Creating animation rigs which solve problems, are fun to use,and don’t cause nervous breakdowns. ——Jason Schleifer
To demonstrate how important analyzing the needs of the rig are to creating a production-quality control structure, let’s take a look at one of the most simple examples: a bouncing ball.
Figure 1 – The ball. A ball rig is seemingly simple, but can get complicated rather quickly.
If I were to simply say to three riggers, “create me a bouncy ball rig”, I would get three different animation rigs. Maybe none of which would meet my exact needs. For example, how bouncy should the ball be able to be? What kind of material is it made of? What are the rules?
By speaking with animators before creating the rig, you can set up certain “rules” or guidelines as to how the rig should work. This will save you time and energy by producing only what is necessary.
Steps 1, 2, 5, 7, and 32 – GET SOME REFERENCE!
For the bouncy ball, let’s take a look at the requirements, both animation and rig-based. The animation requirements will be based on what the animator and director want to be able to do with the bouncy ball—how they want it to move around, to act, to interact with it’s environment.
The rig requirements will be a combination of standard requirements (i.e. easy to use, etc) and specific requirements for this particular creature or object. Of course, the best way to determine these requirements is to do exactly what an animator does: get some reference. You can’t be certain of the way an object should move or what it should be able to accomplish without actually seeing or thinking about it performing the way you want. So for a bouncing ball, if you have a ball available get it out and start bouncing it around. This will give you direct experience with the ball, which will help you determine what you need to have it do. If the ball is meant to just bounce up and down, we’ll have to add the ability to move it around (Figure 2).
Figure 2 – moving the ball up and down
What if the ball is supposed to be a bit rubbery? In this case, we’ll need to squash it when it hits the ground, and perhaps stretch it out a bit while it’s moving through the air (Figure 3) .
Figure 3 – adding squash and stretch
Now this would be a pretty boring animation if the ball just bounced up and down, so we probably need to add the ability to travel around horizontally a bit as well. However, if we can do this, then we’ll need to be able to angle the stretch and squash to make sure the ball stretches along the angle of movement (Figure 4).
Figure 4 - allowing the ball to stretch along the path So far this allows for quite a bit of animation control.
What if the animator decides they want to bounce off of something that isn’t the floor? Like a wall? In this case, it is important for us to allow the ball to squash against any surface (Figure 5).
Figure 5 – Allowing the ball to squash against any obstacle, no matter what angle it is.
This is a pretty powerful rig! However, it’s not quite finished. What happens if the ball has a texture on it? We’ll need to rotate the ball in order to make sure it’s moving properly. One really important note with this.. we need to be able to rotate the ball independently from the direction it’s stretching. If the ball rotation and stretch-ation (it’s a word, honest) are tied together, it will always look like the ball is physically jumping from spot to spot instead of rotating naturally.
Figure 6 - In drawing A, the ball is angled to follow the path that it’s moving. This makes it appear as if it’s jumping from spot to spot. In drawing B, the ball rotates naturally. The stretching is completely independent of the rotation.
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