BUILD A FLEXIBLE RIG PART 3/3
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AUTHOR
Antony Ward
Since the early 90s Antony has worked for many of today’s top game and VFX studios, and has written three technical manuals and many online tutorials.
Welcome to the third and final part in this series. Up to now we have explored how to create a fully flexible character rig, right from building the initial joints through to adding a ribbon-based system to allow for maximum flexibility. The truth is, there is so much more we could do to enhance this rig, we could be going on for months.
There’s Soft IK, which eliminates the snap you get when an arm or leg is straightened by easing into the pose. We could look at knee and elbow pinning, controlling the stretchiness, adding a facial rig and so much more. However, there is one fundamental area we haven’t touched upon yet, and is essential for any character with feet.
At present there are no options for animating the robot’s toes or automating a good foot roll. There are plenty of tutorials out there that will show you how to create a basic ‘reverse foot’ setup, but with this tutorial I wanted to go even further and offer you an enhanced version that gives the animator maximum control over how the foot moves.
The idea here is to use one attribute to give you the full range of motion, from back on the heel to standing on the tips of the toes. In addition to this there will be a series of attributes to configure the type of foot you’re working with. After all, a foot with a boot will deform differently to one without.
As always, all the scene files are included with this tutorial, so feel free to load the first
