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The Art of Rigging Volume II picks up after Volume I by taking readers deeper into the techniques used to create animation rigs with Alias Maya. Whereas The Art of Rigging Volume I introduced the fundamental concepts used by professional technical directors, Volume II will take these concepts a step further by applying them to a truly production-quality example. Readers are guided through the creation of a battle robot, dubbed SP-23 (as seen on the cover).
The majority of the book concentrates on the processes used to rig this gargantuan model. In the process, readers will learn how to handle such extremely large assets by implementing a multi-resolution pipeline. Mechanical rigging, dynamic simulations and plenty of MEL scripting are all covered in complete detail.
In addition to following the creation of the SP-23 rig, The Art of Rigging Volume II includes several bonus sections, video lectures and many included scene files. Bonus sections include discussions of muscle rigging and smooth skinning for organic characters. The included DVD contains many hours of video lectures, all scene files and plenty of custom MEL scripts.
The Art of Rigging Volume I solidified CG Toolkit as the premiere training provider for discriminating technical artists. This sequel both compliments and extends these ideas while introducing many new scripts and techniques.
The first video in chapter one will introduce you to the SP-23 robot and the production used throughout the rest of this book. After taking a look at the concept art and disussing the idea behind the SP-23, you will get a first glimpse of the final high-res model before rigging. |
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This second video will quide you through the complex SP-23 model. Kiaran will discuss all of the various peices and give you an idea of what's to come. |
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To coincide with the first exercise in the book, this video demonstrates the technique used to organize the extremely complex SP-23 model. Once the various peices are organized, the task of rigging the model becomes much easier. |
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At the beginning of every production, it is important to determine what, if any, tools you will need to complete the job. This video will introduce you to the myriad of MEL scripts developed for this production. |
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The 'pipeline' describes the path that your images will take from concept to completion. This video is a quick overview of the pipeline used in this production. |
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The Creation of cgTkMirrorAnim.mel. As the first MEL lesson in this book, this video will go through a complete script dissection. Kiaran will guide you line-by-line to discuss how a simple workflow tool can be developed using MEL. |
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In this tutorial, Kiaran discusses the history of NURBS surfaces and their place in a modern production. |
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This lecture includes discussion on the many ways to use polygon surfaces plus several different techniques for smoothing your surfaces. As a bonus, Kiaran guides the user through the creation of a MEL expression for automatically smoothing your meshes based on the distance from the camera. This includes coverage of some very useful mathematical principles. |
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This video includes coverage and discussion of subdivision surfaces and their role in a modern pipeline. |
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Proxy rigs are used to provide fast feedback (realtime) for animators. This videos shows how we simplified the SP-23 model and how the same idea can be applied to an organic creature (Leon). |
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The first lecture in chapter three will show you the finished animation rig setup. Kiaran demonstrates all of the different features and will leave you with an understanding of the direction for the rest of the chapter. |
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Learn how the joints were accurately placed in the SP-23 model. Kiaran will go-on to show you how they were then oriented properly, with an explanation of how to setup rotation orders to help avoid gimbal lock. |
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Learn how the FK peices of the robot's leg were rigged with this simple lecture that guides you through exercise 3.1 from the book. |
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See how to use the custom-built pickwalking script to add custom pick walking functionality to your animation rigs. After seeing how to use the script, Kiaran will guide you through, line-by-line, (of cgTkPickwalker.mel) to show you exactly how the script works. |
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Learn how to harness these oft-misunderstood features of the MEL language to create truly interactive rigs. Kiaran will show you how to embed a UI before dissecting a full script node/job combo that was used on the SP-23 animation rig. |
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To animate the SP-23 rig, animators directly grab the peices they wish to manipulate. This creates nice, clean, easy-to-use animation rigs. Learn how the technique works, and then follow Kiaran as he dissects a script that will setup these controllers automatically. |
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This video demonstrates how we rigged the robot's somewhat troublesome leg so that the animator could pose it in an IK fashion. Watch as Kiaran shows how IK setups can be constrained in interesting ways to provide good control. |
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This video quickly demonstrates how the various FK peices on the robot were rigged. Kiaran first imports the joint layout, attaches the controller objects, set's up the pick walking relationships and finally uses a script node to add some interactivity to the rig. |
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This video starts by showing you how to use the cgTkQuickSDK.mel script to quickly and easily batch process set driven keys across multiple objects. Once you have seen how the script is used, Kiaran will dive into the script and discuss the MEL code, line-by-line. |
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Follow along as Kiaran demonstrates all of the features in the high-resolution rig. |
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Learn how to rig pistons that realistically slide and compress. These techniques can be applied to all of the pistons throughout the SP-23. After seeing how they are rigged, Kiaran will show you the finished product on the SP-23 head pistons. |
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This lesson will introduce you to the cgTkDynChain.mel script. Newly updated for this book, this script will enable you to create dynamic joint chains that flop around realistically. These chains can then be tweaked, set to collide and finally have their animation baked to keyframes. All of this is demonstrated in this lecture. |
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In this video, Kiaran will demonstrate the technique used to rig the springs on the robots shock absorbers. By using a wire deformer and the spiral script, we can create a spring shape that maintains it's intial girth while stretching. Finally, we write an expression to drive it automatically with the leg. |
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This tutorial shows some of the tricks we used to enable our machines to render the robot without crashing. Learn how to setup mental ray's memory management and render from the command line to save precious system resources. |
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This video describes how to setup a render pass for ambient occlusion using mental ray for Maya 6.0 and 7.0. Finally, we will render a peice of the robot and show you the end result. |
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This lecture demonstrates the lighting and shading techniques used to generate the renders seen throughout the book. |
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After finally generating our ambient occlusion and color passes, we are ready to composite them together. This lecture will show you how this is done with Adobe Photoshop. |
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Learn how to prepare your model to be bound to a skeleton with smooth binding. In this lecture, Kiaran will discuss how smooth binding works and why it works the way it does. Topics include weight normalization, the component editor and the paint weights tool. |
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This lecture picks-upo where the last one left. Kiaran will demonstrate techniques for designing believable deformations with the paint weights tool. See how to paint the pesky shoulder area as demonstrated on the Leon troll creature. |
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This video demonstrates how to use the jcAnimCS script. We start with a walk cycle on the animation rig, and then store this animation to a file on the hard drive. Finally, this animation is copied to the render rig. |
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Starting where the previous video left-off, this lecture will show how to tweak the dynamics on the robot's wires and prepare the file for rendering by baking the dynamics into keyframes. |