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Note: For this workshop, Paul will be supplying a character for students to rig. Students will be able to use their own characters once approved by Paul. Feedback will be given so that changes can be made to the characters before the course starts.
Week One: Setting up a Biped Figure Part One
In week one, students will be introduced how to correctly set up a figure for their character. This will include describing where joints need to be located within the mesh to produce clean and accurate deformations.
Week Two: Setting up a Biped Figure Part Two
In week Two, students will complete setting up a figure for their character.
Week Three: Mesh Preparation, Naming Convention Importance and Introduction to Creating Driver Objects
In week three, students will be guided through the process of checking the mesh and preparing it for rigging. Students will learn how to clean up a mesh and how to fix Non-Uniform objects. There will also be an introduction to creating and using driver objects along with skin wrap so that multiple objects that are being deformed can be used to drive a single attached mesh. For example, having a head detached from the body to allow for morph targets on that object.
Week Four: Introduction to Tools and Creating a Deformation Rig
In week Four, students will be introduced to all the tools involved with rigging their character. Students will bring in the final deformation rig in order to skin their character. This will include setting eyes up for animation and any extra controls needed for deformation.
Week Five: Skinning Part One (including intro to Motion Tests)
In week Five, students will be introduced to Skinning, where they will apply skin to their figures and begin to cycle through the motion tests to edit the default envelopes. Students will be shown the power of using envelopes to set up vertex weighting.
Week Six: Skinning Part Two
In week Six, students will continue from week Five to finalize envelope set up and dig deeper into vertex weighting (if necessary). Although envelopes used correctly can produce very good deformation, week six will focus on perfecting those deformations.
Week Seven: Finalizing the Rig and creating a Master Rig and Master Mesh (Usability of Skin Wrap and PointCache)
In week Seven, students will be required to finalize their Rig. This will entail attaching teeth and eyelashes to the character as well as renaming the character and creating a Master Rig as well as a Master Mesh.
Week Eight: Introduction to ACT and how to use Muscles and Dynamics to bring extra realism to your Character.
In week Eight, students will be introduced to the Tool that has been created by the Author to assist in the usage of ACT and how to set up muscles for their character. Students will also be instructed in the use of ACT Dynamics and how to animate act settings to bring their character to “Life”.
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Level of Ability
Students with at least a moderate knowledge of 3ds Max are welcome to participate in this workshop.
Other Requirements
Students need to be familiar with web navigation and browsing, as well as email. Students need to be familiar with using a bulletin board system (such as CGTalk.com).
Software and Hardware Requirements
3dsMax (versions 8 and upwards) and ACT ( a 60 day free trial of ACT will be available to students prior to the start of class). ACT can be used with the free trial version of 3dMax 9 for those users who only have version 8. This workshop is 3dMax specific and not for Maya users.
A Broadband Internet connection is required.
Students will also need a computer capable of running java to be able to upload animations.
Hardware capable of running 3ds Max with a medium size scene should be sufficient (1Gb RAM).
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