Rigs are becoming more versitile. We’re seeing great rigging features implemented and autorigging tools saving us many man hours and providing stability and flexibility in our pipelines. Software vendors are providing some great tools with each new release as well. I see this growth continuing as driven by the ever expanding needs of production. Research and development people are doing on the job, or on their own time is huge too. Thankfully we have a good culture of sharing in the rigging world, so we can all benefit and collectivley elevate our game.
One of the biggest issues at hand, as I see it, is how animators use a rig.
Over at Rigging Dojo we’re fond of saying …
It doesn’t matter how fancy your rig is if no one can use it.
Once, I was a half decent animator, then I turned to “the Nerd side” and became a rigger. I’ve been managing Riggers and Animators for ten years. I’ve been teaching these topics for some time too. I’ve personally struggled with usability of a rig from both the technical and aesthetic side and taught people how to work with the User Experience.
UX of characters in production combined run-time animation blending systems are the next leap in character animation for game development, imho. Hence, I’m very interested in the usability of character rigs and will use a series of articles to illustrate where we are currently, and think about where we can go. This will be a lot of me “thinking out loud” and I’ll welcome feedback in the comments or via twitter.
Upcoming posts will include the following.
- Meet your neighbors
- A look at the state of the art
- Common industry standards
- Thoughts on the future
More to come …
Chad! I was thinking about starting this topic as well, half motivated by the Steve Jobs mentality on usability. This is a great topic! I feel like one of the least talked about\considered in the production pipeline and should be something that is in the for front of the riggers mind at all times.
I look forward to seeing more on this!
Hi Adam,
I’d love to hear your thoughts on these topics too! You’re blog is aces, btw. I’m hoping to have my next post out early next week, focusing on influences on my thoughts on these topics.
Chad