yea that definitely helps... it seems to me like the big arrow at the bottom is instead of just selecting the root bone, same with the curvy arrow at the top instead of the neck (with the added feature of beak control). the foot controls and the ring around the torso are hella cool though.

Nice going mat, nice little vid!

If any of you guys want to play about with a rigged model I would recomment Low man for maya, its superb for getting some animation practice in without having to do all the rigging (which I'm confused on LOL)

Matt - Where did you learn your rigging from (books DVD's etc) as I would be interested in having a look into some gettin some of them that you would recommend.

Cheers

Steve

Nice setup you got there happymat27, and you explain it well in the video.

I thought this character was cool when I first looked. I liked it a lot. Then, after watching the vid, I love it! Freakin awesome controls! The slider for the wings = genius. That whole control center above the head = brilliant. I can't wait to see an animation with this chick!

I second that question, as I'd like to learn as well. Care to do a tute?:p

Great work, you've turned a simple model into something top notch!

The head and body are completely seperate, I've soft bound the body geometry to the body part of the rig and rigid bound the the head parts. So you were half right as the head controller does pick up the root joint of the head rig but it's the waist control that's parent constrained to the root joint of the torso, because I've used IK in the legs they react to the root joints movements too. The big arrow thing at the bottom is the parent of all of the other controls. I've parented the head controller to the waist controller so that the head moves with the waist too.

I just read that, I hope that I haven't confused things for you!! Hopefully the illustration will make more sense than my babbbling.

Later,

Mat.

Thanks folks,

I learnt all of my rigging techniques from books, Maya Foundation and The Modelling And Animation Handbook (from Alias Learning Tools which I guess is now Autodesk Learning Tools) and The Art of Rigging books (from CGToolkit). None of these books are particularly cheap (between £40 and £50 each) also the Art of Rgging ones aren't really for beginners but they do cover everything from rigging to production pipeline to matte painting to fur, cloth and fluids.

I'm not too sure about making a tutorial, we'll see.

Cheers,

Mat.

"If any of you guys want to play about with a rigged model I would recomment Low man for maya, its superb for getting some animation practice in without having to do all the rigging"

cool, thanks gster ;)

great video of the controls... also mat and everyone else, does anyone know where i could download some icons for the controls? im having abit of trouble finding them or are they already some default ones in maya?

cheers

I just make the controls out of EP Curves, it only takes a few seconds and I get exactly what I want.

Hello again,

I've made a start on a run cycle with little bird flapping in an attempt to take off, it's the first take so there's plenty to do to it but I thought I'd put it out in cyberspace in search of crit anyhow!

Unfortunately Birdy's a bit bald as fur, when it has a hair system attached to it, takes more than a few seconds to render in mentalray.

CLICK THIS to see some moving pictures.

Cheers,

Mat.

just watched it, looks cool ... btw how did you make it soo the shadow underneath the bird just kept on following it?

cheers, marlon

Cheers Marlon,

I've not got any lights in the scene, it's completely illuminated by Final Gather, I'm not entirely sure of the in's and out's of FG but it's got something to do with the fact that the whole 'sky' is illuminating the scene and a new FG map is calculated with each frame so the shadows fall directly under my model in each frame.

I made this picture which will make it clearer (I hope!). The red arrows represent the FG rays, they're bouncing all over the scene, when they encounter an object they will bounce off it (illustrated by the green dots) and a shadow is created underneath (or around) the object. Not very technical I know but I hope it sheds a little light (no pun intended) on the matter.

Take it easy,

Mat.

Haha, that bird is quality. The run cycle is comical - obviously in a good way. He has a lot of character for a model so simple. I think you need to make a cat now, lets get some sylvester / tweety action going on :D

ohh alright then...thanks for the picture btw, mades things more easy and i understand now :)

also another question about the animation clip of the littlebird trying to attemp to fly, did you key frame like every move/motion it did? or is there a way(which im trying to find out) where you can just key frame the first like 2seconds and just keep on copying and pasting them but changing the translate so it kept on moving forward if you get what i mean?

"I think you need to make a cat now, lets get some sylvester / tweety action going on"

haha what a great idea lol, havnt seem a scene/video/series from them in a along time.. what happend to looney tunes? they where good and fun to watch when i was a little kid,

"well thats all folks!" hehe, cheers .. marlon

The walk cycle is only 18 frames long.

Changing the post infinity curves for the limb movement, using the graph editor, to cycle and the forward movement of the master control to cycle with offset will make the character walk forward infinately. The only drawback with that way is that you can't have the character doing anything else apart from the cycling keyframes, this isn't really an issue for a straight forward walk by like I have the little bird doing though.

Hope that helps,

Mat.

ohh ok thanks, ill keep that in mind ...

also about the shadow, can you take screenshot(print screen) of your mental ray settings and all the things which have contributed in making the scene/shadow because for some reason i seem to have forgot how to do that again and yeah ived been wanting to know ... thanks again

cheers, marlon