These CHARACTER MODELING and RIGGING VIDEO TUTORIAL downloads are all high-quality, 1080P, full length videos in H.264, MP4 format. I use the off-line format for long-form tutorials, better suited to study over time, as opposed to the fast hit-it-and-quit-it style on YouTube!
Rigging a character’s body is one thing – setting up the face? That’s a much more difficult challenge! This MAYA 2017 FACE RIGGING EXTENDED CUT TUTORIAL covers the solid foundational topics every character face rigger needs. Topics covered:
- Creation and placement of joints to create proper animation.
- Adding new joints and tweaking the placement of existing joints – even after the skin is bound to the skeleton!
- Synching our topology with our joints for ideal deformation.
- Adjusting topology and anatomy to animate correctly – while the mesh is already attached to the skeleton!
- Animating our joints to create emotion poses – including all the major emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, fear, and surprise.
- Painting skin weights to ensure proper deformation and animation of our face.
- Iterating on joint placement, topology shape, skin weighting, and animation, to create more appealing face shapes.
This topic is so complicated, so in-depth, that this video is just PART 1 in a multi-part series. The next videos in the series will specifically cover material not shown here, such as phonemes, set-driven-keys, and creating a control panel for animation. The crucial techniques presented here cover the hard work of establishing the initial skeleton and skin weighting – the lion’s share of the work! The very same techniques are built on top of to create mouth shapes for talking – and that whole process will be MUCH easier after watching this video!
This video assumes you’ve already seen the JOINTS and SKINNING video – or are at least familiar with the topics covered there. This tutorial is split into separate chapters based on topic, making review easy.
• 1080P
• H.264 Mpeg4
• 1:25:08 running time
• 2.42 GB file size, split into a whopping 22 files
The Maya 2016 JOINTS and RIGGING tutorial is a more in-depth look at the character setup and skinning process. Over an hour long, new topics include a guide on joint placement, skin weighting guidelines and best practices, and joint orients – and how the wrong joint orients can destroy your skeleton! The video is split into separate chapters, making review easy.
• 1080P
• H.264 Mpeg4
• 1:11:14 running time
• 2.6 GB file size, split into 8 files
Part one of the ELLE female character creation series, this video goes in-depth with the character modeling process in Maya 2016. Three times as long as the video on my YouTube channel, more time is spent elaborating on crucial topology creation issues, like the shoulder and the hips. And much more time is spent showing the anatomy creation process – which is absolutely vital to creating a compelling female body mesh!
• 1080P
• H.264 Mpeg4
• 53:34 running time
• 1.11 GB file size, split into 2 files
Part two of the ELLE female character creation series, this video goes in-depth with the head modeling process in Maya 2016. The focus here is on creating a properly topologized mesh – but also on creating an attractive and versatile face that can be reused again and again. Particular time is spent discussing anatomy tweaks and tips to get the right look.
• 1080P
• H.264 Mpeg4
• 48:28 running time
• 1.40 GB file size, split into 2 files
The BODYBUILDER series is focused on capturing exaggerated male anatomy. The subject’s well developed musculature is ideal for those still trying to learn proper anatomy. It also works well for creating the style of idealized body common in popular media.
Part one of the bodybuilder character creation series, this video goes in-depth with the character modeling process in Maya. Twice as long as the video on my YouTube channel, more time is spent discussing crucial topology and anatomy issues like the shoulder and the hips.
• 1080P
• H.264 Mpeg4
• 41:41 running time
• 1.07 GB file size, split into 2 files
Part two of the bodybuilder character creation series is head modeling for animation – an in-depth look at this crucial modeling process in Maya. The face is an especially difficult region to nail – likenesses are hard to acheive, and building topology to fit the complicated facial animation requirements is very challenging. In the video, I address both topics, talking about how to model the topology correctly, and then matching anatomy to the reference images used.
• 1080P
• H.264 Mpeg4
• 37:54 running time
• 885 MB file size, split into 2 files
Part three is CHARACTER TEXTURING in Mudbox! Mudbox makes it a snap to project high-quality photoreference onto our models, quickly and easily creating ultra-realistic characters. This video shows the basics of projection painting, and then moves on to the advanced tricks that really make our textures stand out – blending and color matching, spot detailing, and even painting tricky areas like hands.
• 1080P
• H.264 Mpeg4
• 33:51 running time
• 608 MB file size, split into 2 files
Transactions are handled by Paypal. A receipt email will be sent with your download link. Contact me if there are any problems!