Nikholai - Week 5

I've always disliked feet. I dislike the way they look. The way they feel and the way they cause me a great discomfort at the end of each day. Personal feelings aside however It is almost criminal for me to say that I’ve enjoyed creating the foot controls for the custom rig a bit too much. As an extra bonus it was a pleasant surprise to find out that during the course of the tutorial I would be driving into some basic Maya mel scripting. Before all of this however I was pleased to be sent over the player characters base mesh. This meant that the creation process could begin with next to little interruption.

Model created by Ed.

Before explaining the leg and feet however I’d like to explain the mel scripting side of things. Firstly, the console command of ‘select -hi’ was a command I will be using a fair amount. It is a simple way to select objects by order of the hierarchy. Additionally, it is worth noting that even at this stage the attention to detail within the organisation of the rigs hierarchy has been at the top of my focus. With commands such as ‘select -hi’ it is crucial to ensure a clear and well structured hierarchy within Maya’s ‘outliner’ window. The other part of mel scripting that I touched during this stage of development was importing custom tools.

These were supplied with the tutorial and was a simple case of important, organising and then applying these scripts within the toolbars. Though not direct creation of them, it has given me a chance to see one stage in the tool creation process. I have also been able to drive into the code and start to build up an understanding of how mel scripting works for further uses. The toolbar elements that I imported included a ‘Box Curve’, ‘Diamond Curve’ and ‘Cluster Mark Center’ script. The first two simply create curve objects for use with building the control elements of the rig. The last script however is a bit more complex in it’s operation. You select an edge loop on the model where you wish to create a cluster, run the script and it turn takes the vertex information and generates a cluster at the center point of the edge loop. The use of this was for ensure that joints that couldn't be easier positioned correctly could be done with ease. For example, this will mostly be used for the arms and hands but was also used for the legs. This script is the one that most interests me and I plan to allot time to study the inner workings of the script further.

Finished foot and leg sections.

Moving onto the leg and foot rig themselves there is a fair amount to explain. Starting with the legs it was a case of following the flow of the model to ensure an effective placement. The additional of the doodle knee joint is to ensure a more natural deformation within the legs as they bend. The IK handle for the legs is assigned to the ankle joint with it’s origin at the hip. The foot is where the rig becomes more interesting. It has been created as a reverse foot lock. This means that though the ball and toe joints are placed within the model at correct points. The additional heel bone is what drives the motion of the foot. The heel itself is one of the main control points for the rig. Therefore, the foot can rotate from the ankle, heel or toe. As an extra pivot point however the ball control, floating above the foot, drives the upwards rotate of the ankle. This creates believable bends within the foot and will help improve results within animation. The final point of the foot control is the addition of the banking controls place around the foot and the plane below the foot that acts as a global move for the feet.

Ball controls

Foot lock

Heel

The banking controls work as pivot points once more to add an extra level of depth and controls to positions in which the foot, ankle and leg can move in relation to the IK handle. All of these controls are created by using the curve tools within Maya and parenting them correctly to the joints they need to work with. The orientation of the joints themselves have been constructed to ensure that they flow accordingly to ensure no issues with bending and deforming. Setting up the orientation by means of the ‘local rotation axis’ is key to ensure a good rig. Furthermore, by using a series of point and orient constraints I was further able to ensure minimal errors in the way the joints behaved as they moved. The final control that was created for this section of the rig was the knee controls. To allow for easy correction in the movement of the knees. The floating control, which has an origin of the hip joint, controls the location of the lower knee joint. Though the IK handle will simulate and calculate the positions of the knee against the other joints. This extra controls ensures easy assess to apply any needed corrections. Lastly, to duplicate the rig from the screen right, which is the model left, to the screen left. I did so by means of duplicating the rig components, positioning accordingly by means of the component editor. Then rerunning the point and orient constraints to ensure movement correctly on the now opposite axis's.  

Banking controls

It is a lot to breakdown in such a short space but it is worth taking note that these early stage of the rig create the foundation for what will be my workflow for the remaining sections. As I move on from  the past week into the next I look towards working on the spine, neck and head sections of the rig. I don’t at this current stage in development plan to add any rigging or controls to the face. This is due to the character design still being in the development stage. Therefore the facial structure could  change. I do however plan to add these at the later date as I feel that simple facial animations will add that extra level of depth and detail to the game. Other than the head and spine, I do not plan to focus on any other part of the rig for next week.