Riggers having less of jobs
polycounter lvl 8
Was discussing this with a co-worker the other day. Because of mixamo or similar "auto-character generation" and "auto-rigging services" do animators, especially riggers are having less jobs/paychecks recently? Or it didn't have any effect on this segment of the industry?
Replies
Secondly, I`m going to have to go with no, I don't believe that's a true statement. Mixamo very much caters to indie development. You won't generally see AAA studios using mixamo. And even if they do, auto-character generation and auto riggers do not get rid of rigging jobs. That's like saying mocap gets rid of animation jobs. It's just not true. The job description will change, for sure. Instead of hand keying an animation, you`ll be cleaning up the mocap data. But the jobs will still be there. Just like with auto-riggers. Instead of doing a custom rig from scratch, you just have more tools to make your job faster. Plus, a lot of high end studios have their own auto-rigging tools that they`ve created. It's not time effective to redo the same thing over and over when the tech artists can just create the scripts that will do their custom job with a few scripts.
Indie places may use mixamo, but they are also the places that can't generally afford all the extra riggers/animators anyways. They wouldnt be hiring 5 riggers if mixamo wasnt around. They would just have a lower scope for their projects, with the same number of employees.
That's my take on it, at least.
Just like available models on Turbosquid and Crativecash wont replace the jobs of modelers.
Auto-rigging system and scripts will help super small indie projects but for bigger professionnal works, an entitled specialized rigger who know his expressions, nodes and python will always be in top demands in the industry, whether it's for games or movies.
I'm a CG generalist student myself which specializes myself in animation. I have some good advanced rigging knowledge but after working in a movie FX company, I realized how technical rigs can be and witnessed the massive gap there was between me and specialized riggers, for pretty much every part of the body there's some deep python coding and node connection going on, don't even get me started on facial rigging (hardly any script can automate that)...
Most auto-rigging scripts are good for basic humanoid character (what about animals and creatures?), but they never include every control you want. There's a lot of stuff that you'd like to have customized on demand and without a proper technical animator (rigger), it becomes hard making change to an automated rig (it breaks easily).
Bro, just go and watch the making of for Uncharted 4 (technical video), even in games, they're pulling some overpowered shit titles after titles, go watch some of the DIsney rigging making of, incredible stuff can be seen there...
Though, like I said, for small projects with simple characters (mobile games), I suspect using Mixamo and auto-rigging scripts seems like a viable solution.
each studio dosnt need that many TA's but the quality of they varies more so than in other 3d or programming fields in my experience.
therefore despite the job is rare the applicant also quite rare.