Rigging Tutorial for Maya 2018?

Oblivion2500

I have been having a lot of trouble with rigging tutorial as I can't seem to find any good ones for modern days. I'm using Maya LT 2018. I don't like the auto-rig so much. It's great and all but it's limited right now. I need to be able to create a human character rig and a first person arm rig for a game in UE4. Does anyone know a good set of tutorials for Maya rigging that no one has gotten problems with?

Creo_metus

I just went through a tutorial on Plurasight called 'Game Character Rigging' Fundamentals':

https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/game-character-rigging-fundamentals/table-of-contents 

I thought was really great. I had never rigged a character before and this taught me a lot and was pretty detailed in my opinion. It specifically uses Maya and you will build the rig from the ground up. I'm not advertising for plurasight or anything, but that tutorial specifically was really helpful for me and they are running a 10 day free trial so it's worth look. 

Creo_metus

I just went through a tutorial on Plurasight called 'Game Character Rigging' Fundamentals':

https://app.pluralsight.com/library/courses/game-character-rigging-fundamentals/table-of-contents 

I thought was really great. I had never rigged a character before and this taught me a lot and was pretty detailed in my opinion. It specifically uses Maya and you will build the rig from the ground up. I'm not advertising for plurasight or anything, but that tutorial specifically was really helpful for me and they are running a 10 day free trial so it's worth look. 

TarsaE

How much rigging experience do you have? And how much time?

I--personally, this is just my opinion!--would avoid Digital Tutors / Pluralsight unless you are in a pinch. The quadruped rig I made following their course worked, but was really awkward from an animator standpoint. I've learned much better ways to rig since then. Unfortunately, a lot of that was pulling bits and pieces of information from various places, so I can't point you to a specific tutorial. And again, that was Pluralsight's quadruped rigging course, so I can't speak to the biped one.

I've been working through Kasper Larsson's (of Manoanim) free quadruped rigging course, and finding it very good. He does have a biped series, but you'd have to pay for it.

Otherwise, I would suggest searching for specific tutorials, i.e. rigging an ik arm, spine, setting up a toe/ball/heel roll, etc. I wouldn't worry too much about how old a tutorial is; most of the basics don't change.

Just tossing in my two cents as a beginner rigger myself.

Mark Dygert

Yep, it really depends on how deep you really want to go. Rigging can get really technical, really fast. Are you looking to get into rigging so you can put it on your resume and rig anything a character artist can throw at you, or are you looking for the fastest route possible to get something working in UE4?

A good option is the Epic ART kit it is specifically designed to work with UE4, Advanced Skeleton or The Setup Machine.

If you are looking to get into rigging there isn't one particular tutorial that shows you everything, but a bunch tutorials that teach you a whole lot of things and then you mix and match those to build whatever. It's not really a single process that you go through the same steps each time, but more of a bunch of tools in a toolbox.

Alex_J

The pluralsight ones are decent enough for getting familiar with the tools in Maya and the general process. I've done those and no other rigging tutorials, and I know enough to get humanoid characters working half-way decent in a Unity game. I couldn't realistically apply for any rigger jobs of course.

The pluralsight tutorials aren't ideal, but they are all in one place and, as a beginner, your mind will be more on just figuring out the tools and UI more than the process, so I don't think any less-than-ideal processes should screw you up too bad.

Oblivion2500

TarsaE said:

How much rigging experience do you have? And how much time?

I--personally, this is just my opinion!--would avoid Digital Tutors / Pluralsight unless you are in a pinch. The quadruped rig I made following their course worked, but was really awkward from an animator standpoint. I've learned much better ways to rig since then. Unfortunately, a lot of that was pulling bits and pieces of information from various places, so I can't point you to a specific tutorial. And again, that was Pluralsight's quadruped rigging course, so I can't speak to the biped one.

I've been working through Kasper Larsson's (of Manoanim) free quadruped rigging course, and finding it very good. He does have a biped series, but you'd have to pay for it.

Otherwise, I would suggest searching for specific tutorials, i.e. rigging an ik arm, spine, setting up a toe/ball/heel roll, etc. I wouldn't worry too much about how old a tutorial is; most of the basics don't change.

Just tossing in my two cents as a beginner rigger myself.

Don't have a lot of time. Some experience but it's not my specialty. I have been using the auto-rig feature in Maya LT and it sucks when it comes to animating the rig, it's so painful it makes me want to give up my game project altogether. I just want to rig a low poly (ps1-era graphics) humanoid character that can be easily animated. The hands will just be a low poly hand with just a thumb with no fingers, rather it will be a grip like a fist. 

throttlekitty

What don't you like about maya's auto-rig?

Oblivion2500

throttlekitty said:

What don't you like about maya's auto-rig?

It's very difficult to animate the rig using the control rig. Especially the arms, it's a pain. It's a great feature and tool but needs work and more flexibility.

throttlekitty

Oblivion2500 said:

throttlekitty said:

What don't you like about maya's auto-rig?

It's very difficult to animate the rig using the control rig. Especially the arms, it's a pain. It's a great feature and tool but needs work and more flexibility.

It's not as full-featured, but it's got some nice tricks. I've had no issues with the arms or legs compared to other rigs; it's important to make use of Full Body or Body Part modes along with the occasional pin.

Oblivion2500

throttlekitty said:

Oblivion2500 said:

throttlekitty said:

What don't you like about maya's auto-rig?

It's very difficult to animate the rig using the control rig. Especially the arms, it's a pain. It's a great feature and tool but needs work and more flexibility.

It's not as full-featured, but it's got some nice tricks. I've had no issues with the arms or legs compared to other rigs; it's important to make use of Full Body or Body Part modes along with the occasional pin.

Yeah, I have gone into the control settings and selected both hands to pin them so they don't make the arms have any weird motion.

bentraje

Hi, 

Since you are aiming for an Unreal/Maya pipeline. 

Why not use the Unreal ART Maya pipeline? Its pretty robust. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbZ_g8Hgvk

Oblivion2500

bentraje said:

Hi, 

Since you are aiming for an Unreal/Maya pipeline. 

Why not use the Unreal ART Maya pipeline? Its pretty robust. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbZ_g8Hgvk

The ART toolset does not work with Maya LT, Maya LT does not allow plugins written in Python. Correct me if I'm wrong?

throttlekitty

Oblivion2500 said:

throttlekitty said:

Oblivion2500 said:

throttlekitty said:

What don't you like about maya's auto-rig?

It's very difficult to animate the rig using the control rig. Especially the arms, it's a pain. It's a great feature and tool but needs work and more flexibility.

It's not as full-featured, but it's got some nice tricks. I've had no issues with the arms or legs compared to other rigs; it's important to make use of Full Body or Body Part modes along with the occasional pin.
Yeah, I have gone into the control settings and selected both hands to pin them so they don't make the arms have any weird motion.

What kind of weird motion are you seeing? You may have missed a step during setup, HIK requires that the arms be totally straight. So if you were coming from an A-posed skeleton, you'd need to get it to a very tight T-pose before creating the HIK rig.

Mark Dygert

MayaLT, for rigging? Wow you're life just got infinitely harder. You're pretty much stuck using QuickRig/HIK.

Oblivion2500

throttlekitty said:

Oblivion2500 said:

throttlekitty said:

Oblivion2500 said:

throttlekitty said:

What don't you like about maya's auto-rig?

It's very difficult to animate the rig using the control rig. Especially the arms, it's a pain. It's a great feature and tool but needs work and more flexibility.

It's not as full-featured, but it's got some nice tricks. I've had no issues with the arms or legs compared to other rigs; it's important to make use of Full Body or Body Part modes along with the occasional pin.

Yeah, I have gone into the control settings and selected both hands to pin them so they don't make the arms have any weird motion.

What kind of weird motion are you seeing? You may have missed a step during setup, HIK requires that the arms be totally straight. So if you were coming from an A-posed skeleton, you'd need to get it to a very tight T-pose before creating the HIK rig.

Like a skipping motion or cap motion or the usual arms and shoulders moving in a circular motion back and forth. I did do the pin like you said and also have the IK "T" and "R" at 100% like the legs do by default. Is that what you are doing or are you just pinning the translate and rotation? Here are my settings whenever I need to animate the arms or hands.

Oblivion2500

Mark Dygert said:

MayaLT, for rigging? Wow you're life just got infinitely harder. You're pretty much stuck using QuickRig/HIK.

Well, a bit harder. I can try to make my own rig and I think it's very similar to the normal version of Maya which I have used for years as a student at design school. I actually like Maya LT, the modeling and UV tools are great. It's just rigging could be easier but it's not that much easier in Maya regular edition. The great thing about Maya LT is that it's only $240 a year instead of $3400 a year which I don't have.

throttlekitty

@Oblivion2500 I just want to point out that I'm far from a pro animator, but I've been using HIK for a while.

I'll pin whichever I need to at that moment. So for the shoulder rolling around motions, pinning the elbow helps a bit too. I don't use the reach values when doing hand-keyed work, but I've found them helpful for retargeted animations.