Forget about trying to keep students' attention. Forget about getting to the good stuff quickly. If you're serious about rigging, before you even touch a 3d package, I believe everyone should have a good grasp of vectors.
Unless you already understand vectors in which case, grab that 3d package! With both hands!
Don't worry, vectors aren't that crazy.
I'll assume you're familiar with this:
Math is at the heart of rigging. Sure, Maya's native functions will do a lot of if for you, but if you wanna go plus-ultra with your rigs, it will mean getting your hands dirty.
I'll assume you still remember the basics from school - whoever you are.
Stuff like how to square numbers, what a square root is, that a negative number multiplied by another negative number yields a positive number. etc.
You might already know all about the subject of this post. If not, it's well worth learning, because it's the bedrock of a looooot of other math. Seriously, the amount it shows up in other areas is ridiculous.
I'm talking about this bad boy:
The Pythagorean Theorum.a2 + b2 = c2
'Sup, all?
I'm Sam. I'm a rigging lead at Pixel Zoo Animation Studios in Brisbane Australia.
I decided to make this blog to dump my Maya rigging thoughts onto. There are a number of blogs and websites out there that are absolute treasure troves of useful tips, and yet it feels like there's a severe shortage of knowledge on the topic available online. Or in general. I've come to be very opinionated about how rigging is taught in various 3d animation academies, so maybe I'll try here to give out all those tidbits that once you hear you think to yourself "Why the absolute hell did nobody tell me that until now?!"
Just a heads up, this blog will be dealing strictly with Autodesk Maya, though the more fundamental stuff is the same across all 3d packages.
For anyone who is thinking they like what they know of rigging in Maya so far and would like to make a career out of it. That's great! But there are some things you should know that people might not know/want to tell you about what such a career entails.
It might not be fun to hear. It wasn't fun for me to hear, but it was important.
Two things I was told early on that helped me immeasurably and one additional thing I think people need to be told early on.
So here we go. Let me feed you some golden, crispy harsh browns.
