are just here to help with the weight painting of the character um let's look at another one let's say the bird again in red we have a spine basic spine in yellow there is a head and neck preset the dark red bones here are a tail preset the purple ones are again a single bones that can be manipulated by the user and here they're used as feather bones this green bone is used to manipulate the wing of the bird but really it is a tentacle preset and down here in the fingers or claws we also have a tentacle preset in green as I said as I mentioned the tentacle is very versatile and very useful preset so yeah my point is that there is nothing special nothing magical about these pre-built metrics they are just a combination of these building blocks and when you understand how rigify works you will be able to build your own metrics out of these building blocks or you can extend the existing metrics let's move on to the next point in this presentation and that is how we generate metrics as you probably already understand there is a quick way to create metrics and that is through this menu that appears after you activate rigify I call this workflow the beginner workflow even though I call it beginner workflow I'm not saying that it's bad it is quick and efficient you get good results because these metrics that you get from from this menu are prepared by real professionals and they're going to just work you get some really nice automations with this workflow and the only problem with it is that it's slightly limited you are limited to a human a bird a cat wolf horse and shark and sure you can use the wolf to rig a dog or the shark to maybe a rig some sort of fish but as soon as you try to do anything more complicated you will run into the limitations of these pre-built metrics and when people do run into these limitations they sometimes try to extend the capabilities of these rigs by either combining parts of the existing metrics or copying and pasting parts and I call this approach Frankenstein metrics and I'm not very fond of it I don't recommend it the one upside of this workflow is that it does give you extended possibilities you can do more with your rigs possibly but there are still some limitations to what you can do and the biggest problem with this workflow is that you may get errors you will get errors and because you don't understand how rigify works you won't know how to fix them so I really want people to use the advanced workflow which is what this course is about to use the advanced workflow you need to understand how rigify works and then you get almost unlimited possibilities you can build almost any rig since rigify needs things to be set up in a certain way you may still get some errors but you will know what to do about them there are still some limitations currently rigify does not include any presets that help you with mechanical rigging so if you need to rig a piston or caterpillar tracks then you are on your own rigify does things in in its own way so if you're really OCD you may not like this way so rig if I may not be for you and finally if you have a pre-existing pipeline then rigify may not fit into it rigify is already used in serious pipelines I'm just saying that if your pre-existing pipeline has really strict rules then there may be some problems integrating reified into it so the only downside of using the advanced workflow of rigify is that it is not very intuitive to do when you activate rigify parts of it are over here in the armature tab some are kind of hidden inside the bone tab some appear over here in the end panel and if you don't know what you're looking for then it may be hard to find all of the features of rigify or how they work but this is what this course is about we are going to learn how to use rigify properly and it's going to be quick and easy let's run through the rest of these steps quickly once you have a metric you want to make sure that it is well aligned to your character we're going to do this step properly in the next chapter here I'm just demonstrating really quickly this alignment is not perfect but let's say for the sake of this presentation that it is good so the only thing to keep in mind is that you want to do this step in edit mode the next step is an optional step and that is to set up bone groups and layers there will be a special chapter dedicated to this topic but this step is meant to make your final trick more user-friendly the next step in this process is really simple but really important rigify gives you this generate rig button when you click it if everything is set up correctly then magic will happen and reify will produce a highly usable rig that you can use with your characters and so since I used the pre-built metric my rig will generate without any problems there is a chance that things may not be set up correctly so in that case you may have to go back to your metric tweak it and then try to press generate rig again in this case my Rick generated without problems so the next step is to test your rig for testing purposes it's best to just parent your character to your generated rigged with automatic weights that gives you decent weight painting very quickly and you can experiment with your rig and see if it works well so the next step in this process is to ask yourself does my rig behave the way I expect it to do and if it does then you're basically done and you can go to another step which is outside of this rig if I workflow and that is finishing your weight painting and then posing and animating a character but there is a chance that you won't be happy with the behavior of the rig in which case you can go back to your metric tweak it add more building blocks to it and then you can regenerate your rig and that is a very powerful and very unique feature of rigify I don't think it's available in any other rigging system or any other 3d package we are going to be using this feature very often in this course and so you may have to edit your meta rig a couple of times and regenerate a couple of times but eventually you will be happy with your rig and then your work with rediff eye is finished and you can go to the final weight painting posing animation and so on thanks for watching the next chapter will be available soon or it may already be uploaded details will be in the video description or just go to cg dive comm / rigify where you'll find the latest chapters additional resources and information 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Channel: CGDive

Views: 49,760

Keywords: rigify, blender, b3d, tutorial, 2.9, 2.90, 2.90.1, 2.82, 2.83, 2.83.1, 2.83.2, 2.83.3, 2.83.4, 2.83.5, 2.83.6, 2.83.7, 2.83.8, 2.83.9, 2.91, 2.92

Id: yTm35Fte_Gs

Length: 15min 20sec (920 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 26 2020