Find out about this great rig and how our course helped him speed it up!
Student at Savannah College of Art and Design
Mason, can you tell us a little about the project
“I’ve worked as the rigger, alongside a team of nine incredible artists on the SCAD capstone film “Goro Goro“. The film follows the story of Daigoro, a baby thunder god, who dreams of being as powerful as his father.”
How did you use the “Optimizing Rigs for Parallel Evaluation” course in your work?
“I came into the course knowing very little about parallel evaluation or rig optimization. As a newcomer, the course was very approachable, narrowing down from some relatively easy ways to make huge optimization gains in your rigs to understanding some of the more mysterious aspects of Maya’s evaluation graph, multithreading, and how to design setups with that in mind.
One huge and unexpected benefit I found is that by taking the time to re-evaluate and, in some cases, rebuild each component, your rigs also become much more stable!
Charles does an excellent job explaining the concepts of the course but also his thought process, so you can feel confident attacking problems outside of just what is covered.
As I continue developing my rigging toolset, I’ve found myself inherently applying the course concepts to the point that most of my components are naturally optimized.
Thanks for the fantastic course, Charles, This has been a game-changer!
Where can we find out more about your project?
“I have a complete breakdown of my rigging process for this character on my website: https://www.masonsmigel.com/post/daigoro-rigging-process
Model and textures: William Hawkins
Retopology and Rig: Mason Smigel
Animation: Ryotaro Sawada
Production proven results
About the class
- 7 Lessons
- 15 videos
- Example Maya files
- Workflow python scripts
- PDF chapter guides
Optimizing Rigs for Parallel Evaluation course is for anyone looking to take their rig performance to the next level, using the tools available in Autodesk Maya.
For example, learn what makes the Parallel graph different from the DG and how to identify hotspots in your rig slowing things down.
Apply production proven techniques to speed up your rigs by modifying them to take advantage of Parallel Evaluation and GPU deformer overrides in Maya and keep them running on the GPU.
Get your FPS up and keep your animators happy!
Syllabus
- Lesson 1: Course Overview
- Lesson 2: Understanding Graphs and Parallel Evaluation
- Lesson 3: Beginning Optimization using the Profiler
- Lesson 4: Biggest Bang for Your Time Buck
- Lesson 5: Macro Optimizations Face Rigging
- Lesson 6: Meso Optimizations & Skin Cluster Stacking
- Lesson 7: Micro Optimization The Last 10%
About the Mentor
Charles Wardlaw is a Software Engineer / CG Supervisor / Character TD living in Ontario, Canada. Husband, father, nerd, and reckless insomniac, he has worked on many feature films, high-end TV shows, and children’s cartoons in his fourteen-year career.
Testimonials
Mark Jackson
Red9consultancy.com
“This course is a really good introduction into optimizing your rigs for proper threading in Maya. Some very good & concise tips on using the Evaluation Toolkit and Profiler that everybody doing serious production should be following. I never knew about the “A” hotkey!”
Josh Sobel
fRigging Awesome.com
“Before learning from Charles, I thought advanced rigs were slow and we just had to deal with it. After rewriting my systems with his tips in mind, I’m getting over 60fps on a mid-range machine through basic parallel evaluation! This is the missing piece in every rigger’s Maya skillset. Rough performance predictions for the fRigging Awesome Studios Kayla 2 rig and all future rigs with Full Geo: Parallel – 70-80fps and Cached – 130fps+ thanks to Charles for being a parallel eval guru and sharing his knowledge.”
Miguel Campos
mGear Framework
Open source rigging and animation framework for Autodesk®
“The Course Optimizing Rigs for Parallel Evaluation from Charles Wardlaw is a must watch for any Rigger/Character TD using Maya. I will apply all the knowledge and tips learned in this course to improve mGear. So if you are using mGear and see a substantial improvement in rig performance, please thanks Charles for it”
Mathias Røyrvik – Lead Rigging Artist – Rodeo FX | LinkedIn
“This is a must for anyone that want to speed up their rigs. The focus on going from easy speed wins to dive deeper into the details of the system and how to optimize for it means that there’s something for everyone here. In addition it’s not just a great resource to have as a document of how things work, but also of best practices and strategies to approach issues at several levels. Thanks for the excellent work!”