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Need Help with Rigging a Complex Character

Rigging General
#1

Hello mGear community,

I’m currently working on a project that involves rigging a character with some intricate requirements, and I could really use some guidance from the experts in this community.

The character I’m rigging has multiple limbs and non-standard anatomy, which is proving to be quite challenging for me. I’ve been able to rig simpler characters before, but this one is pushing my skills to the limit.

  • Specifically, I’m struggling with
  • Managing the rig for multiple limbs
  • Dealing with non-standard anatomy
  • Creating a facial rig for nuanced expressions

I also check this Rigging Spherical Eyes with Just a skinCluster and Sin and Cosalteryx But I have not found any solution.
If anyone in the community has experience with rigging complex characters or can offer any advice, tutorials, or resources, I would greatly appreciate your help. Any insights or tips would be incredibly valuable to me right now.

Thank you all in advance!

#2

Hi miamsith,

Some of this is pretty general, and unfortunately there likely won’t be any easy answers.

Multiple limbs:

What are you struggling with? The key things to note are that you need to specify a separate hostUI controller for each limb, otherwise the attributes like ik/fk will drive all the limbs that are connected to it.

You can just use any old control_01 node as a hostUI. And specify it in the guide for the limb.

Non-standard anatomy

I guess my only comment is philosophical: what is “standard anatomy”? :slight_smile: This is the biggest one where there are no easy answers. It’s all just bones and polygons, and sometimes you have to get creative with hacks and workarounds. If you have any specific challenges or specific mechanics you’re trying to figure out, that would be an easier question to answer.

nuanced face rig

You linked to my sin/cos eye. This is mostly just an interesting case study in driving something with joints only. There is no reason that you have to use this technique. You can use blendshapes or anything to make your eye shapes. I should have made a more complete tutorial, because a lot of people get stuck on driving it. But this technique won’t give you any extra nuance. I rarely ever use it in production.

Otherwise face rigging is a deep topic. I don’t know any tutorials off-hand. But I know the books “Stop Staring” and “The Art of Moving Points” were extremely valuable to me, years ago. As far as I know they are still relevant. Rigging Dojo is good for courses and mentorship. (There might be other courses.)

And ngSkinTools - if you don’t already use it - is one of the secrets to complex face rigging. Because then you can manage a lot of the skinning in layers, and get very precise results. It helps with complex bodies and clothing too, of course. I can’t recommend it enough.

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