Livestream - Character Rig in Maya (direct download added)

**Denny** · 07-28-2010, 11:56 AM

http://www.livestream.com/dennystechnicalcorner

Streaming is done for this time. The final recordings can be found further down. I don't know why but for some reason some menus aren't recorded by Livestream when I'm working in Maya. I'm really sorry for this, it's a technical limitation which I can't get around. I hope you can follow along well enough.

DIRECT DOWNLOAD
http://www.mediafire.com/?a4x3z96gkw7at (All parts, smaller download)

LIVESTREAM
Character Rigging 01 - Skeleton and Skinweights (Part 1-5)
Character Rigging 02 - Animation Rig (Part 1-4)
Creating a Physical Asset (Ragdoll) (1 Part)

**GameHatcher** · 07-28-2010, 11:58 AM

I am looking forward to this Denny! Thanks for taking the time to do it.

**Intermission** · 07-28-2010, 12:16 PM

I will be watching, as an aspiring animator who will be attending Animationmentor I find this interesting.

**Denny** · 07-28-2010, 01:03 PM

Going live in 10 minutes.

**Sir. Polaris** · 07-28-2010, 01:14 PM

oh god it's live.... *pukes on screen* (from excitement)

**Sir. Polaris** · 07-28-2010, 04:24 PM

Lol he is still at it.

**Denny** · 07-28-2010, 05:30 PM

For those who are interested I've finished the skinning/skeleton pass and am now starting with creating the animation rig.

**Denny** · 07-28-2010, 07:13 PM

So the live session for today is over. The next livestream will be tomorrow at the same time. If you check the time stamp in this post you'll have your local time for tomorrow. I'll be making a post here in advance before starting the stream.

Thanks for watching.

**TheAgent** · 07-28-2010, 07:59 PM

hey that was a great video it was fun : ], wahts the next one gonan be about?

**Denny** · 07-28-2010, 08:05 PM

I'm going to continue on the character rig until it's completely ready for animation and implementation in Unreal. I will be covering the PhAt editor last when everything is up and running.

Stay tuned tomorrow around the same time. Now I'm heading to bed, it's 2am and I'm trying to force myself from the computer. I just had to sort the Video Library on Livestream so people can find the sessions a lot easier On-Demand.

**TheAgent** · 07-28-2010, 08:11 PM

Alright well have a nice night!

**Denny** · 07-29-2010, 01:27 PM

I'm starting in half an hour.

**kristiandelay** · 07-29-2010, 02:04 PM

streaming has begun!!!

**Denny** · 07-29-2010, 05:05 PM

So, we're done for this time. See original post for additional information.

**Kelt'ar** · 10-02-2010, 03:08 PM

Man this was helpful

**Sir. Polaris** · 10-02-2010, 05:28 PM

Whats with the sig denny! don't leave us

@ Ontopic
I wish I could have been there for another rigging session, was very interesting last time.

**Denny** · 06-28-2011, 05:54 PM

I'm bumping this thread, I have some visitors on my site asking about Maya to UDK tutorials so I guess it won't hurt.

Sir. Polaris >> I'm in lurk mode now. :P

**PsychotropicDog** · 07-01-2011, 11:46 PM

I really like that rig and your workflow. Sadly, I am guessing if you are sending people to that link there is not a distilled .pdf of it - lots of good stuff but I know I missed some of the action.

**Denny** · 07-04-2011, 05:14 AM

There's too much information to summarize in a pdf and I'm too lazy to make one, unless I'm going to sell it which I doubt will ever happen.

**PsychotropicDog** · 07-07-2011, 07:18 PM

Well that is a bit tragic

One quick question if I am lucky...
I am almost done my mongrel rig, the question is:
What contraints do the bind skeleton joints get from the animation rig? I didn't write it down or something :/

**Denny** · 07-08-2011, 06:13 AM

It isn't important what constraints you use if we think in terms of compatibility with Unreal itself. Use the constraints necessary for the animation rig and skeleton to behave like you want. Be it Point+Rotate, Parent (with/without offset) or an attribute connection is up to you.

I recommend you don't read too much into the details on what constraints I'm using in the video unless you want to copy a specific behavior, try to learn how constraints, connections and hierarchies work like the back of your hand and try to recreate the behavior I have in the video. It's a lot easier on the mind to remember such things as you can recreate things systematically.

**PsychotropicDog** · 07-08-2011, 02:21 PM

In case you are wondering...
most joints got Orient, no maintain offset.
root got point+orient
base of spine (pelvis) got parent with offset maintained.
spine joints ( that got some rotation due to spline IK curve creation) orient with offset maintained.
Seems ok, time to animate then test the importing.

edit: Yay it works and imports ok! Now to go improve the control rig.

**Denny** · 07-09-2011, 06:17 AM

Perfect, just continue as you are then.

**Kelt'ar** · 07-09-2011, 10:19 AM

Denny I saw the vid you did with your mortal Online Characters.Those Physic assets were the bomb.

**Denny** · 07-10-2011, 06:53 AM

Thanks mate!

**Kyle_Katarn** · 07-13-2011, 05:22 PM

I'm watching the Animation rig one as we speak. Just a question, the sound keeps cutting out, is this intentional, or am I missing out on some crucial dialog? :P

Amazing work anyway.

**Denny** · 07-14-2011, 03:30 PM

Depends, there are sections when I say I turn off the mic and focus on working. Does it seem like that or technical issues?

On another note it seems Livestream has deleted part 5 and 6 of the rigging process due to low amount of views. Or perhaps it was the parts I removed myself, it's only 10-15 minutes worth of material gone so shouldn't be any problems. I am doing a backup however just in case.

Edit*
I'm currently re-encoding a downloadable version. 1.3GB of video, close to ten hours. Luckily I have a Core i7 so it won't take days. :P

**Denny** · 07-15-2011, 11:12 AM

I have re-encoded a medium quality version available for direct download. It's a total of 582MB instead of 1.3GB so heavily compressed. It's split up in several parts.
http://www.mediafire.com/?a4x3z96gkw7at