== Advanced Character Rigging with Maya 7.0 ==

by ascottk

'''Introduction'''

Skip to [[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Two]]

Skip to [[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Three]]

For a brief overview of getting animated characters into Doom 3, go here:
[[Getting_Characters_and_their_Anims_into_Doom]] (you'll find the Maya 7 plugin here)

----

Maya is a beast of a modeling program & it has a big learning curve. When you get used it, you'll find that the work flow can be pretty quick. Turning your Maya mesh into an animated Doom 3 model will require a lot of patience & a lot of work because of the fine tuning the weights of an animated rig. Unforeseen consequences, . . . ahem . . . like submeshes clipping through another submesh and unintentional rigging of joints you don't want, can be frustrating but those are the reasons for this tutorial!

== First of all, here's a list of useful hotkeys: ==

*'''Alt + Left Mouse Button''' - Rotate the view port ("Tumble")

*'''Alt + Middle Mouse Button''' - Pan in the view port ("Track")

*'''Alt + Right Mouse Button''' - Zoom in the view port ("Dolly")

*'''F1''' - Maya help (opens in a web broswer)

*'''F2''' - Animation specific menus

*'''F3''' - Modeling specific menus

*'''F4''' - Dynamics specific menus (not very useful for Doom 3)

*'''F5''' - Rendering specific menus (rendering current frames, texturing/lighting, etc.)

----

== Need to know tools in Maya: ==

'''Outliner'''

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/9544/mayaoutlineryf8.jpg

'''Attribute Editor'''

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4402/mayaattributeeditorqd3.jpg

'''Paint Skin Weight Tool''' referred to occasionally as weight painter . . .

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/5351/mayapaintskinweightstf8.jpg

This tool is the one you'll want to familiarize yourself with, especially the ''Replace'', ''Add'' and ''Smooth'' functions in the "Paint Weights" rollout.

Of course we'll need a mesh to rig.

Enter Diego's Thug character:
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6441/diegothugtd8.jpg

& now we'll need a skeleton to rig the mesh to:
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/9492/tdmskeletonrf1.jpg

Now that we have all we need to start, let's go on to Part Two:
[[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Two]]

[[Category:Models]]
[[Category:AI]]
[[Category:Tutorial]]

Advanced Character Rigging - Part Three

2007-03-28T03:52:04Z

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2007-03-28T03:32:09Z

24.21.150.68:

Advanced Character Rigging - Part Two

2007-03-28T03:31:39Z

24.21.150.68:

== Advanced Character Rigging with Maya 7.0 ==

== Part Two ==

Back to [[Advanced character rigging]] Introduction

Skip to [[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Three]]

Now it's time to "skin" the bones.

All of the meshes need to be:

*triangulated (F3 (Modeling mode), Maya menu - '''Polygons > Triangulate''')
*have their histories deleted (Maya menu - '''Edit > Delete by Type > History''')
*have their transformations frozen (Maya menu - '''Modify > Freeze Transformations''')

Next we'll need to attach those meshes to the skeleton rig. In the outliner window (Maya menu - '''Window > Outliner . . .''', select all the meshes & the skeleton (hold Ctrl while clicking the meshes & the skeleton):

http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/9914/mayaoutlinerselectionszo2.jpg

Then Edit > Select Hierarchy:

http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/6108/selecthierarchyor4.jpg

This is necessary to include all of the joints in the skeleton. The origin joint would be the only joint we rig & that wouldn't be too much fun, now would it?

And now hit F2 for Animation Mode. Go to the menu '''Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind [ ]''' & click the square to the right of the menu item:

http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/1141/bindskinmenusl1.jpg

which will bring up the bind skin options:

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/7133/bindskinoptionszx3.jpg

& use those values.

Now select a mesh, in this case we'll select the legs since the upper legs & the lower legs are tricky to weight. When the lower leg rotates back, you want it to look natural. Not to have it look like this:

http://www.mindplaces.com/save/rigging12.jpg

Now bring up the Paint Skin Weights tool (Maya menu - '''Skin > Edit Smooth Skin > Paint Skin Weights Tool [ ]''' & click the square to the right. The Paint Skin Weights Tool will replace the Attribute Editor & the mesh will become black (black has no weights associated with the selected joint in the Paint Skin Weights Tool, white is fully weighted):

http://img354.imageshack.us/img354/3449/legsselecteo2.jpg

I hate having stray joints rigged especially when the joint isn't all that important. So the Flood function is very handy to get rid of those stray weights. Select the Hip joint in the weight painter, select the ''Replace'' function, turn up the weight value to one, & click "Flood" like so:

http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/6714/hipsfloodub4.jpg

Which will make the legs white:

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/2235/legsweightedht9.jpg

Now select an upper leg joint in the weight painter, in this case it's "LeftUpLeg",leave the weight value as one, select a brush at the top of the weight painter, & paint on the mesh where the upper left leg should be (notice that the rest of the leg turned black after choosing another joint in the paint weighter, that's a black canvas for the joint you selected):

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1646/legpaintft5.jpg

Keep painting weights wherever they should go & we'll troubleshoot & refine the weighting in part three which is way over here:

[[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Three]]

Advanced character rigging

2007-03-28T03:31:11Z

2007-03-28T01:55:10Z

24.21.150.68:

Advanced character rigging

2007-03-28T01:37:01Z

24.21.150.68:

== Advanced Character Rigging with Maya 7.0 ==

== Introduction ==

Skip to [[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Two]] or [[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Three]]

For a brief overview of getting animated characters into Doom 3, go here:
[[Getting_Characters_and_their_Anims_into_Doom]] (you'll find the Maya 7 plugin here)

----

Maya is a beast of a modeling program & it has a big learning curve. When you get used it, you'll find that the work flow can be pretty quick. Turning your Maya mesh into an animated Doom 3 model will require a lot of patience & a lot of work because of the fine tuning the weights of an animated rig. Unforeseen consequences, . . . ahem . . . like submeshes clipping through another submesh and unintentional rigging of joints you don't want, can be frustrating but those are the reasons for this tutorial!

== First of all, here's a list of useful hotkeys: ==

*'''Alt + Left Mouse Button''' - Rotate the view port ("Tumble")

*'''Alt + Middle Mouse Button''' - Pan in the view port ("Track")

*'''Alt + Right Mouse Button''' - Zoom in the view port ("Dolly")

*'''F1''' - Maya help (opens in a web broswer)

*'''F2''' - Animation specific menus

*'''F3''' - Modeling specific menus

*'''F4''' - Dynamics specific menus (not very useful for Doom 3)

*'''F5''' - Rendering specific menus (rendering current frames, texturing/lighting, etc.)

----

== Need to know tools in Maya: ==

'''Outliner'''

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/9544/mayaoutlineryf8.jpg

'''Attribute Editor'''

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4402/mayaattributeeditorqd3.jpg

'''Paint Skin Weight Tool'''

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/5351/mayapaintskinweightstf8.jpg

This tool is the one you'll want to familiarize yourself with, especially the ''Replace'', ''Add'' and ''Smooth'' functions in the "Paint Weights" rollout.

Of course we'll need a mesh to rig.

Enter Diego's Thug character:
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6441/diegothugtd8.jpg

& now we'll need a skeleton to rig the mesh to:
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/9492/tdmskeletonrf1.jpg

Now that we have all we need to start, let's go on to Part Two:
[[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Two]]

[[Category:Models]]
[[Category:AI]]
[[Category:Tutorial]]

Advanced character rigging

2007-03-28T01:23:40Z

24.21.150.68:

== Advanced Character Rigging with Maya 7.0 ==

'''Introduction'''
Skip to [[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Two]] or [[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Three]]

For a brief overview of getting animated characters into Doom 3, go here:
[[Getting_Characters_and_their_Anims_into_Doom]] (you'll find the Maya 7 plugin here)

----

Maya is a beast of a modeling program & it has a big learning curve. When you get used it, you'll find that the work flow can be pretty quick. Turning your Maya mesh into an animated Doom 3 model will require a lot of patience & a lot of work because of the fine tuning the weights of an animated rig. Unforeseen consequences, . . . ahem . . . like submeshes clipping through another submesh and unintentional rigging of joints you don't want, can be frustrating but those are the reasons for this tutorial!

== First of all, here's a list of useful hotkeys: ==

*'''Alt + Left Mouse Button''' - Rotate the view port ("Tumble")

*'''Alt + Middle Mouse Button''' - Pan in the view port ("Track")

*'''Alt + Right Mouse Button''' - Zoom in the view port ("Dolly")

*'''F1''' - Maya help (opens in a web broswer)

*'''F2''' - Animation specific menus

*'''F3''' - Modeling specific menus

*'''F4''' - Dynamics specific menus (not very useful for Doom 3)

*'''F5''' - Rendering specific menus (rendering current frames, texturing/lighting, etc.)

----

== Need to know tools in Maya: ==

'''Outliner'''

http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/9544/mayaoutlineryf8.jpg

'''Attribute Editor'''

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4402/mayaattributeeditorqd3.jpg

'''Paint Skin Weight Tool'''

http://img92.imageshack.us/img92/5351/mayapaintskinweightstf8.jpg

This tool is the one you'll want to familiarize yourself with, especially the ''Replace'', ''Add'' and ''Smooth'' functions in the "Paint Weights" rollout.

Of course we'll need a mesh to rig.

Enter Diego's Thug character:
http://img291.imageshack.us/img291/6441/diegothugtd8.jpg

& now we'll need a skeleton to rig the mesh to:
http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/9492/tdmskeletonrf1.jpg

Now that we have all we need to start, let's go on to Part Two:
[[Advanced Character Rigging - Part Two]]

[[Category:Models]]
[[Category:AI]]
[[Category:Tutorial]]