Question: Best Books: Videos or tutorials about Rigging

B-Cinos

My questions about rigging, I've always struggled grasping it properly so i really wanna know the best current methods for rigging and skinning to/for animating, Paticularly for characters and facial rigs but i'd like to know about creatures and good quadriped limb topology too if there's a really good book or something about it.

There seems to be a fair amount of stuff out there, but i'm unclear and unsure how useful/current a lot of it is so i'd like to know what's considered good out there.

I use 3DS max but i'd be willing to attempt maya, i'm shaky and haven't used maya much but I have heard it's preffered by a fair amount of people.

anything good and solid I can be pointed towards would be appreciated.


i'd also like to know any good books or tuts on good lighting and UE4 materials(thinking about it i'd like to get stronger with them too). But yeah the rigging things always been unclear for me.

Eric Chadwick

Have you seen this page on our wiki?
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Rigging

B-Cinos

oops late reply, my apologies, some of it looks similar but I'm not quite seeing the full answer. for example i'm seeing stuff for a facial control board by jesse sandifer but not how he created the face rig that the control board is working.
(i'm assuming there is a bone based face rig or something behind it anyway, unless I completely misunderstood the video).

That being said the one by alden filion mentions to purchase a book called
"stop staring: Facial modelling and animation done right",
which seems to a a big book techniques and do's and don'ts of facial rigging, which seems closer to the complete begginer to advanced knowledge on rigging i'm looking for. (also says it works for games on the amazon blurb which is a plus cause i want it to work with Ue4)

So yeah i'm gonna look into reviews on that book, and the control board tuts on the wiki, that might be one part of the question solved right there.(now for the body)

thanks for replying man.

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, Jason Osipa wrote that great book. It's a bit dated so things have moved on a bit, but the fundamentals are all still very applicable.

Tech-Artists.org has a great section for rigging. Lots of talented riggers hang out there, worth a look, and maybe a post asking the same sorts of questions.
http://tech-artists.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?11-Rigging-and-Visuals

B-Cinos

Interesting, i'll definitely give the site a look. I am a little curious what you mean by dated and things have moved on though and how. as an example i can think of is it just that engines can handle more bones and that rigs are just more detailed versions of the rigs you'd find in this or another book or are we talking completely different methods in some certain areas.

Eric Chadwick

I'm not a rigger. All I know is software changes over time.