Durian Rigging 01
on December 1st, 2009, by nathanMy first real rigging post! Yay!
First, watch this video (there’s no audio, your speakers aren’t broken):
Second, I love Blender 2.5. So many awesome new features to help me make better rigs. I shouldn’t even say that. It’s not even features, so much as the new core design choices.
For example, notice the custom rig UI elements integrated directly into the side bar? It makes me so happy. And it wasn’t even that hard. Just some python scripting.
Okay, okay. I’m gushing. Let’s get down to rig itself.
In the video above, I’m mostly showing off the spine rig. The spine and neck rigs for this character are my Big Proud Thing™ in this rig, because the rest of the awesomeness is thanks to 2.5, not me.
First, notice that there are only two controls for the spine: the hips (name “pelvis” in the rig) and the rib cage (named “torso” in the rig). I should probably name them better…
Anyway, animating with rigs that have 3+ bones to manage the spine has been a peeve of mine for years. It’s a pain to manage, and 90% of the time you just want to tell the rig “bend and twist this way”. So with this rig I simplified it to a single control that just does the “right thing” (i.e. approximately bio-mechanically correct) most of the time. You just give it the orientation of the rib cage with one control, and the orientation of the hips with the other, and the rig figures out automagically what everything inbetween should do to accomplish that in a plausible way.
In addition to that there is a “pivot slide” slider in the sidebar that lets you place the pivot point of the rotation. And what I mean by that is it defines what point on the spine should remain stationary in space when you rotate the two controls.
For example, by default that spot is at the hips, so in the video when I’m first rotating the upper body, the hips aren’t moving. And when I rotate the hips, the upper body moves to accommodate the bend of the spine. But you can also set that point to the upper body, as I did later in the video. Then when I rotate the hips, the upper body stays put. And when I rotate the upper body, the hips move to accommodate. But you can set that “stay put” point to be anywhere along the length of the spine. Setting it near the hips is useful for things like walk cycles, setting it near the upper body is useful for swinging from the arms or bracing against a wall. Setting it towards the middle is useful for quadruped types of motion.
Anyway, I’m being long-winded, and that makes this seem complex. But it’s actually really simple to use. Watch the video again. It will make sense. 🙂
Of course, animators need control and flexibility, so you’re not limited to this simplified system. I didn’t show it in the video, but if you need more specific control over the spine pose, the raw spine bones are accessible in the “body extras” layer, and you can animate directly with them like normal. You can even combine the two systems (they layer on top of each other nicely). And lastly, you can also tweak the amount of bend that happens at each spine joint during the automatic bending with some extra sliders (which I also didn’t show).
But this simpler control system on its own is enough for probably 90% of situations.
The neck control is similar, but even simpler. You just specify the orientation of the head, and it works out the proper neck rotation. (Again, you can easily get more control if you need it.)
Aside from those setups, one of the nice things about this rig is how it decides what sliders to show at any given time. I’ve scripted it so that any sliders relevant to the currently selected control(s) get’s displayed. So, for example, the IK switch property for the right leg actually belongs to the right IK foot control. But thanks to the scripting it shows up when you select any control of the right leg.
For those who are curious, here is the blend file:
Note that it requires a recent SVN build of Blender 2.5. The alpha 0 release doesn’t work with it. Also, if you don’t see the custom UI controls, just run the script in the text window. In theory it should run automagically, but there are still bugs that need to be fixed with that.
Until next time!
–Nathan
December 1st, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Nothe that for Windows I have done a r25000 build, which can be downloaded from my blog.
I’ll be doing a new set of builds tonight for those who really need those 🙂
/Nathan
December 1st, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Wow cool rig.
I’m waiting when it will be possible to make such controlers in UI without scripting 🙂
December 1st, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Nathan has found its cookie box 😉
Thanks a lot for the video Nathan!
December 1st, 2009 at 4:29 pm
the biped rig dont works well in blender 2.5 so
THANKS Nathan for the rig!!
December 1st, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Looking awesome, Nathan. Well done.
December 1st, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Looks better and simpler than anything i could do. Thumbs up from me.
December 1st, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Nathan, you’re a rigging king! 😀 It’s a thing of beauty. And Blender 2.5 is a king, also. King of kings and lord of lords.
December 1st, 2009 at 4:54 pm
so Nathan, when is the foundation training dvd or book on rigging coming out; HINT HINT.
I would so jump in the queue for this because your approach to rigging is so understandable and very easy to grasp or at least I found it to be so when I watched the BBB rigging tut you did.
It would be very nice to watch you rig something from the ground up to full animation standards
December 1st, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Thank you Nathan. I was hoping for a 2.5 rig to make animation introduction for my class (Thought that teaching 2.49 was pointless at the moment and this seems more than ideal).
December 1st, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Nathan 4 president!
December 1st, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Excellence! Thanks so much for sharing!
Heh heh, I think I know what you mean about gushing about the program, Nathan. I’m quite a quiet, sane person, I’ll have you know, and not at all prone to bouts of unreserved cackling and glee at the all-over holistic wonder of this program…
@JesterKing huzzah for r25000!
Sweet 🙂 can’t wait to play with this rig!
December 1st, 2009 at 5:06 pm
As always Nathan brings us great rig ideas! 😀
Thanks for sharing!
December 1st, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Incredible! You made that look so simple!!! I’m impatient to see more
December 1st, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Oi. That’s beautiful.
December 1st, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Looking forward to the dragon rig!
December 1st, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Another fantastic rig, thanks for sharing. I also agree with Tyrant Monkey, I really enjoyed the rinky rig tutorial from BBB, a rigging dvd from you would be AWESOME and I would immediately purchase several copies.
December 1st, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Thanks Nathan, You make me realise two things. One than rigging and animation can be interesting, until now I was thinking that it was boring. Seeing this rig gives me envy to rig. Two, how much the new gui is cool and how to use it for various cool stuffs 😉
Thanks for that and good luck 😉
December 1st, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Hi Nathan, this is great example how powerful Blender 2.5 is especially for animator friendly rigs. I am looking forward to some macros implementation for example for no-popping IK/FK switching.
I see your rig is set up without 3d manipulator widgets. So following our discussion in Amsterdam about complex facial rigging you may be interested in my PM and example blend I have sent you at BlenderArtists.org (be warned, proposed solution is rather a walk-around :-))
December 1st, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Very awesome rig. I am very curious on how this is done as well. I’m sure that the rig will help, but nonetheless, I will check out any tutorial coming from this.
Thanks for sharing. 😀
December 1st, 2009 at 6:37 pm
I second tyrant monkey’s comment, I’m looking forward to buying your book 😉
December 1st, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Works beautiful Nathan 🙂
But I can’t open blender 2.5 anymore since yesterday (Linux Kubuntu 9.10 with NVIDIA grapics) 🙁
December 1st, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Very nice rig toolbox. I would like to ask something: Will you develop some Muscle System for the dragon?
December 1st, 2009 at 7:22 pm
It would be really cool to be able to make a rigging UI without scripting.
December 1st, 2009 at 7:45 pm
This rig seriously rocks.
I love the simple bone setup for animating, the bone colors and all the custom controls 8)
Awesome work Nathan (and of course the rest of the Blender 2.5/Durian team).
December 1st, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Awesome! Thanks for uploading the .blend, I will definitely be taking it apart to see what you did! 😀
There seem to be a staggering amount of possibilities for rig designs in 2.5! With both customizable interfaces and the ability to drive anything (even rotation types!) I’m sure we’ll see some very elegant solutions, as you have done with the spine here. I sense a whole new era of great Blender character animations!
I am following your posts closely, and look forward to seeing where you go with this! Keep up the great work!
December 1st, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Been patiently waiting for an example of a custom UI for a rig, thanks for that.
…and the spline IK which I don’t understand at all but now have something to tear apart to figure out how it works.
December 1st, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Great ! And may I join the other in expecting some kind of tut’ in the line of the great Rinky rig tut you’ve made for BBB ? Seems so easy when I hear you explaining !
December 1st, 2009 at 8:40 pm
@Anonymous Coward:
It’s not spline IK, just FYI. Spline IK can’t do this. It’s better for things like tails, tenticals, rope, etc.
@tyrant monkey:
I’m hoping to do a DVD at some point, but no promises when. Maybe after Durian. But maybe not. :-P
December 1st, 2009 at 9:07 pm
hi there
i noticed that you are not using the final model of Sintel (dãr), are you plannig to replace the model before the animation part, or after?
how are you going to do that? just replace the mesh and do the weight paint?
bye!
December 1st, 2009 at 9:24 pm
It really looks cool! Congrats mate! I’m expecting a rigging tutorial with all the new features of B25 on the Sintel DVD!!! :p Fingers crossed!
December 1st, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Hey Nathan…may I kiss you !!!
Eheh kidding. Spine seems wonderfully designed (especially the pivot point feature) and the interface really inspiring. Can’t wait to see facial stuff. Lee is probably having a lot of fun already!
Thanks a lot.
Gian
December 1st, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Looks excellent!
Very excited about the custom rig possibilities here…
Should the model in the movie be in the blend file? I do not seem to see it…
What revision is needed to see the blend correctly?
Than you for this very inspiring post 🙂
December 1st, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Will Durian be using it’s own version of 2.5 or the official Alpha releases of 2.5?
December 1st, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Beautyful rig!! And awesome UI implementation as a plus.
Another victory of the intellect over the pixel barbarism.
Congratulations! and thank you for your hard work!
December 1st, 2009 at 11:01 pm
First thing that grabbed my attention was the snazzy panel for the rig on the right side, great stuff! I’m betting a lot of post-2.50 rigs will be using similar controls instead of the “float over head” ones.
December 2nd, 2009 at 12:27 am
Funny, “Nathan’s rabbit rigging demo” was blogged exactly 2 years ago, on December 1st, 2007 🙂
http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/nathans-rabbit-rigging-demo/
December 2nd, 2009 at 1:33 am
Cool stuff 😀
That rig seems top notch!
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:46 am
@higginsdj: they will be using cutting edge 2.5 builds.
Nathans “Big Proud Thing™” is only a sign of things to come 😀
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:46 am
Why you don’t just use blenrig?
December 2nd, 2009 at 3:04 am
Oh wow! Nathan is rocking the rigging world again! ^_^ That last pose was just…. “joyful”, man! Hehe! I’m pretty surprised with the custom rigs built-in. Wow! Somehow, when I start to work in 2.5, the pain I have had in 2.4x rigging will be soothed. ^_^
Great work, Nathan! ^_^
December 2nd, 2009 at 3:43 am
heya Nathan!
thats great news, the rig is cool and the new controls in the buttons window seem very handy!!
I wondered one thing, i downloaded the simple biped rig a while ago and i couldn’t get everything to work like i thought it would like…so i took the biped mesh and made a rig following a tutorial onto that mesh…would i be allowed to use it professionally/ commercially..after all its not your rig but the mesh of the figurine I’m not sure if thats the same thing …
anyway thanks for sharing your rigs and wisdom …
Party On !!!
Best wishes from Berlin!
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:01 am
@Nixon:
I released the simple biped rig as public domain, so you are free to do whatever you like with it. 🙂
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:31 am
Wow – I can’t keep up with Blender 2.5 development anymore.
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:23 am
am spellbound !!!!
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:47 am
@nathan
thx for that quick reply:)…thats great news for me !!
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:18 am
http://i49.tinypic.com/2wdsqdj.jpg
You could say I was… blown away! 😀
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:03 am
WOW!
That amazing rig..
Good work Nathan…
Can i do it? 🙁 Nathan please make at least one tutorial on your work….PLZ
PLZ….PLZ….
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:11 am
great…
i hope cambellbarton integrate this pyton script, so we can ease use this tomorrow
December 2nd, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Dude, I’ve been playing with this rig all day… I freakin love rigs that are ridiculously easy to use because then we can focus on the animation making animating less tedious and more fun! I’ll be posting up an animation using the rig as soon as I finish…
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I for one will look forward to it, Jon. 🙂
Excuse me for wasting space, but:
http://i47.tinypic.com/k0vbs.jpg
I could’ve come up with a whole bag of alternate captions. Like “Sintel: We blow up things so you don’t have to”, or “Lighting up after Mexican”.
December 2nd, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Haha nice nice… I just now got the “blown away” joke too… forgive my sometimes slow (often slow) sense of humor!! haha
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Really great! A lot of information here, lot of fun for a rigger.
One question? How do you hide/unhide the model mesh parts?
Great work
Daniel
December 2nd, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Well I’ve been trying to figure out a project for the holidays and now I have one. I’ve been following the Durian project for a while now and with this rig I now need to immerse myself fully into blender. Good thing I got books for it! As an animator I see SO many possibilities with the simplicity of this rig. It’s freakin’ beautiful! And it looks like it beats the hell out of set driven keys in maya. Thanks for the blend file and thanks for the build!
December 2nd, 2009 at 9:56 pm
that rig looks awesome 😀 must be easier to use…
and i read that Simple Biped is a public-domain…thing? awesome!!! (bizarrely, i’ve been using the word “awesome” a lot these days… must be because of 2.5alpha0, lol :-DDD)
where can we find Simple Biped, though? it would be useful to see how it’s built, it would give me an idea of what i need for animatics…
thanks, and GO DURIAN (or should i say Sintel?) TEAM!!! :-DDDDDDDDDDD
MeshWeaver
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:01 pm
the rig crash blender (“segmentation fault”) 🙁
i own a radeon hd3200 there are other users with the same issue?
December 2nd, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Very nice!
As an animator, though, one aspect seems strange: When moving the spine pivot, it’d be better to actually slide the _pivot_, rather than sliding the _rig_ _around_ the pivot. Use a floating bone to indicate where the pivot point is in the viewport, and have the slider move that — moving the body like this means you have to counter-animate by moving the root bone back up to the standing position, and creates a leak for a lot of such corrections.
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Ok, I found the answer of the question of my previews post
“How do you hide/unhide the model mesh parts?”
Scaling the bones via drivers, nice trick 🙂
Jur!
December 3rd, 2009 at 12:41 am
amazing, very simple rig in this version 😀
i want to try
December 3rd, 2009 at 1:34 am
@Anonymous:
As an animator myself, I definitely understand your desire for the pivot to move instead of the spine. Unfortunately, this is one of those things where you think you want it, but if it actually worked that way you would hate it.
If you can find a pencil or some other straight object, I can illustrate why. Place the pencil on a table. Now imagine the pivot for the pencil is at the eraser. Rotate the pencil 90 degrees. Now “change” the pivot to the tip. Rotate 90 degrees again. Now change the pivot back to the eraser and rotate again. Notice that you’re moving the pencil across the table, without ever translating!
Aside from being exceedingly difficult to implement (it would require integral calculus to make the spine behave that way), that pencil exercise illustrates the core of the problem. Not only would it make the location coordinates of the rig be inconsistent over the course of the animation (i.e. the same loc coords would mean different things on different frames), it would also mean that if you modify the pivot of the spine in an earlier part of an animation, it’s subsequent rotations will move it to a different location later in the animation. Which is actually really horrible for animation (you can’t go back and tweak without screwing up the already animated parts later on the timeline).
I hope that makes sense.
What I do want to do, however, is provide some tools to help deal with the counter animation necessary (like a button to match the pose after changing the pivot).
@Daniel Martinez Lara:
Yeah, the mesh hiding is kind of a hack. You can actually do it properly if you want, though. You just have to make the meshes separate objects and drive their visibility property.
@D:
I love you.
December 3rd, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Very illuminating post there, had not considered the implicit translation…
Found a revision that showed the mesh btw. Do not know the number, because it was pulled from graphicall.org more than a week ago…I guess one should just get a reasonably new build and if it does not work, try another one…other people does not seem to complain about this anyway, so the problem is perhaps a small one…
December 4th, 2009 at 2:58 am
noob question, but where do you save the .blend to for this to work?
December 4th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Cool rig Nathan, just wanted to know that how are you gonna replace this biped model with the actual Sintel model? If there is a tutotrial for a similar kind of setup, could you please publish it again.
December 5th, 2009 at 1:22 am
Hi Nathan,
I would like to second Hperigo’s question from higher up: you’re not using the final model with the rig, and I’m curious how you will transfer it to the final model for animation.
Thanks for the great work.
December 7th, 2009 at 4:20 am
Hey,
I freakin love looking at all of the development for Sintel, and I just have a question for you. Well I’m kind of a noob at this so I was wondering….
Why is the Character mesh “cut up” in the video? Cause i was watching the video, and I saw that when she bent forward, or backward, that there was a gap in between the torso and the rest of the body. So I was just wondering why…
December 9th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Hey, Nathan, amazing rig, man!!! I’m playing here a little bit! 🙂
I have one question: I was thinking would be great to see the fingers size sliders and palm rotation slider when I select the hand controller, for a fast hand posing. How can I do that? Cheers
December 10th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
wow, i am a bit of a noob @ blender and only really just found out how to rig :S does anyone know how to assight certain shapes like he circles nathan used to simplify the rig? any feedback would be awesome 🙂
December 10th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
@Hperigo
To see how to transfer a rig from one model to another go to this site:
http://blendergroupie.blip.tv/#729604 Then, look at the sidebar next to the main Video. Scroll down through the video thumbnails until you see a list of videos titled “Char. Animation in Blender” then click on the one that says “Get in Role”. Hope this helps.
December 11th, 2009 at 4:48 am
@Oni – thanks for that.
December 12th, 2009 at 2:54 am
Oni, that link is awesome!
December 14th, 2009 at 3:14 am
Man I love this rig, it is so fun to play with! Only minor issue is that neck should perhaps have been on main layer. I can see how that would sacrifice some simplicity, though, is that why the neck is under extras?
December 14th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Thanks Oni for the link, here is the premalink for the “Get in Role” video
http://www.blip.tv/file/1773933
December 15th, 2009 at 2:12 am
I love this rig! The work with the spine, hips, and torso are so slick, my mouse is greasy. One question, though: is it me or do the arm IK controls not work yet? I noticed that that part of it wasn’t demonstrated in the vid.
December 15th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Never mind. Didn’t see the IK slider. Doh!
December 17th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Wow, I’ve been playing with this rig since you put up the link. It’s AMAZING and intuitive.
The one thing that I was curious about was why/how the IK manipulators for the hands don’t move along with the mesh hands when it’s in FK? It makes it harder to set smooth moving targets if you need it after a longer sequence.
If anyone not familiar with 2.5 is playing with it and wants to switch between FK/IK smoothly, the custom panel is keyframeable, so you can change the IK/FK balance over time. The new Dopesheet is perfect for this.
Is there a way to group the rig elements and hide them in the Dopesheet? It’s hard to get my timings down when the elements are always scrolled offscreen 🙂
Seriously, amazing and well thought out rig!!!
Mr Mowgli
January 20th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
Great Rig.
I’m a long way from making anything this complex, but I would love it if someone can point me a resource for putting the sliders in an interface as oppose to a custom bone in the 3D window.
Look forward to the rigging tutorial on the DVD.
January 23rd, 2010 at 7:17 pm
The rig aparently don’t work anymore 🙁
Sintel appears whitout head, arms and legs…
Can you guys update the rig? :$ It was usefull.
Thanks!!! And good look whit the project!!! 😀