The Best Free Rigs for Learning to Animate in Maya

Morpheus - endlessly flexible

We do not design and build our own rigs here at Bucks - there are just too many excellent free rigs and sets provided by Maya enthusiasts for student use. We point our students to the very best freeware rigs from the web and show you where to find them. In the end though, it is up to our students to find the rigs that they most enjoy animating with. There are so many; all have their strengths and weaknesses. Below is a list of some of the best, and where to find them.

The Marvellous Monty

The marvellous Monty by Raveen Rajadorai. A green pea with legs, and the perfect rig for learning animation. We recommend him for animating locomotion, like walks runs and jumps. His long legs make him very flexible and easy to use.

Morpheus by name, Morpheus by nature

Josh Burton's excellent Morpheus rig is a great rig for acting and performance. This stunning rig has a few quirks (the textures are a little tricky to use) but it is very flexible and adaptable and gets great results.

For sets and props we use the many free assets available at the excellent website Turbosquid,
and also www.tf3dm.com, which has tons of free stuff. We always recommend that our students set the scene, and create a set. It helps you imagine what is taking place, and helps create an interesting environment.

Animators can also consult the Resources page of The 11 Second Club. The Club runs a monthly animation competition, which we strongly recommend all our students enter. Their Resources page
lists the rigs that they recommend, and we don't disagree with any of their picks. They are all solid and reliable, and deliver the goods when it comes to character performance and dialogue.

Another very useful page is this blog post by LesterBanks, a few years old, but still a great list of fantastic free rigs available online.

Finally, don't forget Animation Buffet, which again lists some of the best free resources out there.

The important thing to remember when you download a new rig is that all rigs have their quirks, and each one is unique. To be sure your animation will come out OK, test your rig extensively and make sure it can do everything you need. If necessary, get online and start asking questions in user forums. Not all rigs will do what you want them to. For example, if you are working on a dialogue shot, don't invest tons of time and effort in a rig that doesn't have facial expressions - you are simply wasting your time.


For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.

When Should an Animator Animate on the World Control in Maya?

When Should You Use the World Control to Animate in Maya? The short answer is: "never". But, as with most rules, real life is not quite as simple as that, and there are exceptions to the rule. Since this is an area of some confusion for animators learning to to use Maya, here's a brief outline of what the rules of World Control Etiquette really are.

What is the world control?
The World control is the control on a character or creature rig which allows it to be moved into position. It is also sometimes called the World Mover, the Global Control, or the God Control. It is at the very top of the animation hierarchy, and supersedes all the other controls, hence its name.

What is it used for?
The World Control is used to place your character in your 3D set. That is generally the first and last time that you will use it.

Why should you not use it for animation?
Because it creates confusion. If you set keyframes on your world control to move your character, you will have to counter-animate other controls such as the body and the feet. This will create two sets of curves which counteract one another, and make it very hard to edit your curves.

So why in the Animation Apprentice tutorials do you sometimes animate on the World control?
Good question. The reason is that sometimes you have no choice. For example, if you are animating a walk cycle "on the spot", you may need to set a keyframe on the World Mover in order to create a sense of forward movement. This is because training rigs are generally highly simplified to make learning Maya easier. On production rigs, which tend to be very complex, there would likely be a series of controls below the World Control in the hierarchy which perform the same function as the World Control, but are called something different, such as the "Direction Control". So, on a production rig, you would use one of these other controls to create the same function, while leaving the World Control untouched.

So it is bad to animate on the World Control?
Generally, yes. But when you are animating motion cycles with simple rigs, then you may have no choice.

----Alex

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. And find out about how our online video tutorials work.  

How Can You Tell if Our Course is For You?

free 3D software

A career in animation and visual effects is not for everyone. A lot of what we do day to day involves solving software problems, trying to make stuff work on a PC or a Mac, and cursing our computer when it doesn't. Being a digital artist isn't for everyone. One way of finding out if this is something you would like to do for a career is to do a couple of tutorials online. A great place to start is with the 3D software Blender - it's completely free, and there are many free tutorials out there to get you started.

Free Blender Tutorial at YouTube

To begin, go to the Blender homepage at www.blender.org and download their free software. It's easy to do, and quick to install on your laptop, or your friend's laptop. Any reasonably modern machine should be able to run Blender.

Next, go to YouTube and search for Basic Blender Tutorials.  What you want are the most basic tutorials available, that teach you the really simple stuff, assuming absolutely no prior knowledge of the programme. Below is one we like, which teaches you how to model a coffee cup. To do this tutorial you will need a PC (it's not so good on a Mac) and a three button mouse (or Wacom tablet).




If you're running a Mac, you might try this Mac-friendly tutorial below instead. The author gives instructions for both platforms (Blender is slightly different on a Mac vs a PC), so if you are on a Mac you are more likely to be able to follow the tutorial without running into problems.



If you can follow one or both of these tutorials without giving up in despair and wanting to chuck the computer out of the window - a career in animation and visual effects might be for you.

A willingness to learn, an openness to embrace new software, the desire to combine technical and artistic skills - these are the hallmarks of a good digital artist. If this sounds like you - you will most likely enjoy our course at Bucks.

---Alex

For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. And find out about how our online video tutorials work.

Eleven Rules to Become a Great 3D animator

Part of the secret of having a successful career as an animator is learning how to be good and fast at the same time. Directors want quality, Producers want speed. You must please both. Animation producers like animators who do the job well, on time, and are nice to work with. If you have all three of these qualities - a long and successful career in the industry will be yours. Below are our top tips for animating in Maya - how to be both good and fast. We don't say that this is an exhaustive list, but it's a great place to start.


1 – Establish your screen layout and save it  

The standard animator’s layout is a three panel view split at the top. The Graph Editor goes at the bottom. Top right is your camera view (which should be locked off), and on the left is your perspective view, where you can dolly and zoom. To find this in Maya, go to Panels/3 Panel view, split at top. Customise the view, then save the layout so you can retrieve it each time you open Maya. Go to window/save current layout. Name it “Animation View”. Retrieving this setup will be the first thing you do when you open Maya.


2 – Create a camera and lock it off.

As an animator, you should always animate to the camera view (unless you're working on a cycle for a games project). You want to set up your camera straight away, else you will waste time animating stuff that the audience will not see. To create a camera, go to Create/cameras/camera. Name it “shotCamera”. Go to Panels/look trough selected, and move your camera into the right position. Once you are happy with it, select your camera, right click on it, and lock it off in the Channel Box.

The T Pose. As still on your model as it is in real life

3 - Start off by relaxing your rig

Almost all animation rigs are designed in the “T pose”, which is stiff and formal. So, you need to relax it. At frame 0 in your timeline, relax your character, and make it less stiff. Bend the knees, bend the arms, give the face an expression. Offset the feet a little. Save this pose on frame 0 - outside your timeline, so you can come back to it later when you need to create new poses.

Expressions will sell your shot

4 – Block out everything, including facial expressions, from the start.

You should add eyebrows, eyes, fingers and facial expressions on all your poses. Offset the symmetry, make each key pose expressive. Facial expressions will help to sell your shot to the director. Don’t think “Oh, I’ll do the facial expressions later”. Do them now. Facial expressions help to tell the story, to make the shot clear.


5 - Don't animate on the world mover

The world mover is for moving your rig into position at the start of the shot, and for nothing else. Except in rare circumstances, don’t animate on the world control. Set a key on the World mover once, when you move the character into position, Then, never touch the world mover again.


6 – Decide which controls you want to use and stick to them

If a character has multiple body controls, decide which ones you want to use. Be consistent – else you will forget where you set keys. For example, don’t use multiple rotations on the spine controls. You will forget which ones you used, and this will make it very hard to make adjustments to your animation later on.


7 – Pick an attitude for the shot and stick to it

Don’t over-complicate things. You don’t need multiple expressions. Pick one main expression for your shot and stick with it. A common mistake is to have too many expressions in a shot.

Are the characters looking at one another?

8 – Make sure your eye direction is consistent


Bad eye direction will let down your work. Is the character looking where they are supposed to? Eye direction movers are often inaccurate. You will likely have to fine tune the eye direction, sometimes frame by frame.

Show it is Hi Rez and get approvals faster. Photo: Wikipedia

9 – Show your work in high resolution

Show your work to the director, or whoever is approving your shot, in the highest possible resolution to get it approved faster. Low resolution shots look grainy and unimpressive, even if they are well animated. Make your work look nice – and get faster approvals.


10 – Imagine you are the director – does your shot make sense?

Does your shot make sense to anyone other than you? It you showed to your seven year old niece would she like it? Your work must be clear to others as well as you. If you have to explain what is going on, it probably needs work.

11 – Download the TweenMachine

The Tween Machine is a free Maya plugin which makes the work of adding breakdowns to your shot super easy. Download it, install it, and never look back. http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/script/tweenmachine

To see how to use the TweenMachine in detail, see this post. For more about the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. And find out about how our online video tutorials work

How to use the free Parent Master plugin for Maya

The Parentmaster - a free Maya plugin

Autodesk Maya is free to students, and a result of this it has a huge user base around the world. Many Maya users have sought to improve the software, developing free plugins that can (as the name suggests) be plugged in to your free copy of Maya, adding to its usability and helping to solve some of the trickier problems associated with digital animation.

The ParentMaster is a plugin created by Paolo Dominici which greatly simplifies the business of attaching and un-attaching objects in Maya. Say you want to animate a character picking up a ball and then dropping it. This free tool will make your life much, much easier.

What is it for?
The free Parentmaster plugin is a way to attach and un-attach objects in Maya.

What do you need to do?
By following this tutorial you should be able to:

1. Import a free plugin into Maya – the ParentMaster - and install it successfully.
2. Learn how the Parent Master works by attaching and un-attaching objects in Maya using the free ParentMaster factory Maya file
3. Use the ParentMaster to animate a character picking up a ball and then dropping it.

PART 1 – Import and install the plugin

a) Import the plugin
You can find the free plugin here: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/script/zv-parent-master
You will need to register with Creative Crash and then log in.

b) Installation

1. Import the ParentMaster plugin and open it up.
2. Find the Read me document inside and follow it carefully
3. Place "ZvParentMaster.py" in your scripts folder in Maya. Navigate through documents to find your Maya folder. It should look something like this: 
1. Win XP: "C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\My Documents\maya\scripts"
2.  Win Vista/Win 7: "C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\maya\scripts"
3. Mac:"/Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences/Autodesk/maya/scripts
4. Place the "zv" folder in the same folder (If that doesn’t work, try placing it in the icons folder instead)
5. In Maya, open up the Script Editor and go to the Python tab, copy and paste these two rows: 

import ZvParentMaster
ZvParentMaster.ZvParentMaster()

Once you have done that, follow these steps:

1. Highlight the text in the Python tab and click on "Save Script to Shelf...", specify a name for the shelf (eg PM) and click "OK".
2. You should now see a tab on your shelf labeled PM. Click on it, and this symbol should appear in your view port:
3. If you have any problems with installation, go through the process again.

To see Paolo Dominici demonstrate how it works, check out the demo at http://www.paolodominici.com/vid/parent/parent.mov

The ParentMaster "factory"

If you want to install it on a Mac, try this video below:



PART 2 – animate the ParentMaster factory.
Your goal is to complete the exercise so that the parcel moves through the factory, attaching and un-attaching as it goes.

1. Open up the Maya scene file that comes with the ParentMaster – it looks like a little factory. Create a project, and set to it.
2. At the frame where you want to attach the parcel to the blue pusher, select the box, select the pusher, and click on the attach button
3. At the frame where you want to un-attach the parcel from the blue pusher, select the box, select the pusher, and click on the detach button.
4. Keep repeating the process until the parcel box moves through the factory.

Technical Notes

How to edit Parent Master constraints and adjust the timing in the Graph Editor:

1. Go to the Parent Master menu bar and select the 5th icon down labeled “Select constraints and snap groups”, and click on it
2. This will show your ParentMaster key frames in the Graph Editor
3. Adjust the timing of the key frames just like you would any keyframes in Maya

PART 3 – Use the Parent Master to animate a character picking up and ball and dropping it.

1. Import the character rig Morpheus. Google “Morpheus rig maya” to find and download the rig.
2. Import a table (find one at www.turbosquid) into your shot
3. Create a ball. Create/polygon primitives/sphere
4. Set Morpheus’s hands to IK.
5. Under Preferences, set your animation to stepped curves
6. On stepped curves, animate Morpheus picking up the ball and dropping it, using the Parent Master.

Problems

Note that the Parent Master does not work with referenced files. Or, rather, it can be made to work - but it is difficult.

---Alex

For more tips and tricks in Maya and other free tutorials, follow this link.  To see the books we recommend for the study of animation and visual effects, click here.  For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks.

Hair Simulation in Maya 2014

Rapunzel - great hair!

One of the best new features of Autodesk Maya 2014 is a big step forward in its hair simulation capabilities. The new tool is called XGen, and it comes free with Maya 2014. It was developed by Disney/Pixar and was used on their recent film Rapunzel, to generate the heroine's gorgeous, bouncing tresses.

At the BlueGFX Expo in London last month, Autodesk demonstrated their new hair simulation tool, giving us a step-by-step tutorial in how to go about creating great hair effects in Maya with this new instancing system. So how exactly does it work?

XGen is found under the Dynamics tab in Autodesk Maya. You go to Create/XGen/description, and give it a project name. Pick groomable splines/create to create your new hair map.  You can use the Density slider to add to or reduce the density of the follicles.

Using the brush tool you can paint the hairs to make them bigger or smaller. You can pose them too, grooming the hair to make it follow the contours of the body, growing out in different directions, just like real hair.

On a facial rig, you can add stubble, a moustache, a beard. You will generally do this on a separate mesh. Underneath the hair mesh will be the original mesh, which will have its own skin shader.

You can also use XGen to create other effects, such as long grass waving the wind. You can use the same system to propagate trees in a landscape, or grass over a field, or roof tiles on a roof.

So, next time you're working on a character rig, have a go at XGen and see what you can create.

---Alex

For more about free online tutorials, see our post about Andy Sykes' excellent tutorials in Flash, and check out the free Maya tutorials at Animation Apprentice. Be sure to take advantage of free life drawing classes at Pixelovely.com. For more on the experience of studying at Bucks New University, come and visit us at one of our Open Days,  take a virtual tour of one of our animation studios, check out what our students think of our course, and see why we're ranked in the top 12 creative universities in the UK. Find out why we're giving free laptops to all our students, and why we give all our students free access to videos at Lynda.com. Also, see what financial assistance might be available to you. Learn which is better for animation, a PC or a Mac? Get hold of a copy of a map so you can find your way around campus, and learn about motion capture at Bucks. And find out about how our online video tutorials work.

Animators Resource Full Interview - Zach Parrish

This is my full interview with Zach Parrish. In this interview, Zach breaks down a series of shots from his time as Animation Supervisor on Wreck It Ralph. He also takes us through some of his blocking techniques, chats about his time with Glen Keane and some of his duties as a Animation Supervisor. Sorry for the occasional Audio overlap...unfortunately it's due to the capture of it. Hope you all enjoy!

Animators Resource Full Interview - Zach Parrish from Animators Resource on Vimeo.

Check out more interviews at:
animatorsresource.blogspot interviews page

See Zach Parrish's work:
zapmyshorts.com

Enjoy!
JP

Planning is SOOOO important!

Hey everyone

I stumbled on this post from Carlos Baena's site. It was from one of the shots that he did on The Incredibles. The one where he saves the "jumper" and crashes through the building leading to the supers getting sued. He shows the process of his planning for the shot from thumbnails to video ref. It is a great read and really inspirational.

Check it out:

Tips and Tricks > Planning Case Study: Incredibles





Enjoy!