skinning/rigging

Ruz

Do you consider this the animators job the modellers. seems recently there are people who think its the modelers job, which I find hard to agree with.
I always skin my characters up quickly anyway to test deformation, but I would rather spend the extra time it would take to skin it up properly on refining textures etc

Daz

As to 'whose job it is', the answer is, 'it depends on the studio', and it's certainly something that should have been defined at the outset of the project or even employment. I certainly think that a modeler should be able to skin weight. But I wouldn't expect a modeler to be able to handle building really complex rigs from the ground up in this day and age.

The thing is, and maybe this is more the case in US dev. I don't know, that character setup is so much work in itself now, that this is often the sole job of one person; the character rigger, or often called the character TD. Of all of the larger studios I know of out here, this is fast becoming the norm.

monster

It's an animator or technical directors job. But it's good for modellers to know how build animation friendly geometry.

Ruz

Yeah I still think its the anim/tech guys job, though as i said I can skin quite well and test my deformations as I go along

Shawner

Technical Animators at my work are tasked with these jobs as well as supporting the animation pipe and helping grease the communication between tech(programmers) and art.

killingpeople

of the two, i feel the animator seems the logical choice.

in effect, it would give more control to the animator and seems more of a balance of workload between the two. ideally the modeler would concern themselves with the model & texture. the animator: the rig & animation.

i think the best approach would be to use a technical artist, much like a tools programmer, in that they custom tailor a rig setup for animators. and communicate between the modeler and animator.

realisticly, i'd say whatever works best. every dev team is comprised of different talent and scope.