#RiggingInMaya | Part 20 | Advanced | Driver Skeleton

hello and welcome to video 20 in my rigging Amaya series we have the model ready to go so let's start to look at building a quadruped a drag in this video we will investigate creating the driver skeleton but this won't be used to directly affect the model instead think of this as the actual bones of the doc so these will instead drive all the systems so in this case it will be the ribbons these will then act like the muscles which will in turn manipulate the skin taking this approach will give us much more flexibility with this rig and make animation easier and more organic before we get started I just wanted to mention that you can now download all the source files for this and all my other courses from Mike you brush coffee Gumroad and art station stars so there's plenty of options out there for you you can find links on the screen and in the description below I also wanted to tell you about the antsy GI Club joining the club is a way for you to help support the future of this channel as it will allow me to dedicate more time to creating new content just for you but that's not all you can also earn yourself exclusive rewards these include all the course assets models rigs and custom made scripts as well as access to the members on the area of the antsy GI Club discord server you can also claim a 10% discount on all antsy GI merchandise there are two ways you can join the first is to simply click the join button below this video and become a member of this YouTube channel the second is to head over to my patreon page and support me there alternatively you can just visit the link on the screen or in the description below to find out more okay let's start adding some joints open the joint tool options just reset these I'm going to use the default settings this time round so we'll be working with X pointing down the joint let's also try to use projected centering too the idea behind this is it will detect the middle of the model for you essentially saving you time as you try to position the joints manually now this doesn't always work so let's see what happens before we start to create skeleton we just need to use some reference to guide the joint placement anything will do and a quick Google search will quickly give you something you can use it's important the joints are placed correctly so the dog will animate in a more natural way let's start with the front leg we need 5 joints initially this starts with the scapula and works its way down there we go so we can see the projected centering has got a little confused here it worked with the body and the lower leg in fairness this is probably down to the shape of the model to be honest I prefer to build my joint change manually anyway so I'm going to delete this although projected centering does work much better with a standard biped type rig especially with fingers I'm going to hold X which will snap to the grid and create a single joint at the world route change the radius to make it a little bigger and then move this so it's roughly in the right position they will do so I'm going to press ctrl + D to duplicate it and move it down maybe more up here so I'll just create another copy down here and another here and I'm using the wireframe to help guide the placement so it's in the middle finally another one here because we work from the sideview all these joints are still aligned down the middle which is what I wanted let's parent these to each other now to create the chain we have the main leg here I'm not going to parent it to the scapula just yet I want to maintain this straight line because it will help later when we add the I K so let's move them over so they are in the middle of the front leg other just the scapula too and finally parent this joint to the scapula okay so that's one leg done but it's not ready just yet let's look at the rotational axes you you can see that they are all matching the world so we need to fix them next all I'm gonna do is use it orient joint tool just reset this I want to have X pointing down the joint so these default settings should work so I'll just apply that now that has worked an exit is now orientated so it's pointing to the next joint the problem is the y-axis is all over the place and we need to keep things consistent all we need to do is update the settings so secondary axis is set to Y which is right secondary axis world orientation is currently set to y2 so it's trying to make the joints y axis point up this is why we are getting this issue ideally we want ours to all point forwards so in this case down the z axis if we apply that you will see all the joints are now pointing the same way so why is now pointing forwards on the old match it's probably a good idea at this stage to rename these joints before we move on left scapula left humerus left radius you left carpus you and left metacarpus you let's add some toes next I'll duplicate the metacarpus you I'm positioning it here again look at where the actual joint should be placed in the pot I'll create another copy and move that in front and down a little okay now let's update the hierarchy so this should be parented to this one and this to the metacarpus I'll make this a little smaller so we can see better now let's reposition these might be able to see better from the top view I'll switch to wireframe okay looks about right so duplicate these and move them over to the opposite side you looks okay okay we need another copy now for the outer toe you and finally another for the inner toe you now we need to fix the orientations you so it's back to the orient joint tool we can try the same settings we had before which are ideal as we want the ters to match the leg setup because of the placement of these joints though we may have some issues okay now let's reset the end joints so they matched the orientation of their parents so you see the middle toes look good because the y-axis is pointing up the problem is the outer toes don't so they won't rotate correctly when animated in this instance we want to go back to the original settings so secondary axis world orientation needs to be set to Y this will force the y axis to point up that's better just reset the end joints you've probably noticed that I left the metacarpus joint matching the world orientation I've done this for a number of reasons the main one being that it will mean the controls will be orientated to the world 2 this gives you a nice clean rig which will be better for the animator to use plus it reduces the risk of the joints flipping now back to renaming it's difficult sometimes to know what to call these let's go with the proper names rather than inner or outer so left front pinkie because remember we will also have Realtors too so we don't want names clashing and call its child the same but with tip on the end the innit or we will call index like the finger you we will call this one ring you and finally this one middle so these are just going to be set up like a hand you okay just check we got all those so that's one leg built all we're going to do is mirror this to create the opposite side first we need another joint so create a new joint at the world route again using x2 snap it to the grid you don't need to reposition this joint but I'm going to because we will use it again later I'll just move it so it's between the shoulder-blades you and rename it to shoulders parent the scapula joint to this new joint we need the shoulder joints because it will act as a pivot point for when we mirror the joints although I recently discovered that you don't actually need a pivot point joint it will actually mirror across the world axis anyway but this is just the traditional way that I've always done it so I'm just going to continue open the mirror joints tool in search for ports L underscore and in replace with put our underscore so the tool will rename the joints for you as it mirrors them mirror across should be set to Y Z so it flips over the z axis and mirror function needs to be behavior apply that to mirror the joints that's now used the shoulder joints as the reflection plane as mentioned earlier you will also see that the orientations are different on the right leg X is pointing away from the joint and Y is backwards now this isn't a problem in fact it's exactly how we want it if I rotate the scapula joints you will see that they mirror each other's movements which makes life easier for the animator I'm going to UM parent the legs from the shoulders now unlike a game rig we can work on each section independently so we don't need a single skeleton okay let's create hind-legs I'm just going to duplicate the front leg and use it as a base first I'm going to change my manipulator so I'm working in world space so I just hold down control and shift and I can now quickly select world from the marking menu this just means that can move the copy back and it will stay a level so the paw is on the same plane what I want to do is get the foot joints into position first this just means that we don't have to rebuild the whole paw joints we can just use these you okay now we can work our way up and reposition the rest now we can't just move the joints which are higher up the chain because they will move the children like this instead we need to press insert this allows us to move the joints independently so we can move this one here under this here again refer to the reference for the right positions I'm only moving them along the y and z axis so up and forwards i want to keep the like as straight as possible when viewed from the front that's the main joints in position I'll just delete this one actually I need to UM parent it first I'll just double-check the PAS you because we move the joints the orientations will be off so they need attention next first i'll unparent the power so i don't edit those joints actually I need the metacarpus joint so instead I'll just duplicate the par move it out of the hierarchy and hide it to keep it safe I can then delete the toes so we are left with the main leg all I need to do then is use the Orient joint tool again to fix the orientations I'll just change this to Z so the y axis points forwards so that's the like fixed and we needed the metacarpus joint so the carpus knew how to orient itself now we can bring back our poor and parent it to the like again you now we renamed again to match the correct skeleton joints so femur fibula a metatarsus you it looks like we have two joints with the same name now so we should rectify that let's just add front to the metacarpus names you and we can add rear to the back ones it's good to make sure all the names in your rig are unique or you could end up with some systems becoming confused especially if you are using scripts or other tools later let's also update the toes changing front to rear actually we should use the search and replace tool that's much easier you now all we need to do is mirror the back leg let's parent it to the shoulder joint and use that as a pivot point again all we do now is use a mirror joint tool with the same settings as before and there we go the right hind leg done right let's unparent that from the shoulder joint and now hide the rotational axes there we go the four base legs built maybe we should refer to these as driver legs instead considering what they're going to do let's look at the spine next I'll switch to the side view we can keep the shoulder joint and duplicate that let's move this down to be the root joint about there should do let's call this route create another copy and move this between the other two call they spine underscore mid let's create another joint now to go between these call this fine underscore lower finally duplicate this joint and move it up so it's between the upper joints I want to make sure these joints are exactly between the others so I'm going to use a point constraint I'll select the outer joints first and then the middle one and constrain them but with maintain offset disabled this will force the joint to be exactly between the others I could do the same with your projects - there we go now I can delete the point constraint nodes I'll just move them up slightly to create more of an arc and now let's parent them to create a spine hierarchy with the root joint being the parent now the spine joints are in place we need to check the orientations let's select the hierarchy and make the rotational axes visible we can see that zed is pointing down the axis and we want to use x so let's update that open the orient joint tool again this time we want Y to point up so change secondary axis world orientation to Y with the route joint selected click apply ok actually we could just use a toggle local axis visibility button to hide the rotational axis again it will be quicker than going through the menus okay let's do the tail next and we will be doing pretty much the same as we did with the spine duplicate the route joint and then delete its children we just want the one joint you with this area we're going to place a joint on edgeloop this will make it deform and Bend better plus give the animator more control over the look of the tale you although thinking about it this is just the driver skeleton so we could get away with every other edge loop we could possibly reduce it more but let's see how it holds up later on in the rig we will actually be using the ribbon and that will have a joint on each edge loop instead so it makes sense for us to just use the joints in the ribbon and not in the driver part of the skeleton now let's parent those to create the chain remember to do it in the opposite order to the spine the base of the tail needs to be the parent and again we are just the orientations let's leave the settings the same as we did for the spine this time we will use the button in the orient joint tool to make the rotational axes visible so we can check them looks good we have an extra joint here so let's get rid of that and reset the tip of the tail using Orient joint to world okay good oh I should have hidden the rotational axes while I had the window open I will just quickly hide them now hmm looking at the tail I'm thinking I might change the flow of the joints so they are closer to the middle of the model I'll just adjust those now you and update the rotational axes to you so that's the main driver joints created for the body now let's look at adding them for the neck and head I'll create a new joint I like to add joints this way because they are created with worldspace orientations and in some cases this is the orientation I need it also means I'm working with clean joints from the start this will be the base of the neck so looking at the reference it should be around here I'll add another one around here and another one at the base of the skull it's important that this is placed exactly where the head needs to rotate it shouldn't be down here because the head will pivot from the wrong point again check the reference since you aren't sure remember that some of these joints are just placeholder so we can change their positions later if needed I'm just going to move this joint a bit more so it's more in the center now I need a jar joint okay that will do and let's add in the I joints next I like it when I'm given a model where the eye geometry is perfectly aligned like this so you can easily see the central point on the wireframe so with the eye we need to make sure it's aligned from the front to again we can use the wireframe to help find the central point on the sphere okay now let's rename some of these so head Jah you neck and neck mid unless parently used to create a hierarchy we now need to correct the orientations in the neck I'm going to leave the head joint like this though in world space as that's already perfectly aligned select the neck joints and open the Orient joint tool just disabled less I'm going to also disable orient child of selected joints so we don't affect the head although thinking about it ahead joint won't be affected anywhere because it's the end joint let's turn on the axes so we can see them and we just need to make sure Y is pointing up so let's change this to wide okay those are fixed now let's parent the jaw to the head and the eye to the head with those parented we can simply joints tool again to create the right eye what's next Aryeh the ears I'll just duplicate the eye two starters off I move this over we need it to be in the middle just move it down slightly okay let's call this left ear bass let's add two more joints in here and repairing them and also rename them call this tip and this mitt I might actually adjust it so it follows the flow of the ear a little better okay that's better now to correct the orientation again you there we go and reset the tip joint so it's correctly aligned oops accidently reset them there we go I just wanted to hide the orientations again so let's mirror these across for the right here so that's it all the main driver joints are in place ah we forgot to rename the tail I'll just quickly rename the joints here and that route to this joint and tip to this one just check everything else you okay yeah looks good you just to keep things tidy I'll group the Jones and rename that to drive a skeleton so I'll just have one last look over this met the ear joints a little smaller but this is just a cosmetic thing though looking at the jar I think we need to update that I'll quickly add a joint to mark the end of the jar somewhere around here and rename that to JA tip and make sure it's parented to the jaw and not the head I'll rename the jaw joint to with the tip jar in can now adjust the orientation of the jaw again with Y pointing up okay so that didn't look like it changed but it's because my manipulator is in world's face I'll just hold ctrl and shift and change it back to object space there we go we can see it's aligned now finally just reset the tip joint okay there we have the bass drum skeleton there's a couple of things I want to go back though I'm correct which I just noticed with the I Jones you see these need to be perfectly aligned with the eyeball wireframe and they aren't they just need pulling back slightly ah there's another issue looks like the orientations aren't correct on the right eye okay we'll fix that next I'll just switch to world space so I can move these back that's better okay let's reset the orientation on the right eye as you can see it's inverted this is because we mirrored it earlier but didn't change the settings it's an easy fix er we just need to orient the joint to the world okay now both eyes Realty at the same way it's a bit of a rookie mistake but it goes to show that even after all these years of rigging even people like me make mistakes it also shows why you should double-check your skeleton before you move on speaking of which before we do move on there are a couple of things I always check with my skeletons I'll just turn off wireframe all I want to do is create a basic rotate plane I care handle on the legs I'm just going to move this up and down to check how it bends why one is for it to bend backwards so directly behind itself which it does this is because I made sure the legs were straight when viewed from the front which means the pole vector will lie directly behind it we don't want the likes to bend off to the side that would be bad so this is why I double-check them just to make sure I'll check the hind leg now okay looks good I'll just go through and check the other joints now to see how they rotate you okay great so what happens if you're working on a rig and because of the way that the model is built you can't have the joke perfectly aligned and straight when viewed from the front or you can't have a slight bend in the elbow or the knee which is going to help to dictate which way they will Bend when you have eyecare applied well there's actually a simple solution so if we look at this example here if I apply I care to this now and then I move it you will see that the elbow points off in a random direction and this isn't ideal ideally what we want is for the elbow to move directly behind the arm now all we need to do is before we app the I K puts a bend in the elbow you and then right-click on the joint and go to set preferred angle so this is just going to tell Maya that this is the angle that we would prefer it to bend it so with that done if I apply the ICAO again now as you can see if I move it the elbow is now moving directly behind the arm which is perfect so if you're having problems with which where your elbow or your knee is pointing when you add I care to it simply use this method and use the set preferred angle option to dictate which where it should Bend one other area to keep in mind are the joint rotation orders now I'm not going to go into too much detail here as I covered this in my fundamentals video you can find a link in the description below and it's around the ten minute mark in the video you want to be looking basically the rotation order dictates which axes have priority over others and it's really important to think about these because using the wrong rotation order can result in bad rotations and gimbal lock let me show you what I mean so here we have the rotation manipulator and over here the rotation order if we rotate using the manipulator actually let's change that to object space okay let's try again if we rotate this joint all the AXI stay locked so they remain the same distance apart the problem is this is basically a lie let me switch to gimble instead with this manipulator we get a true idea of what each axis is doing and how the rotation order can help one thing to remember with a rotation order is that it reads backwards so in this case with accepted the default of XYZ the z-axis has priority so if I rotate the z-axis the Y and X follow so far this looks the same as the other manipulator let's try another axis so Y is next in the order of priority as you can see if I rotate it out it only affects the x axis so problems arise when this rotates around so it meets the z axis so they are both on the same plane and this is basically a gimbal lock the two axes are aligned to cancel each other out in a way so what this means for us is having to go through and think about what priority we need for each area over the duct and this could even possibly be on a per joint level if we look at this like for most of the time it's going to be rotated like this so in this case the z axis needs priority because it will be used the most the same with the back leg so the way we set up our joints or Ian tations has paid off because the default rotational that works well with these limbs they may need to rotate and twist in the other directions but it will only be slightly if we check the tail this will need to use Zed primarily but also why so it could be wagged whinnies happy but again the default settings seem to work well here the same with the spine and the neck so luckily for us we don't need to change anything so far but it's something you should keep in mind with all your rigs 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 or suggestions please post them in the comments below or contact me through the antsy GI Club Twitter account and I will try my best to reply alternatively you could post them in the antsy GI Club discord server or I spend more of my time you can find an exclusive invitation to join in the description below remember that you can also join the antsy GI 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: 11,353

Keywords: rigging, maya, autodesk, maya3d, rigging in maya, rig, 2019, maya 2019, gamedev, game art, game development, game rig, game rigging, how do I, maya 2020, canine, quadruped, model, dog, paw, jaw, patreon, tail, ear, wolf rig, labrador, joints, skeleton, rotate order, rotational axis, pole vector, ik handle, set prefered angle, projected centering, orient joint, joint orientation, gimbal lock, xyz

Id: gxU6aEKYC6Y

Length: 45min 33sec (2733 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020