Essential Skills in Character Rigging

ROTATION Hierarchies What Is a Hierarchy? How Do You Make a Hierarchy in 3D? What Does "Inheriting Transform" Mean? 3D Rotations What Is a Rotation? What Are Euler Rotations? What Is Rotation Order? What Are Quaternion Rotations? What Rotation Types Do I Use? Why Have Two Types of Rotations? Joints and Joint Orient What Is a Joint? What Properties Do Joints Have That Other Types of Transforms Don't? What Is a Joint Orient? How Do You Set Joint Orients? What Is the Best Configuration to Set Up Joint Orients? How Do Joint Orients Relate to Rotation Order? Does Translating Joints Affect the Joint Orient at All? Primary Skeleton What Is a Skeleton? What Are Skeletons Used For? What Is Forward Kinematics? What Different Poses Are Characters Modeled in, and How Does That Affect the Skeleton? What Is Skeletal Alignment and How Does it Relate to the Character Model? How Do I Assess a Character Model for Skeletal Assignment? Lesson 1: Creating the Basic Skeleton Intermediate Skeleton Setup How Do I Orient My Joints Properly? How Do I Determine Rotation Order? When Do I Need to Customize My Joint Orients? How Do I Set Custom Joint Orients? What Are Twist Nodes? How Do I Put Twist Nodes into My Skeleton? What Twist Nodes Do I Need to Create for My Human Skeleton? How Do I Insert a Twist Joint if I Need One? Do I Have to Do All This on the Other Side? Inverse Kinematics What Is Inverse Kinematics? Why Do I Need Inverse Kinematics? How Do I Create IK Chains? What's the Difference between Single-Chain and Rotate-Plane IK? What Is a Pole Vector? How Do I Edit IK Chains and Their Parameters? What Are the IK Essentials for the Humanoid Body? What Is Spline IK? Lesson 1: Building Standard IK Chains for a Human Arm DEFORMATION Introduction to Deformation What Is a Deformer? How Do Deformers Work? What Are the Different Kinds of Deformers? How Are Deformers Used in Modeling, Animating, and Character Rigging? Skinning a Character What Is Skinning? How Does Skinning Work? What Are the Different Types of Skinning Methods? What Are the Important Parameters of Binding a Character? Can I Let Maya Do My Skin Weights for Me? What Is Artisan? What if I Need to Move a Joint after Skinning My Character? How Can I Save My Skin Weights So I Don't Have to Do Them Again? What Is Secondary and Tertiary Deformation? Lesson 1: The Zeman Skin Weight Method Relationships How Do You Make Relationships between One Node and Another? Why Do You Need to Make Relationships between One Node and Another? What Are Constraints and What Do We Use Them For? What Are Expressions? What Are Math Nodes? What Are Driven Keys? What's the Best Method of Generating a Relationship? What Are the Differences between One Method and Another? Lesson 1: The Reverse Foot Lesson 2: The Pole Vector Lesson 3: Driving Hand Poses with Driven Keys Lesson 4: Driving Corrective Blend Shapes Lesson 5: The Twist Rig Conclusion