#RiggingInMaya | Part 01 | Model Evaluation

hello and welcome to the first video in this workshop to quickly recap what we are going to do is take this model and rig it if you would like to see how this was made you can find details on the screen now showing where you can find the workshop looking at the model we can see that we will primarily need a biped rig but his legs are more like canine limbs so we will need to tackle those in a different way that just means the workshop covers more areas because we will see how to create both biped and quadruped limbs really quick question for you now how would you like to help support the future of this channel and keep these videos free well there are a few options one would be to simply treat me to a coffee at my coffee page as a quick and easy thank you you could also grab something from the ant cgi store or one of my other online stores like cubebrush and gumroad this is where you will also find the course files that go with this course so you can download them and follow along however for as little as 99p a month you could join the ant cgi club there are a few ways you can join you could head over to my patron or coffee pages or alternatively simply hit that join button below this video in short the more support i get the more time i can dedicate to creating more high quality content just for you to get more information on how you can help follow the link on the screen or in the description below okay now that's out of the way let's get on with the video now before you start any rigging work it's important that you examine the model thoroughly that is unless you are the person who built it but even then there are some areas that you should be aware of most of the time you will be given a model from a work colleague or a client and asked to build the rig but don't assume that because someone else has built the model that is ready for animation at this early stage it's crucial you check the following areas because doing so now will save a lot of time and headaches later in the rigging process okay so let's bring back the ui and to quickly show and hide all you need to do is press control and space let's switch to the side view i'll just hide those lights the first thing we need to check is the actual scale of the model you should always check with the client so you can get an exact size our rig will be scalable but it's better for the animators to be working with a clean rig from the offset rather than one whose size has been changed first we go to windows settings preferences preferences we need to check what units mayer is using let's look under the settings tab here we can see the working units by default it's usually set to centimeters which is exactly what we need now we know the working units we can adjust the grid so we can see how tall this creature is let's close that and now go to display grid and open the options let's reset this and apply it you can see that the grid has changed and each square now represents one centimeter now the last thing we need is to have to count each one of these to work out the right size but luckily we can adjust the grid settings to simplify things we ideally need a line at each meter which is 100 centimeters so let's change each of the units to 100 so we just get a line at every 100 centimeter point we should also reduce the subdivisions to 1 because we just want to see the main lines if we apply that now the grid has simplified and we can instantly see that the creature is just over a metre tall according to the client ideally he needs to be closer to 1.8 or 1.9 meters we can now adjust the scale to make him bigger the next thing we need to check is that his feet are actually on the floor plane and not floating above it or below it i have a floor plane in the scene already which is just a polygon plane which i added just so we can see the shadows and also so we know where the real world ground level is so we can see he is clearly below ground level i'll just turn off the textures so there we can see he needs to be moved up that looks better bring the textures back okay so that's the scale and vertical position fixed he is roughly 1.8 meters tall now and his feet are planted on the ground perfect now we need to make sure the horizontal position is right let's switch to the front view so this is the grid line and it represents the middle of the scene what we can see is that the model is offset slightly we need the middle of the model to be on this grid line this makes using mayer's symmetry tools easier and is better when creating joints and also mirroring skin weights again moving this back will make your life easier so let's select the main group and this time i'm going to use the snapping tools to help me snap to the grid all i need to do is hold down x and you will be able to see the grid snapping icon update up here to tell us is active if i just move along the x-axis now you will see that the model snaps to the grid points i'll just double check that the middle of the model is sat exactly on the grid obviously this works better if the model is symmetrical just like this one is okay that's the positioning updated whenever you do anything like this it's good practice to also freeze the transforms so the models don't have any translation rotation or scale values left on them always maintain clean values to do this we select the main group and go to modify freeze transforms and open the options i'll reset the settings first and click apply because we did this on the main group it will also apply it to everything beneath that group one other step you should take is to update the pivot points on each model too you can do this quickly using the modify center pivot tool this isn't essential but it's just another step that i like to do with my models before i rig them ok those are all clean and centered next we need to check the eyes some character modelers like to pose the eye sometimes but that's not ideal for the rig i'll just isolate these so we can see here that the eyes are rotated they are rotated in each of the view too ideally we need them to be looking straight ahead this is because we will be adding eye controls in front of the head so the eyes need to be looking at the controls and not below them the alternative is to build the controls with an offset on them which can cause problems with the rig and animation especially if you are planning on transferring animation between characters so it's better to have every character looking dead ahead and then the animators compose the eyes later if needed you also need the eyes to be focused on the controls themselves so what we need to do is move these back just rotating them will be fine actually i can update one eye and then copy the values across so let's just press h to hide this one we want the wireframe to be back at the default position so as close to matching the horizontal and vertical lines as possible yeah that looks better once done you would just freeze the transforms again to clean up the rotations but we need those values for a few more minutes let's bring back the other eye i can just press shift h to make the last hidden objects visible again so all we need to do is copy the rotation values across the right eye still looks wrong but that's because we need to invert some of the values because this eye is mirrored so we can just remove the minus from the z-rotation and add it to the y rotation okay that's much better now we just need to freeze the transforms on the eyes and make sure the pivots are centered too again this isn't essential but it can come in useful sometimes when you need to find the exact center of an object for joint placement so that's the model's scale and position corrected now we need to check what is probably the most important element of any model and that's its topology i'll switch on default lighting and disable the textures i'll also turn on wireframe on shaded so we can see how the polygons are formed so now we can see the model the first areas i like to check are the head and face when working on a facial rig you need to make sure the head can support one and i can see straight away this one won't the mouth has been modelled closed so we can't open it if i hide the head there are no inner mouth teeth or tongue models these elements along with the wall of the mouth are often referred to as a mouth bag so if this was to have a facial rig i would need to contact the artist who built it and asked them to update the head other areas we would need to check are how the edges flow along the surface and how many edge loops are around deforming areas like the eyelids and lips there needs to be enough topology so the eyes can close and the lips can deform in this instance these areas would need adjusting too there's not really much point in doing it at this stage because we're not going to be adding a facial rig when building a head model or in fact when building any organic model you should try to follow the natural muscle lines so basically the polygon edges try to match how the underlying muscles are formed this means the model will deform in a much more natural way when animated so for this workshop it unfortunately means we won't be building a facial rig but we will be looking at a more detailed facial rig setup in a future course let's instead focus on the rest of the model it looks like there are quite a few problem areas here we have a lot of triangles which are not an issue when placed correctly but these seem to be all over the place here for example in the inner thigh we have similar issues up here with lots of triangles which aren't needed there are triangles up here and down here and here in fact there are a lot of areas that need reworking on this model the problem with all these triangles is they will cause problems as the model deforms the surface will pinch and tear in areas and in some cases cause unwanted creases the fingers need to be able to bend so it looks like we may need to add another edge loop around the knuckles we need this because as the finger bends the polygons around this area will stretch and ultimately look very sharp and angular having another edge loop will give us a nice natural curve instead lots more triangles up here okay so to be honest at this stage i would normally send this model back to the artist with a list of suggested changes and improvements but instead let's use it as a learning exercise and update the model ourselves it is important to state though that you shouldn't do this without the client's permission they may have a pipeline which needs to be adhered to so they may have to do the updates themselves in house okay so let's update this topology first it's good practice to back up the main model so let's duplicate it and rename the original and then press h to hide it we need a copy because later we will use that to update this model's uvs let's isolate the main body model ideally we need nice clean lines made up of polygon strips with quads not triangles something like this model ok let's look at this area first on the inner thigh because this model is symmetrical we can use the symmetry tools to work on one side and it will automatically update the opposite side holding ctrl and shift right click to bring up the marking menu now go up to symmetry and then make sure symmetry is enabled you can now see the edges are highlighted blue meaning that they are symmetrical if they turn red it means that those edges aren't symmetrical so any changes you do on this side will not be updated on the opposite side now this is basing the symmetry of the world position of each edge and as you can see it's mirroring across the x-axis if you have issues with the model you can also base it on the model's topology too you just need to define an edge which will be the mirror point and choose topology instead okay let's switch back to world you can also mirror across the other axes too if needed what i want to do here is simply turn these two triangles into quads so they join the other quads below the quickest way to do this which will be less disruptive to the actual model and its uvs is to select these three edges here hold down shift and right click to bring up the marking menu and go down to connect components i'm going to use the insert with edge flow option 2 because that will add the edges while also maintaining the natural curve on the model's surface let's apply that so that's given us more quads but what we can now do is select these edges bring up the marking menu again and go to merge collapse edges collapse edge you can see that this has now left us with four triangles but we can quickly turn these into quads just select and delete the inner edges let's do the same down here to connect these triangles so select the edges next to the triangles and connect the components to add an edge loop now merge the upper and lower edges to convert those quads into triangles finally delete these edges to turn these into quads so that's the inner thighs looking much better now and the other side has been updated too the new edges we added are making the surface look wrong now because the surface normals in these areas are set to hard which makes it look like there's a crease so we just need to soften these back down right click on the model and go to object mode so we are working on the model as a whole and not the components although you could just select these edges and do the same thing now hold shift and the right mouse button to bring up the marking menu again and go to soften harden edges soften edge that's fixed the surface now if we look over in the channel box we can see that all the work we have done is building up under the input section this is the modeling history and it's good practice to clear this when you're at a stage that you're happy with the model to do this go to edit delete by type history and that's all baked into the model so we've cleaned up the topology in this area but the edges aren't flowing in a nice uniform way so let's look at fixing that next this time we're going to use mei's sculpting tools to help even out the spacing go to the sculpting shelf and click on the relax tool as you can see in the tooltip this will smooth the model surface without altering its shape this will give us a circular brush to work with let's make sure symmetry is on so right click on the model and go to symmetry also make sure you select object x so it will mirror across the x-axis now as we paint the surface is evened out giving us much cleaner topology that was quick right it's not without its downsides though the problem is the vertices have moved but so have the uvs so the texture will now look wrong let's bring back the textures and take a look now because of the simple pattern in this area it isn't immediately noticeable but we need to keep to the original uv layout because changing it will affect the other texture maps like the normal map for example let's quickly bring back the original model and compare okay so we can see some stretching here compared to here we can quickly fix that though using the original model so it's a good thing we copied it select the original model and then add the edited one to the selection now go to mesh transfer attributes and open the options this tool will copy elements of one model to another so we can use it to copy the uv layout the main setting we need is this one uv sets set to all or current depending on the model but all is a safer bet let's just use world as the sample space because these models are in the same place and click apply you may need to rewind to see it but those star patterns moved back to the original position so the uvs are now fixed okay let's turn off the texture and continue working i'm just going to speed this section up slightly because we're just repeating the process and i don't want the video to drag on and on all i'm going to do is repeat the same process add edge loops to help remove the triangles soften the surface normal and then we're just going to use a relax tool again to even out the vertices and then finally use the transfer attributes tool to update the uvs if you do want to see a more detailed video on topology or one on model preparation you can find both on my youtube channel okay so now we have an updated model i've spent some more time updating the topology so you can see it's a lot cleaner and will deform in a much more predictable way as mentioned earlier it's always best to try and make the edges of your model follow natural muscle lines but it's also useful to follow crease areas too when working on clothing like you can see here around the hips the topology is much better here too i also added an extra edge loop to the knees to allow for the deformation and into the knuckles too now there are plenty of other areas that need cleaning up but i didn't really have time so i just focused on the main areas for now i may update the model later on as we work on the different areas of the rig but we'll see how we go so that's the general body topology and yes this is a game model so it should be optimized but you should never sacrifice how the model deforms so you can squeeze out a few more polygons speaking of optimization another area that needs looking at is this buckle there's far too many polygons here especially for something that isn't seen close up i'm getting distracted though this won't affect how we come to rig it but it's another thing to keep in mind if you're building a model a good way to judge how many polygons you need to use in a model is to see how close that area is going to be on screen if it's never going to be really close to the camera then you don't need lots and lots of polygons so in comparison this area works well because you do need those details around the outside of the circle so those extra polygons are needed here okay there's another area of the model that needs adjusting and that's the pose the arms here are too relaxed so need raising into more of an air pose ideally when posing your model you need it to be in a relaxed pose but you also need the arms raised slightly so that you can paint the weights under the arms so the quickest way for us to adjust this pose is to use joints and then raise the arms and i will be demonstrating joints and how they influence a model later in the workshop so i won't spend any time showing you how to set this up just now i also prefer the palms to be facing down so i will probably update that before the next video again just using joints to deform the model for me this is more of a personal preference though but ideally having the palms facing down again means to get into a natural pose means all you need to do is just lower the arms okay one final tip before we move on when working with a model like this which is symmetrical it's best to have elements which are also symmetrical on either side combined into a single model this means when it comes to painting weights you can focus on one side and then simply mirror the weights across this can save you a lot of time especially if you're working on hands for example or even fingers they're the worst you can just spend time refining the fingers on one side and then mirror the weights across to the other luckily the main model is already a single mesh so we will be able to mirror the weights easily enough we can see with this hip clothing there is one on the other side so it makes sense to combine them into a single model just select them and then holding shift and right click to bring up the marking menu now go to combine that's now a single mesh we can do the same with these hooks we can also do it with the hinges too the sashes are also symmetrical so let's combine those i'm sure there will be other areas to combine so i will investigate those before the next video okay so that's just a quick look at what you should be checking on when you're sent models to rig and don't be afraid to ask for changes at the end of the day if there are problems with the model that are going to impact on how it deforms it needs to be checked before any rigging starts so now we have the model in a much better place to start rigging so in the next video let's take a look at mayer's joints before we start to build the base skeleton okay that's another video over thanks for watching right to the end and make sure you also check out some of the other free videos and courses that i have available you can find links to all these on the screen now and in the description below remember to help support future content and keep these videos free visit the ant cgi store or join the ant cgi club alternatively if you would just like to show your appreciation for these videos why not treat me to a coffee at my coffee page again the link is on the screen now and in the description below thanks again for watching this is ant cgi signing off and i will see you on the next one you

Channel: antCGi

Views: 3,057

Keywords: rigging, maya, autodesk, maya3d, rigging in maya, rig, gamedev, game art, game development, game rig, game rigging, how do I, maya 2020, patreon, controls, deformer, antcgi, skincluster, flexible rig, tweak, scale, 2020, maya2020, spline, head, neck, topology, transfer attributes, uv, edge loop, symmetry, joints, deformation, test, clean

Id: e74KphYwMww

Length: 27min 46sec (1666 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 24 2021