Character Rigging for Beginners: 01 Skeleton

hello everyone and welcome to a brand new rigging series character rigging for beginners in this series of videos I'll walk you through start to finish on how to create a human I can rig for your characters since this videos will target artists who are new to rigging I'll try to minimize a use of scripting math nodes and third body plugins and just stick to the out of shelf tools and Maya having said that the emphasis will be on the workflow and the principles not individual tools we'll try to keep everything simple so steps are super simple to follow and at the end of it you'll have a solid I care rate for your own use and for your own character so let's dive right in the first step is to start with the skeleton now I'm not going to introduce individual tools I'd rather use them throughout the tutorial and may record separate videos and explain individual rigging tools but for now we're just going to assume that you all have basic knowledge of simple rigging tools in Maya so I have a Sam character here in the scene and it's very simple we've got a character eyes are separate and the hair is a single geometry I've already gone ahead and uv-map the whole thing and textured it and it's ready to go so first things first I want to put everything on a display layer so I won't select the character by accident since we're going to rig this character so I'm going to call this Geo layer and I'm going to reference it and save anytime you want to turn off the layer you can easily select the V and toggle the visibility all so make sure this scene is clean there's no unused note there's no extra influence note that you haven't been used there is no unused shaders of already cleaned up the scene and deleted the history of my geometry and it's ready to go now first step is to build the electrons I'm going to shading and make sure x-ray joints is enabled also I make sure that wireframe on shaded is also enabled because I would like to see the lines on my model and since I'm in perspective view I will switch to orthographic I have a tendency to start with orthographic and just it's I found that it's more accurate to place the joints and look after the skeleton now from here I'm going to skeleton create joints option box I'm going to reset the tool so my attributes matches yours and I'm going to start with my first joint which is the root of the thigh click then I'll bring the skeleton down to knee and we're going ahead and create the joint right at the ankle and end the chain right there by pressing enter on the keyboard now at any point of time if you would like to make a change to the position of the joint you select the joint you press W to go to move tool and hold down D to reposition the joint for the most part mine looks good that's fantastic I've got to go to perspective and move it aside I better use actually front gives me a better accurate read and I think I need to rotate it in a y-axis and align it better but I really don't want to touch any rotational values when we talk about intermediate or advanced way of rigging it is absolutely fine to go ahead and change rotation values but this tutorial is for beginners and we try not to touch that first we use join orient instead so I'm hold down holding down control and middle mouse button and just drag ever so slightly that should be a good position for the rig now if you think the joint size is a bit too small at any point of time we can go to display you can go to animation and you can change the joint size here I think point nine is a good value so I'm not going to change it for now now I'm going to switch back to my side view and I'm going to zoom in and switch to wireframe and I've got the last joint here what I'm going to do going to select create joints but I'm not going to click on the last joint because as soon as you click you continue the chain and that's something that I don't want to do for this example what I want to do is to select the skeleton create joints and just click anywhere in the canvas bring it to the position roughly and then continue with my ball roll and ended joint right at the end of the toes outside the geometry and press Enter now definitely this joint should be aligned accurately the problem is it's kind of sharing the same radius and it's a bit difficult to select so I'm going to go to channel box and we've got a radius channel he reduce this to probably point six or maybe point five so it's easier to differentiate now one thing that I would like to do right off the bat I would like to put few tools in my shelves the first one is local rotation axis so I'm gonna go to display I'm gonna go to transform display local rotation axis I'm gonna hold down ctrl shift click and add it to my shelf I'm going to enable recollection access for my ankle joint now I'm going to snap this joint to the local rotation axis of my end ankle joint to do that I'm going to hold down or press W hold down the middle mouse button and just snap it to the position so these joints are sharing the same pivot now and it is very important to do that otherwise you get really wobbly deformation now it's time to go ahead and fix the orientation in the side view so I'm going to select the foot bone now right now the orientation of my joints is not accurate so what I'm aiming for at the moment is X to be down the chain just like if I select on this guy and enable local rotation access you can see X is down the chain so first things first I'm gonna select the end joint and zero out the orientation of the ankle end joint which has got the bigger radius and then I'm gonna select the foot bone the inner join and I can see that the orientation is in fact actually down the chain now later on when we talk about plugins in intermediate and more advanced topics and rigging are we gonna discuss many plugins that can just do this for us or matically but for now every time you want to orient something manually you can simply select the bone shift P to unparent the joint after frame and then you can go ahead and fix the orientation of this bone however you want to I can just press or punch in a value in here or hold down control middle mouse button drag to left and right to change any of these values that I want for now this looks okay because this in fact shows me that this bone shows down the chain now I'm going to select the child which is the ball roll and shift select the foot bone and press P to establish the connection again and right now I have these two as two separate chains and that's not good I want to connect them so I'm going to select the child shift select the parent and press the P key as soon as I do that it gives me the entire chain completely connected and just gonna select the inner joint and toggle off local rotation axis that's much better you just need to make sure that the orientation is right so if I press e on this joint and rotate it in x-axis you should see that we are getting the right deformation I'm gonna control Z on that I have no intention of rotating any joint so now once we've created at least one chain like that it's a good idea to go ahead and rename everything to make sure that we have just the right naming convention and that is super important the way we do that is I'm gonna hold down shift click on that joint to reveal every single joint that I have here and I'm gonna just name them on one by one so I will be using the naming convention of G and T for joint underscore L for left and Phi 0 1 I'm gonna copy the name and I'm gonna continue down the chain this one is G NT l Shin 0 1 next down to the joint I'm just gonna zoom in and hide the grid now after two bones here one is the inner one is the outer the other is the end bone of the foot chain so I'm going to call this joint underscore and underscore ell ankle and I select the name copy-paste for the next one its joint L ankle 0-1 next up down the chain this one is going to be G NT not end rather underscore ell underscore foot 0 1 and the end joint is of course is joint end L toe zero one fantastic everything is named properly and we are going to follow that type of naming convention every step of the way now it's time to put together our I care handle going to go to skeleton and gonna go all the way down to create I can handle and I make sure that in current solver rotate plane is selected since we may make a mistake by clicking on the wrong joint I'm gonna do it through the outliner so the first joint I'm going to select is G and thiele thigh and the last joint I'm gonna pick is G and T end left ankle now if I go to if I go to display go to animation and tear off the menu you can actually increase the size of each handle so you can actually select it let us select the I can handle and if I move it you can see that I managed to lift the foot that would be the I can handle for the left foot great let's rename of my I can handle as well I'm just gonna call this RP for low rotate plane i k underscore ell underscore leg 0 1 now it's time for me to mirror the joints to the other side because I don't want to go through the manual process of doing all of this again I just I can use a nifty trick to mirror everything to the other side now with the thigh joint selected you go to skeleton mirror joints the option box just going to reset the tool and all I need to do is search for L and replace it with our now the mirror function we want behavior and mirror access needs to be Y Z just think of an imaginary plane and that from this side goes to the other side so it is going to be Y Z and they press mirror then if I go through the naming convention you can see the naming commission stays the same but every L has been replaced with letter R fantastic I'm gonna copy the name for my I can handle and change L to R for the right leg just very quickly gonna select it and test works just fine now it's time to clean up as we go I don't want to leave anything for the at the end I just want to clean up every step of the way that I go through so I'm gonna put I case into one group call them i kz r1 if i go to its channel box i really don't need to see transformation rotation and scales i'm going to right-click on it lock and hide selected i'm going to do the same thing with the skeleton select both chains ctrl g to create a skeleton i'm gonna call this skeleton 0 1 and do the same thing i'm gonna select translate rotate and scale and right click lock and hide select it so every time we create a skeleton that goes into skeleton folder and every time we add and like you handle that goes into ik0 1 everything is nice and clean now it's time to add joins for the torso and the head now what i want at this point is to create that root joint right at the pelvis area but one thing that is a common mistake is artists try to just eyeball the root joint but the problem is with this light very minor miscalculation the joint becomes quite wobbly so i'm gonna show you a really neat trick on how to place that joint for the root right at the center of the pelvis to do that we need to create a locator so let's go to create locator and if you think it's a bit difficult to see from local scale you can always go ahead and increase its size and increase this to something like two now select the two thigh chains and shift select the locator last and go to constraint point make sure to reset the settings and press add now with maintain off set off that locator snaps right in the middle of these two bones now we know exactly where to snap our roots bone very neat I'm just gonna expand the locator and get rid of that point constraint it serves its purpose we don't need it anymore now we're gonna duplicate this locator and bring it up to the area where the chest should end and Nick should start so I'm gonna press control D on the locator and move it in x-axis can I try to find this neckline here so that gives me a good understanding on where the spine starts and where the whole chain upward ends so we can start with the neck bone fantastic I'm gonna go and select the skeleton and turn off its visibility for now and I'm gonna switch back to orthographic you can even go ahead and turn off the geometry if you want so it leaves you with just these two now with these two I'm gonna go to skeleton create and hold down a V to snapped one of the locator and click again with V held down and press Enter and there I have my spine chain obviously it's just one bone and we need to segment it but we know for a fact that the location of each bone is accurate now it's time to use insert join tool to segment the spine chain I'm going to go to select skeleton and go insert joint and the way you use this tool you just click and drag so click and drag that would be your back joint again click and drag that would be your joint going to expand in the outliner and I'm going to name them here so JMT routes 0 1 there is no left and right of course J and T back to your 1 and J and T chest 0 1 going to bring back the skeleton and I'm gonna bring back the character as well and again there are different rigs different methods some rigs have more than three three bones for the spine but remember we try to keep things simple for now so that's that let's go ahead actually and continue the chain and create the neck and the head so I'm gonna click here to create my head bone take care of the head bone and I'm just gonna connect these two that's gonna be the neck bone so this is the child shift select the parent and press the P key and there I have it I probably it would be a good idea for me to just slide back the neck bone a little so I'm gonna hold down D with the move tool selected move that back a little it's always a good idea to have the joint at the center of the geometry if you can just gonna press ctrl a and zero out the orientation of my end bone would be a good time to go ahead and continue with my naming convention so this is going to be J and T underscore next year one the other one is going to be J and T head zero one and of course the end joint is jnt' and head zero one now I'm going to switch back to front and I don't need these two locators I'm just gonna select them press Delete to clean up the scene now it's time to create the pelvis bone we do have the root bone that we want but let's create the pelvis bone and later on we parent the pelvis bone to the root bone so I'm gonna go to side view and I'm going to hide skeleton again just to have access to the root bone only that's our root bone and I'm gonna hide I care handles as well I don't select anything by accident and I'm gonna go and select the skeleton and create joint I'm not gonna click on the joint I'm gonna click away and move here and just eyeball it click one more time to bring this joint down press Enter of course now we need to go back and fix its pivot so I'm going to go to perspective I'm going to zoom in probably we need to use the trick that we used for the ankle so I'm gonna select the rib bone enable local rotation axis and I'm gonna select the then you joined the pelvis bone that we created and hold down the middle mouse and just snap it to the position so these two share the same pivot it is really important to do that if you have a minor offset then the character is going to wobble I'm just gonna check the end joint as well make sure it's outside the geometry and of course as usual I'm gonna just zero out its orientation so it is down and the chain is the pelvis down the chain or not let's have a look so if I select the pelvis and have a look it is actually looking up the reason that it's this one is okay because this chain is going up so basically down the chain is up for this chain so that one is an exception and we're fine with it but for the most part for the arms for the legs X should be pointing down the chain so just be mindful of that and constantly check let's rename these two I'm gonna rename this one to Jayanthi underscore hell this zero 1 and the end joint of course is J and T and pelvis zero let's make the connections let's connect the pelvis to the root so I'm going to select the pelvis which is the child shift select the root which is the parent and press P now pelvis is part of the root now let's do the same thing for the thighs I'm gonna bring back the skeleton and let's do that as well with 2 5 owns selected because these are going to be the child of the main root bone shift select the joint for the pelvis make sure not to select the root but the pelvis and press B ok let's bring back the character and we successfully managed to create skeleton for our lower body now let's create the arm joints now thinking about the preferred angle of this chain it might be a good idea to start from the top view so we can add a little bit of Bend around the elbow so let's go to orthographic top and I'm going to zoom in and I'm going to just hide the hair and switch back to wireframe and I'd be good idea to go to skeleton and turn off its its visibility to off I'm going to put these joints into skeleton and we deal with it later so we have just a clean geometry to work with so for that instead of just drawing the chain I'm going to make use of this snap until here snap to the center of geometry button just to make sure that I can just create my chain in the middle of the geometry to do that I need to make sure that the display layer is not frozen I'm going to enable this snapping tool here go to skeleton create joins and I want to start with the around the area that the arm falls down so that should be run this area continue and create the elbow joint and rest let's enter to create the chain now because of that snapping tool if I go to front we can see that the joint in fact has been successfully created and it's the middle of the joint it's not sitting right on the ground plane I might actually go ahead and press the hold down D and press W and bring this joint just in a little where the arm faults might bring this up the whole thing and select this joint hold down V and bring this one up a little let's rename them really quick so the first one is going to be J and T L shoulder 0 1 2 copy the name go to the next one it's going to be j NT L forearm 0 1 or you can call this elbow and for the last one is going to be J and T underscore and underscore L wrist 0 1 now next is to create a clavicle joint now by the front view try to kind of trace back the line of the neck and go down that would be around the place where you just place the clavicle joint with the joint create tools selected I'm gonna click once and click twice and press Enter let's rename them real quick first one is going to be GN t L clavicle zero one and I'm gonna copy and paste gan t and clavicle l clavicle zr1 now right off the bat you may have noticed that the position of the pivot for these two are not identical I'm just gonna freeze the geometry so I want selected by accident so again the trick that we always use enable location axes for the shoulder select the end clavicle hold on V middle-mouse and snap it to the position so these two should share the same pivot now select the child which is the shoulder bone or arm bone shift select the clavicle which is the parent and press P so these two are connected as for the clavicle joint select the child which is the clavicle shift select the chest bone and press P now everything is nicely connected alright we're almost there let's create the fingers I'm just going to use that snapping tool again to create fingers because I found it's actually quite helpful as this tool just targets the middle of the geometry which is really convenient so I'm just gonna unfreeze the geometry I'm gonna switch back to top view and start with these fingers here so with the center to geometry snapping tool selected I'm going to create four joints for each knuckle so one two three and four now you may want to go back and check them of course but for now let's just create them from the top view one two three and four to perspective I need to spend more time on the thumb obviously the orientation of the thumb needs to be correct I'm just gonna draw the joints to begin with and then after that I'm just gonna go ahead and fix the orientation so thumb two three and four right at the end now one thing you should be mindful of is the bend should happen in rotate Z so if you're selecting rotate Z and you're bending it sideways then you definitely need to go back and reorient everything now I'm going to spend a little bit of time and bring each bone to position gonna take off the snap and hold down D and move each bone to the position and this may take a while I'm just gonna either pause the video or increase the playback speed and do the cleanup for those also I'm going to select each end bone and select its orientation and frisée orientation for each end bone you all right it's done I've gone ahead and make sure they're right at the center and if I go to local rotation axis you can see X is down the chain and things are working beautifully so that's all done also I've gone ahead and renamed them as well the way I renamed them just to show you really quickly and this is something that you guys can do I started with J ntl thumb a the first knuckle and then B C and D with the extension of end same thing with index J and TL index a 0 1 B 0 1 C 0 1 and D 0 1 with the end J and TL middle a B C and D and then J and TL ring a b c and d and of course pinkie l pinkie a 0 1 B 0 1 C 0 1 and J on T and L pinkie and this one is going to be of course D 0 1 so please go ahead and rename the joint spent the time and make sure everything is clean now once that's done then you select all 5 so pinky ring and then middle and index followed by thumb and select the parent which is the wrist bone last and press P key to parent them and on a sudden everything goes to the joint group in the skeleton folder everything is nice and clean good actually I noticed that the hip bone is way too high just going to lower it down a little now it's time to plug the ik a handle mirror chain to the other side and we're pretty much done so I'm gonna zoom in go to skeleton and create I can handle I want to plug the IQ handle to the shoulder bone so if I select this this is the shoulder bone and on the other one is the end clavicle joint and I don't want to have the IQ handle on that I want to have it on the shoulder bone so I'm gonna select jnt' shoulder I'm gonna click on it and if you have difficulty clicking on that you can always use the outliner and I'm gonna select the wrist and I can handle is created I'm gonna call this RP I K left arm 0 1 I'm going to select my clavicle I think I still have local rotation axis on it ok good so I'm going to select the clavicle go to skeleton and mirror the joints with the same structure replacing L with our behavior and Y Z to the other side I'm just going to check really quick to make sure it's done a good job yes so all the elzar now are now mere joint never bring the I can handle so I have to create the I can handle for the right hand side as well so create the IQ handle select the right shoulder bone and end it at the right wrist bone RP i ke r arm 0 1 now I'm going to select both IQ handles and place in into ika folder I think P alright the only thing that is left to do is to set up the skeleton for the eyes I'm going to zoom in select the character press H on it I might as well go ahead and hide the right eye then I go to the side view just like what we did for the ankle and the shoulder we want to target the center of the geometry create our I bone and ended outside the geometry so I'm going to go and press 4 to go to wireframe enable local rotation access and go to skeleton create joints I'm going to create the joint outside the geometry first let's reduce its radius to something like 0.2 so it's easier to select w to select the move tool hold down V and snap it to the center of the I gonna end the joint outside the geometry then I select the I geometry turn off its local rotation axis and let's rename the I joined jnt' l o0 1 and for the end I joined is going to be JN t end li 0 1 alright red let's select the I bone shift select the parent which is the head bone and press P and with the I bone selected let's mirror it across I'm just gonna go to skeleton mirror joints time to bring back our right eye and it's indeed snapping right at the center of the eye great let's go ahead and actually skin the I geometry to the eye bone so you don't need to deal with it in the next lesson so we select the our geometry shift select the eye bone or the other way around doesn't matter really go to bind skin and the only attribute I change is by on two selected joints and go bind skin so if I select the I join you can see it just the eye geometry follows the hydrant I'm gonna do the same thing for the other eye select the geometry shift select the eye bone I'm going to go to skin and bind skin now let's rotate you can see the eye follows the bone let's do the same thing for the hair and skin a 2d boom just select the hair geometry shift select the head bone and we're gonna go to wineskin now if I were to select the head bone both eyes and the hair geometry should follow good all right that is pretty much it we successfully finish the skeleton for the entire character and we're ready for the next lesson where we bind the skeleton to the geometry and get it ready for control setups thank you very much for tuning in and see you in the next lesson

Channel: SARKAMARI

Views: 61,468

Keywords: Rigging made simple, IK handle, IK Rigging in Maya, Simple Rigging, IK rig for character, Autodesk Maya Rigging, Reza Sarkamari, Skeletoon Tool, Rotate Plane IK, Rigging for Beginners

Id: rAZpH3m7K5U

Length: 39min 44sec (2384 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020