Character Rigging Best Practices


These are the slides for the 2006 GDC talk "Character Rigging Best Practices" -- an update of the old "Character Rigger's Cookbook" slides also hosted here at Giant Bite.

The slides are JPG images of the original slide deck. The text for the slides is available by clicking on this button:

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If you have comments or questions please post them in the Giant Bite forums . You can link to or repost these for educational or non-commercial use as long as they retain the copyright information. Commercial re-use is prohibites.


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Table of contents

Titles

What are "Best Practices?"

Takeaways

Framework

Q: What is a Rig?

A: A bunch of animations, waiting to be born

Chapter 1: Spaces

Understanding Spaces

Understanding Spaces

Control Scope

Control Scope Example

Behavioral Controls

Roots

C-G Root Rig

Ground Shadow Rig

Chapter 1: Review

Chapter 2: Kinematics

Kinematics

Kinematics

Baking

Faking

Torsos

Spine Kinematics

FK construction options

FK Rotations

Twist

2+1 FK Torso

Hybrid IK/FK Torso

Spline IK Basics

Spline IK Management

Isner Torso

Isner Torso Behavior

Chapter 2: Review

Chapter 3: IK Controls

IK Controls

IK Control Groups

PV Groups

Pole Vectors

Pole Vector Control Objects

Legs

Reverse Feet

2 Pivots

4 Pivots

Simplifying Reverse Feet

Simple reverse foot

Simple Reverse Foot

Simple Reverse Foot

Review

break

Chapter 4: Switching Systems

Switching Systems

Switching Systems

Constraint Switches

Serial Constraint Switches

Schedulers

The Value of Schedulers

FK/IK Switching

Alternatives to FK/IK

Interval Matching

Matching FK to IK

Matching IK to FK

Matching Pole Vectors to FK

Arms

Arm Kinematics

IK Hand Control Spaces

Clavicles

Weapon Handling

Chapter 4: Review

Chapter 5: Coordination

Coordination

Pose Libraries

Pose Library Features

NLE's

Fingers

Selection Methods

Selection proxies

Driven Fingers

IK Fingers

Chapter 5: Review

Chapter 5: Putting it Together

Head & Neck Kinematics

World Space FK Head

Spline IK Neck

Target-Roll Head

Chapter 6: Review

Chapter 7: Professionalism

Professionalism

Quality Control

Author: Steve Theodore

E-mail: steve@giantbite.com

Homepage: http://www.giantbite.com/

We're planning on adding a download link for the PPT files, or possibly to pdfs, after the show. Check back around 1st week in April.


Character Rigging Best Practices
copyright 2006 Steve Theodore