#RiggingInMaya | Part 18 | Advanced | Ribbons

hello and welcome to video 18 in my rigging in my series you have now covered all the basics so you should be able to build your own biped rig so that's the first section of this course complete and it only took 17 videos to do it as we move into more advanced areas of rigging i thought we would need a new creature to rig something with a higher polygon count and that can be more geared towards film and tv rather than games so i'm currently working on something special for you and i will post updates in the community feed before we begin rigging the new creature i wanted to cover a key part of the rig and that's what's known as the ribbon i will be using this a lot throughout the next section of this course so it made sense to dedicate this first video to them that way i'm not repeating myself and if you're unsure you can just refer back here in addition to the video i also have a nice surprise for you so stick around to see what it is now before we get started i wanted to tell you about the ant cgi club becoming a member not only helps support the future of this channel but you can also earn yourself exclusive rewards these include course assets models rigs and custom-made scripts as well as access to the ant cgi club discord server which now has exclusive members only areas click the join button below to find out more or visit the link on the screen or in the description okay so let's start by looking at what ribbons are and why they're so useful here we have what looks like a basic arm rig similar to what you created previously so nothing new here if i turn on the arm tweak option here you see we have some new controls to play with i can control the arm as normal but i can then use these controls to go in and adjust the shape of the upper arm like this the same with the forearm and we can even adjust the position of the elbow so as you can see this arm rig is already a lot more flexible than the one we built before but we can do even more with it if i set sign blend to 1 and adjust the amplitude you see we get some nice curves if i adjust the offset attribute we get a nice wave type movement which can be animated let's hide the model and let's make the main deformers visible so here we have the ribbon which is just a nurbs plane along it we have a series of joints we essentially use the controls to change the shape of the ribbon the ribbon then moves the joints which then drive the main skeleton we can move it we can twist it do anything we like with it really here we have the wave even with it deformed we can still move the whole arm you can see i've even used the ribbon to drive the spine i'll make the tweak controls visible as you can see we have similar controls which we can use to animate the spine this gives the animator a whole new level of freedom because they compose the limbs and the spine and pull and push sections around so essentially ribbons make your rigs a lot more flexible and are perfect for a more cartoon style character in this example we can see ribbons being used for the arms and the spine but they can also be used anywhere else as you will see throughout the rest of this course they can even be used to make an advanced facial rig but we will come to that later so how do we build a ribbon first you need a nurbs plane and we use nerves because they are more flexible than polygons so as one area moves it influences the area around it similar to soft selection you'll see what i mean later go to create nurbs primitives plane and open the options we want the axis to be set to z this will make sure it faces down the z-axis and towards the front of the scene set width to 2.5 and length to 0.5 make sure the surface degree is set to 3. we want a nice curve as the plane deforms but we don't want too many control vertices or cvs u patches will dictate how many divisions we have along it set this to eight v patches should just be one we don't want any divisions click create let's rename this to base ribbon if we select some cvs now and move them we can see it has a nice curve as it deforms okay let's turn on the wireframe so we can see the isoparms which are the vertical divisions and we will hide the grid so we have the eight patches we required what we need to do now is attach something to its surface something which will follow as it deforms so what we can do is use n hair which seems a little strange but bear with me go to end hair create hair and open the options just reset this we want to set the u count to match the amount of vertical isoparms we have one two three four five six seven eight nine the v count should be one as we only want one hair follicle to be created down each isoparm change dynamic to static because these hairs won't be simulated if i click apply now i'll just select the follicles so we can see them you will see that they do not sit on each division instead they are floating between them so let's undo that now make sure edge bound is checked and apply that now you will see that they are sitting perfectly so that's the end hair added but we don't need everything that was created delete the pfx hair and nucleus nodes also delete each curve group which is beneath each follicle and finally delete the hair system node the idea is you only want to be left with the follicles right let's just quickly rename these if i select some cvs now and enable soft selection as i twist the surface you can see the follicles all follow and they remain pointing away from it even as we adjust it the neighboring follicles also follow so now we have a surface and a series of follicles which follow as it deforms but we can't really use the follicles directly as they can't be rigged or skinned they are just nodes locked to the nerve's surface what we now need are some joints as you know these are essential for the rig go to skeleton create joints and just create a single joint in the scene you can hold x to make it snap to the grid okay just make this little smaller maybe not 0.25 so now we need this joint to follow the follicles as they follow the surface the simplest way to do this is to just parent it let's parent it to the first follicle and reset the translations to snap it into place duplicate the joint another eight times and we'll parent these to the other follicles to quickly fix the position just reset the translate attributes to zero there we go they are still a bit big actually i'll change the size globally just set that to one that's better i'm just going to disable joint selection up here if i select to move some cvs now you can see that all the joints follow what's even better is the surrounding joints also orient themselves so they follow the surface of the model and they're following the selection so we are getting a really nice arc here all with one simple movement to create this sort of setup manually would take a whole lot of nodes and constraints and even then there wouldn't be a guarantee it would be stable even if we twist it this way the joints all have an influence and remain locked to the surface okay let's rename these to bind joint because these will be the joints that eventually drive the model if this was a rig for a game character you would need to use a joint hierarchy so these wouldn't be bound to the skin instead they would influence the base skeleton so we have the surface and the main joints but animating all these would take time plus you can't edit these joints directly remember that their position is dictated by the follicles so if we move them they won't do anything all we'll end up with is the joints having then an offset which would essentially break the rig instead we need to think about influencing the main nurbs surface instead duplicate the first joint and move it out of the group let's just rename this to follicle underscore group and close that might be better if we make this joint bigger so we can see it better and rename it to control joint one duplicate it twice move this up here and reorder them that's better holding v i can snap the second joint to the joint in the middle of the surface and the third control joint can be snapped to the opposite end we can use these to move the nurbs plane now which will then move the follicles and finally the bind joints they won't do anything just yet though select the three control joints and then the base ribbon go to skin bind skin and open the options just reset them set bind two to selected joints and click apply we can now use the control joints to manipulate the surface as we move and rotate it all the other joints follow along so we're essentially controlling nine joints with just three but getting a really nice fall off we can even twist the end joint like this so this could be good for creating those roll and twist joints needed in bicep and forearm areas if we move this away we also get some sort of stretchiness because the joints remain equally spaced so you can start to see how versatile these ribbons are and how they can dramatically improve your rigs as a final step we could add some simple controls let's create a nurbs circle make it smaller freeze the transforms and delete the history to clean up snap it to the first joint and duplicate it for the others let's rename these now root control tip control and middle control and all we're going to do is parent the control joints to the controls so now we can use the controls to pause the ribbon instead this is all well and good but it would be better to see it working with an actual model let's create a basic cylinder and bind it to the joints just make sure it has the same number of divisions as the ribbon so it will deform better and scale it to fit we need it to be a little thinner now too that looks okay it is just a rough placeholder delete the history before we move on and freeze the transforms okay good now we need to select the bind joints so the ones parented to the follicles and then the cylinder go to skin bind skin just make sure two selected joints is selected good it's just a quick bind but it's only here to give us a rough idea of how the model would deform as i move the control you can see the geometry between this control and the next is evenly spaced the same happens when i twist and rotate it so things are looking more organic even with this basic model and quick waiting it's deforming well so you can imagine how smooth this would look on a higher resolution model or even a subdivision surface model that's just the basic ribbon set up but there is more we can do because the bind joints movement is based off actual geometry we can also use other deformers to get more precise shapes and animation so this means we could also add a few blend shapes just reset these i need to duplicate the base ribbon model because i copied a skin model the attributes will be locked so i need to unlock them actually i might as well use one of my handy scripts here we go the rig mirroring tool has some options for quickly locking and unlocking attributes and cgi club members can download this and all my other scripts so go grab them if you can select all these and click unlock that's done okay i can move this out here now and i'll make a few more copies not sure if i'll need them but we'll see rename the first one to twist ribbon and the next one to curve ribbon actually not sure i need the third for now the others will do just for this quick demonstration select the new ribbons and then the base ribbon go to deform plan shape and create a basic blend shape node ideally you should name it but i'm just going to leave it for now now select the twist ribbon and go to deform non-linear twist to create a twist deformer i'll just rotate this if i adjust the start angle we can see it has a nice gradual twist select the other ribbon and go to deform non-linear sign to create a sound deformer i'll rotate this too so it fits i can adjust the amplitude attribute now to see the curve and we can use the offset attribute to control its movement let's go back to the blend shape node on the base ribbon at the moment both targets are set to zero so we aren't seeing them affecting the cylinder let's set twist ribbon to 1. now i can edit the end angle and it's affecting the main ribbon which is then twisting the cylinder for us let's make the joints visible actually i'm going to make the rotational axes visible too so we can see them rotating a little clearer okay that's better so we can clearly see a gradual twist and you can imagine this working well on an arm or even a tentacle we can even edit either end now let's turn twist off and curve on you can already see the cylinder change shape adjusting the offset gives us a nice wave motion on the cylinder we can also adjust the drop off so the ends are more static we can also still use the controls while we have the blend shape active okay we should be able to i know what's happened here we added the blend shape after we added the skin cluster so the order of the deformation is wrong so we just need to fix that i'll just isolate the base ribbon i'm going to right click on the ribbon and go down to inputs and then all inputs i need to change the order so the blend shapes influence happens before the skin cluster that way no matter what the blend shapes are doing we will still be able to use our controls the ribbon moved so that's worked let's bring everything else back much better so we can have the curve now and still move the cylinder with the controls as you can imagine you can use as many blend shapes as you like i usually have a curl set up for my tentacles so they can roll up plus some other custom shapes to make poses easier to achieve so that's the basic setup of a ribbon along with some of its uses there is a lot more we can cover but i will go into more detail on those as we move through the next series of videos the main thing is you now know how to create a ribbon so in future videos i can skip over this section so things don't get too repetitive right time for the surprise i mentioned earlier well it's not much of a surprise if you watch my videos before but i've spent some time writing a new script to help you when creating ribbons now it's really important you know how to build them yourself but this will just speed things up for you and for me in future videos up here we have all the scripts so far that are available to ant cgi club members this is what we want the ribbon tool let's look at this section first the custom ribbon if we use the default values so with five divisions and click build custom ribbon this is what you get a nurbs plane with five sections and all the follicles and main joints added it also has a length of 10 centimeters we can change the orientation from horizontal to vertical undo this one and create a new one there you go so this is better for legs or a spine for example we can also change the way it's facing at the moment it's looking down the x-axis if we change it to y now it's looking up and zed will make it face forwards which is probably the way it will be mostly used i also added the ability to change the way the joints are orientated this can be useful depending on the base skeleton so you may need to adjust this to stop the ribbon from twisting or looking wrong you will see what i mean in future videos so here we have the joint's z-axis pointing away from the ribbon you can invert it so it points towards it instead that's the obvious ribbon name you can also add a crease into the ribbon you can see it better if i hide the grid so this is useful for bending knees or elbows again i'll demonstrate this more in a future video although it works better when there's a joint here too maybe set this to 6 instead that's better so that's just the basic options what you can also do is add controls to it and there we have the controls added they also affect the ribbon too everything is grouped too to keep things tidy i decided to add this option in two snap to selected joints let's say you have a skeleton already built so something like a leg you can select the three main joints click build and the ribbon will snap into place all it does is it just snaps into the position so there's lots more that will need setting up before this is usable as a leg rig things like this curve need a dressing too just painting the weights would fix this but again we will go over this later that section is good for building basic ribbons which are straight but there are times when you need a more custom shape when building a facial rig for example so i added this part here let's just create a sphere and use it as an example just make it bigger let's say i need a curved ribbon to follow the contour of a character's cheek or maybe around his eyelids i'll select the outer edges first and then click outer edges to store those now i'll select the inner edges and click inner edges to store those there are two curves now telling us where the ribbon should be built i now click generate ribbon and there you have a nice curved ribbon with all the follicles and joints i'll undo that just as before you can also add controls too and there we have three controls so what if you needed a closed loop maybe a ring around the eye or around the mouth we just do the same first we define the outer edges and then the inner ones there we have the curves this time we have to check closed loop let's create the controls too but this is optional there we have a full loop with controls at each joint the problem is the ribbon is inverted so let's undo that reload the tool to refresh the window now let's check flip the ribbon that's better finally it's not very animator friendly with all these controls what we can do is use a ratio menu here to dictate how many are created so when it's set to 1 there will be a control for every joint if i set it to 2 you will get one for every other joint and three creates a control for every third joint and so on and so on so it just makes it easier to animate so that's the ribbon tool and there is a point to me showing this to you through the rest of the more advanced videos i will be using this tool to quickly generate the ribbons for me so it made sense to show it here so you aren't wondering where this tool suddenly appeared from don't worry if you don't have this tool because you can manually build the ribbons just as i've shown you earlier in the video however the script will be available to ant cgi club members just like all my other tools so sign up if you want access as this script took me a while to create it's class more as a larger script so it will be available exclusively for those on the super fan tier well we've come to the end of another video thanks for watching right to the end and if you found this video useful please hit that like button to show your support while you're at it you could also subscribe and enable notifications so you're kept up to date with future videos and community posts if you have any questions please post them in the comments below and i will try my best to reply alternatively you could post them in the ansi gi facebook group or the ant cgi discord server where i spend more of my time you can find links to both in the description below remember that you can also join the ant cgi club to help support future videos while also earning exclusive rewards alternatively if you would just like to show your appreciation why not treat me to a coffee at my coffee page the link is on the screen now and in the description below thanks again this is aunt cgi signing off and i will see you on the next one you

Channel: antCGi

Views: 28,231

Keywords: rigging, maya, autodesk, maya3d, rigging in maya, rig, 2019, maya 2019, gamedev, game art, game development, game rig, game rigging, how do I, download, automatic rigging, maya 2020, blendshape, blend shape, broken, fix, change deformer order, deformer, ribbon, ribbons, ribbon rig, nurbs, follicle, nhair, sine, twist, script, ribbon script, too, free

Id: rCxftP5dLQc

Length: 30min 10sec (1810 seconds)

Published: Wed May 20 2020