model two joints constrained to each other one skinned to the main body one with the tail.

how to make the tail movement dynamic: create a curve

add a spline IK

make selected curve dynamic hair simulation

hairsystem drives the dynamics

nucleus is the physics of the world

follicle drives growth of the hair

if you play the simulation the curve drops.

point lock set to base will make the second end drop along with the curve

use the node editor to make the dynamic curve drive the IK handle

Start Curve Attract. Determines the amount of attraction of the current hair position to the start position. This attribute is useful, for example, where you want to have stiff hair, or hair that moves with a character.

When Attraction Damp is 1, the motion of hair moving towards its start curves is fully damped, leaving only its Start Positions and field forces to dynamically influence its motion.

The Attraction Scale ramp attenuates the Start Curve Attract attribute value along the length of the hair clumps in your hair system. You can use the ramp graph to define a varied stiffness from root to tip for the hair clumps in your hair system.

create a control for the system

Use the interactive playback to move things in the viewport

nCloth Collision attributes:

solver displays: specifies what Maya Nucleus solver information is displayed in the scene view for the current nCloth object. Solver Display can help you better diagnose and troubleshoot any problems you may be having with your nCloth.

Collision Thickness

When on, the collision volumes for the current nCloth object are displayed in the scene view. Collision Thickness helps you visualize an nCloth’s thickness and it is useful when tweaking an nCloth’s collisions with other nCloth objects or and nParticle and passive objects. The appearance of the current nCloth’s collision volumes is determined by its Collision Flag.

delete the tail part that is affected by the system and set the rest of the body as a passive collider (cloth settings). now the tail will move without colliding with the rest of the body.

auto skinning advanced skeleton:

deform option 2 will create the cage structure around your character

the green controls represent where the geometry falls

the red controls represent where is the fall off of the skinning

copy skin weight to project the weights onto the character:

however the head skin weight and some other parts may not work too well. In order to edit this the green controls can be adjusted to better project the weight on the character.

once the corrections have been applied and the copy weight projected again the head seems to be still problematic, so in that case manually skin weight the fall off of the weight is the right solution.

face skinning

symmetrical model and clean model to work with advanced skeleton

select a mask of the face

connect the geometry to the correspondent selection in advanced skeleton menu

fit menu for the detail on the face is very important to be precise since that the program would built the controls and skin the weight according to where you set the points on the face.

once is built by selecting toggle switch you can edit the selection and rebuilt the pose again.

There are either joint-based or blend shape-based approaches for rigging a face.

Joint-based systems
A joint-based facial rig utilises joints and skinning to affect areas of the model.
A joint-based system can be directly attached to the skinned (main-rig) model or offsite on a duplicate model and then connected to the main rig using a blend shape.
Joint systems can also be used on duplicate models as part of blend shape systems. For example, to help create a rotation for a blink or eyebrow behaviour.

Blend shape (on or off site) systems
Blend shape systems use duplicate models to create distinct shapes(targets) for movement.
You can either use fully duplicated models (offsite) or create (onsite) targets to create your system.
Offsite (full duplicate modelling) allows you to use sculpting tools because you are not directly altering the skinned mesh. A full duplicate can also be exported out to ZBrush for sculpting or to be archived
Onsite (skinned model modelling) means you are unable to use full sculpting tools because you are altering a skinned mesh.

cheek thinning blend shape using the shape editor

select the face mesh create first one empty blend shape and afterwards add some targets to it. when creating the target to edit the mesh the “edit” button should be turned on (red)

to make the edit definitive use the set driven key editor with the joint as the driver and the face shape as the driven with the corrective shape selected

sculpt tools (shape authoring) designed to work with blend shapes- erase and smooth and soft selection

pull out and in mouth target same process to push further the pose and keep the target value to 1 duplicate the target twice put the finial target to 0 and the second to 1 and the third to a 0.3 0.4 value merge the second and third targets and delete the first one: now the pose is pushed further and the value is still on 1.

curl in and out and pull in and out lips blend shapes once created they can be added to the rig using the set driven key editor where the driver in this case would be the mouth control and the driven the blend shapes all the key created have to be set as linear tangents in the graph editor.

Once every shape is created they should be connected to the face controls through the set driven key editor.

This week I have animated a lip-sync animation.

I first animated the jaw bounce and the lips and cheeks afterwards:

After working on the face animation I have added some body poses starting from the root control and finally the arms and the head to add emphasis to the action.

This week we learned how to use Animation bot and apply it into out workflow.

animBot is the most powerful toolset for Maya animators, used by more than 90% of the greatest full feature and AAA game studios. This are some of the features I have used:

Increase Decrease Precise Transform

For situations where you need to increase or decrease precise values to a key or attribute.

Nudge Left Right

Nudge selected keys to the left or right.

Tip: if you go to an empty frame and Nudge Left Right, the next right key will snap to that frame.

Nudge commands move keys around. You can nudge selected keys or even all keys existent in the scene.

Copy Key Times

Store key times from selection, to be pasted later.

Tweener

That’s the classic Tween Machine taken to a whole new level.

Based on traditional animation techniques, with this one you can create precise inbetween keys, first pass breakdowns and save hours of work by basically not dealing with animation curve tangents.

Select Sets

Selection buttons to help selecting chunk of rig controls.

It’s meant to be a quick and simple way to organize and select stuff in your scene and despite of not being a picker substitute, if you don’t have one it will do a pretty decent job.

Copy Animation

Copy (store) the animation of selected objects.

You can then paste the animation in the same or another Maya session, to the same objects, other objects, other channels and even to another namespace/character.

Transfer animation to a fresh new scene:

I after started my animation with a monster rig. I have constrained some proxy to better visualise the silhouette and movement of the body of the character. I have imported a reference footage for the animation, blocked the poses using stepped keys first and splined them afterwards. This the final playblast.

Mocap data

Maya has it’s own auto rigging system. If you have a character with a joint structure it can be used to generate controls.

Select create custom rig mapping and start to pair up the joint to the corresponding part of the body in the definition menu. the arms should be straighten up and aligned to the axes.

these would be the final controls.

After in the content browser it is possible to get some mocap data to apply some animation to the rigged character.

manual rigging

these are the steps to create a leg rig

3 IK handles for the leg rig: leg, stabiliser and toe.

rotate with sticky option for hips-ankle handle

single chain ankle- foot and foot toe handles

groups the IK handles to recreate the different foot rotations

control to connect the whole grouping system

create a nurbs circle with the pivot in the middle of the ankle joint and with frozen transformation

knee pole control: create a nurbs circle and group it (offset group) and after parent the group to the knee joint after zero the channel of the group to get the exact rotation of the knee and after use the pole vector constrain tool

add different attributes to the foot control channel

mirror the foot control to the other side by duplicating the control group it put the scale x to -1 un parent it

connection editor for the attributes, left display, turn off show non keyable to link the channels to the correct rotation axis

for the foot roll use set driven key to a value of 30 and -30

group hierarchy

inherit transforms: you might notice that by moving the main group the individual parts start to move at different rate to correct this you need to tick off the inherit transform attribute for the main geo and psd groups.

to manually create a spine control instead these are the steps:

create a pelvis control and position it according to the pelvis joint. To align the spine controls create a locator to use as a guide. in order to simulate a spine rotation parent them together according to their hierarchy.

Planning your animation is essential for the final output. In order to get a good animation is important to apply cinematic rules to the 3D environment.

Gather references of the animation you are going to create is very important to achieve credibility and truthfulness of the movements.

Plan the characters animations with proxies can be useful to track what you are doing and go through different stages before getting to the final animation.

So, for this animation I have used a proxy model and applied different colours to the main block of the body to differentiate the different parts.

The model had two key poses keyed already, so I have created some hold poses from them to simulate a slow in and out of the movement.

Before starting the animation is essential to have the camera animated first so that you know which parts of the body to focus the movements and details.

When starting the animation I worked using stepped keys to plan the shot and have a clear silhouette of the character poses.

Once the main keys are set I converted the keys to linear keys to set new keyframes and breakdowns in the exact middle and to move the keys

After I reconverted the keys to stepped to adjust the keyframes just created

And the final step was to create auto keys for the dynamicity of the movement