Barbarian Rig Designed by Disney's Cory Loftis (An Introduction)
Howdy folks!
I am currently working on a new character rig for a Barbarian Model that was designed by Cory Loftis and modeled by Brazen Animation modeler, Josh Carroll! My amazing mentor, Benjamin Rische graciously introduced me to Josh to see what I can do to push myself as a rigger in the industry and to give me an animator's perspective on rigging. Ben is an animator at Brazen Animation and was mentored by Alex Topete (an old Disney Animator). After I finished college Ben wanted me to be his mentee and work towards becoming a rigger. After 5 weeks of a lot of hard thinking, I decided not to go to graduate school, I thought this opportunity would push me out of my boundaries from being in school and learning more on my own. Plus, who wouldn't want to have lunch with an animator willing to give advice and great company? I would have to be crazy to turn it down!
LUNCH PALS!
Young Padawan, Nick on the left and dope Animation Mentor, Ben Rische on the right
THE BARBARIAN GALLERY
Cory designed a lot of the characters for Zootopia and other Disney films! You can see his drawing in this gallery. Josh is a modeler at Brazen Animation and had the opportunity of meeting Cory, while being an intern at Disney. Cory looked over this character model while Josh sculpted the character after college.
Anyways, I would like to think of this opportunity like a simulation within the animation industry. I am essentially getting feedback from an Animator and how he wants the rig to be made. Also, several other riggers within the industry that were nice enough to take time out of their schedule are giving me feedback on this project. Because of my time as an officer in TAMU ACM SIGGRAPH, I took advantage of reaching out to the awesome people within the animation industry. I have several riggers including Josh Carey, Brian Eby, Cameron Black, and many more critiquing my project. I'll be sure to include more names once I finish this rig.
This project has been a pretty intense one so far, but I'll do my best to update the public with where I'm at as I progress. This is sort of a secret blog until I finally finish this project. I want to create a demo reel and a behind of the scenes video once I'm done.
I have been keeping a rigging bible! It is essentially a glorified notebook of all the notes I have ever taken and am currently taking on Character Rigging, Python and countless other things that relate to the field of being a Character TD.
THE RIGGING BIBLE:
OPRAH WINFREY ENDORSED IT, SO YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO TURN THIS DOWN!
So let's start with what the heck I've done so far for this character! Well, the first part I had to figure out was joint placement. I wrote out a script using python that used locators as positions to where the joints would be placed. The major areas that seemed to give me a hard time were the shoulders, and thighs. After I received a good amount of feedback on my work, joints were moved and new hand joints were created for the metacarpals.(The metacarpals are a recent addition.) Josh Carey, Cameron, and several other riggers and animators love metacarpals!
WHAT'S UP WITH THOSE JOINTS?!
Above you can see some notes that I was given to adjust the rig and my script for the joint placement.
Next thing that I had to experiment with was how to set up a proper FK/IK switch for the legs and arms. After messing with this rig, I have already remade the setup close to 4 or 5 times, because I was told to either move a joint or I had to change the orientation on the character. The biggest tip I was given by Brian and Cameron is to make sure your joint placement is solid before jumping into control rigs and skinning. I won't forget this because I currently have to go back and make some big adjustments to what I'm working on.
Another major part of the rig I have learned about is the UI and how people have a lot of different preferences. Most animators (at least Ben and several others) like to keep the rig simple. I was told to change my control curve drawings to a basic circle (head control) or gears (hands & feet FK/IK switch controls) I ultimately put all of my IK/FK switches into a VIZ control curve. Everything is pretty consolidated without having to jump from place to place. This might change again, but we'll see what I get in future critiques.
For the head and the spine controls I went through half of the Animator Friendly Rigging Tutorials. If you have not watched these videos, then what are you doing in life? I wanted to learn how to make a stretchy spine and as an added bonus I also learned how to do the same thing for the neck. I am still continuing on the Animator Friendly rigging series and seeing what I can do to make this rig better with the advice and teachings it gives.
Currently, I am working on skinning and paint weighting. Before I sent off the rig for a second review I made a first pass on skinning what I could. I tried to use the ngskin tools, but it kept crashing so I went ahead and went back to the traditional method of using the paintweight tool and the component editor! (I'll go back and try ngskin tools. Time was of the essence!) I went ahead and created a calisthenics test to push the boundaries of this character, so I could see what was and wasn't deforming right on the rig.
WORK IN PROGRESS - BARBARIAN CALISTHENICS!
Trust me, I know this thing needs work. I have pics of my checklist below! :D
After receiving feedback, I know I need to move some joints and orientations and learn how to create corrective blend shapes. The neck and clavicle influences seems to need the most work right now, but I am definitely up for the challenge! Hey, if anything, everyone that critiqued my rig really liked my hands, so high five to that!
HAND CALISTHENICS!
It still needs a little work, but it's a big improvement from where it was!
I have new due dates and an entire list of things I need to fix to get this rig deforming correctly!
CHECKLIST BABY!
So much to do and a lot more to learn! I'm excited. :)
WORK IN PROGRESS - Current RIG PIC
This is the rig after being sent in for two Updates! What will the third update look like?
Once the rig is deforming properly and corrective blend shapes are added I will start working on the face rig. I went through Rigging Dojo's Face Rigging 101 course, so I am extremely excited to see what I can do to combine a body and facial rig! If you made it this far in the blog post, thanks for sticking around! New posts will most likely be shorter than this to show small updates for this rig.
Check out Cory Loftis at:
Check out Josh Carroll's work at:
Thanks again for looking at my work! More updates to come soon...
-Nick Harvey
