3D Rigging & Controllers

3D Rigging is a the key topic between 3D Animations and 3D Modeling that is often more elusive field to many people, due to fact it requires deep knowledge and experience how to approach the 3D objects that require rigging. Estimating how long creating a specific rig can vary from weeks to months depending on factors such as how well the anatomy of the object has been thought trough or how many moving parts it has at the final version.

These 3 topics forms the core to any proper object rig and well designed carries the larger pipeline workflow far beyond it’s visual surface. Base rig is the target object’s core hierarchy that is often connected to the polygonal mesh with a skinning method. Additive rigs are generated on top of the base rig in order to separate concerns when skinning iteration and further controllers become more present tasks.

Controllers are the foundational controllers for the rig that can speed up the animation process when dealing with complex object hierarchies. This type of controller is usually best to drive larger sets of motions and chains of joints with a few values. For example this type of a controller in a character is an forward kinematic arm where you have only one shoulder, elbow and wrist controller that drives the motion for the whole arm, even if there would be some extra joints to create a shape for a muscle volumes or something to attach for a characters wrist, like a shield.

Finally the term ‘Advanced Controllers’ means generally something to bring the object’s ultimate goals and designs into life by creating parameters to run more than one individual components, controllers or joints at the same time. This is best described with characters as a ‘Face Controller’ where you have a single slider that changes the whole expression of a character into something like a smile or a grin. Also often many blend shapes can be controlled trough these types of controllers and even creating combinations of blend shapes with them.