Category: tutorial

Maya Time Editor – Learning Series

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date February 27, 2018
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A getting started series on the Time Editor in Autodesk Maya by Steven Roselle

A getting started series on the Time Editor in Autodesk Maya by Steven Roselle. This is a very clear ramp up on using the Time Editor to create, blend, edit and time warp animations in a non-destructive and non-linear animation editing tool. Must watch for animators in Maya.

Our friend and Maya master Steven Roselle from My Oh Maya is creating a series of videos on the Time Editor tool. These are a great starting point for anyone who still has not tried it yet. He also covers some tips and workflows that, if you have used the Time Editor, there is a good chance you missed or overlooked. He covers clip creation and re-use, time warps, animated icons for your pose library, matching clips and transferring animation to name a few examples.

While not yet a MotionBuilder replacement it offers a much better option than the older TRAX workflow in Maya. The Time Editor among other things gives your the ability to work with diffrent “TAKES” in Maya out of the box like an animator could with MotionBuilder, allowing more than once timeline of animation at a time in a fast way without hacking it with the older Animation Layer system.

Maya Time Editor Part 1 – Getting Started

Maya Time Editor Part 2 – Clips and Sources

Maya Time Editor Part 3 – Baking and Exporting

Maya Time Editor Part 4 – Clip Remapping

Maya Time Editor Part 5 – Blending and Retiming

Maya Time Editor Part 6 – Clip Layers

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/My.Oh.Maya

Blog – https://area.autodesk.com/profile/My+Oh+Maya/blog-posts/

If you want to learn some MotionBuilder tricks and get some great advice you can explore and try out in Maya, go get our free Motion Editing E-Book: Rigging Dojo – A Guide to Motion Editing and MotionBuilder in 140 characters

Tags #animtip, Maya, time editor

Blog Post rigtip tutorial

Maya #rigtip – Jaw Translation on Vimeo

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date January 16, 2018
No Comments on Maya #rigtip – Jaw Translation on Vimeo

Nice rig tip on using the remap value node to improve the feel and look of the jaw in motion, from our alumnus Greg Hendrix. #rigtip #faceRigging #Maya #Autodesk

Greg Hendrix

Tags face rigging, Face Rigging 101, Maya, rigtip

Blog Post rigtip tutorial video

Mocap Online – Motionbuilder UE4 Root Motion Animation Retargeting

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date November 5, 2017
No Comments on Mocap Online – Motionbuilder UE4 Root Motion Animation Retargeting

Something that comes up often is dealing with hip vs root bone motion and having to either add or remove it to work with diffrent game engines or mix and match move sets. If you are a AAA team and have tech artists and experienced editors it is a challenge but if you are an independent game studio or a lone artist, this might simply be impossible as was the case for the people who reached out to us.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/motionbuilder-forum/working-with-root-translation-in-motionbuilder/m-p/7517630

I passed this on to Crispin and he worked up a great and clear tutorial on how to get motion ready for Cry Engine using their Motus Mocap online animations.

Click the image and check out the video on their blog post

A Motionbuilder tutorial discussing how to re-target animations from one character to another, and transfer the full Root motion correctly and accurately – even if there is a scale difference between the two rigs.
INDEX is below to jump directly to any section. The question came up on the Autodesk forums. Shout out to Brad Clark with Rigging Dojo, our friends at Crytek and CryEngine, and Epic and the Unreal Engine.
INDEX: 0:00 Introduction
01:49 Basics – Settings, Extensions, Constraints and Match Source
07:41 Plotting and Results
08:16 Scaling – Why do it and problematic results.
12:25 Some things are simpler than they first seem… Doh
13:40 Scaling – The Simple Fix and Results
17:00 Vertical Root Motion – Yes it works, an example.
19:57 Plot All Takes and Editing afterwards.
Rigging Dojo – http://www.riggingdojo.com
CryEngine – https://www.cryengine.com/
Unreal Engine – https://www.unrealengine.com
https://www.MocapOnline.com
http://www.MotusDigital.com

If you are needing more MotionBuilder training and help you can check out our other free tips and tutorials, dig in with our paid on-demand workshop or get custom studio training and consulting like Epic Games, EA and Sony have (contact us for information).

Tags #animtip, #rigtip, animation, Autodesk, education, free, Motion, MotionBuilder, Pipeline, Rigging Dojo, tutorials

rigtip tutorial video

Skinning Rigtip for a little known tool

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date August 25, 2017
No Comments on Skinning Rigtip for a little known tool

Move Weights tool, a little known tool that you should be using to make skinning easier and allow for added control in a pinch. TDs can use it to speed up skinning by copying good weighting to new joints for twist, like shoulders to a few new twist joints in the upper arm for example.

Mesh and Rig from 3dfiggins.com/Store/ AnimRig – Amazing Spiderman – Free Download

Rig free from 3dfiggins.com/Store/ that we used for this #rigTip video.

Tags #animtip, #rigtip, Autodesk, character rigging, deformations, education, elarning, free, Maya, rigging, rigging 101

Blog Post rigtip tutorial video

Cult of Rig : Season 00 Day 010 Finishing Pedals and GodNode Components

Post author By Rigging Dojo
Post date July 21, 2017
No Comments on Cult of Rig : Season 00 Day 010 Finishing Pedals and GodNode Components

Season 00 Day010 Stream – Finishing Pedals and GodNode Components

Downloads:

Pilot Season – Download

Rigging Dojo Notes:

This week we are not doing much of a breakdown, there are many details and things that you simply have to watch through the video to understand and get the most from. We will pick out a few things that we want to explain or highlight. Enjoy!

Part one is hooking up the pedals to use the “gravity” effect, where they stay world aligned. This was a quick adding of another composeMatrix node for an offset and mixed it into a the exiting matrix multiplication in an order to allow offset the pedal.
a quick note on using unitConversion nodes to – a value of an input, while you don’t want to have unitConverts all over the place, using them this way has been a favorite use of ours.
Hook up the animation attribute once more to get back to the same feature as before all the re-structuring the rig.
work off world tip- use the offset of the rig in the world as a “testing” process to help catch problems in the rig before it gets to far along

God node (Master control)

Drive the whole rig but doesn’t have to be in world space
top_top_world_ node, hidden, used by only shot final, this is the world space of your rig, the GodNode would be under it

Building the component

Building a non-cyclic constraint

Connecting the God Node component in to the rig

there is a good few bits of trouble caused by the node editor not being set to sync… jump to here to see the hook up of the offset nodes

Maya name space : “underworld” and all the connective nodes between SRT nodes get assigned that name space.

On to the next video!

Get involved:

Scene used to display the functions is available at:
http://www.cultofrig.com/resources/re…
Maya 2016 and up.

Follow me on twitter for announcements and news
https://twitter.com/ThE_JacO

Check out the calendar for up-to-date information and times
http://cultofrig.com/streamcalendar

Follow the Streams live on Twitch
https://www.twitch.tv/cultofrig/

And keep up to date with news on the website
http://www.cultofrig.com

Tags #animtip, #cultOfRig, #rigtip, education, free, Maya, rigging, Rigging Dojo