Widget based Automated Rigging of Bipedal Character with Custom Manipulators
Character rigging is a process of endowing a character with a set of custom manipulators and controls making it easy to animate by the animators. These controls consist of simple joints, handles, or even separate character selection windows. In this research paper we present an automated rigging system for a humanoid (biped) character with complete customization and control options according to the need of the character rigger and the animator. The rigging requirements check list has been proposed for each body part by analyzing various live natural human motions and then summarizing them. The system initially provides widgets that represent human skeletal joints, which can be easily manipulated and modified according to the character type and body height. The system takes the widgets positions from the 3D space and creates the joint based skeletal structure automatically using procedural programming and then followed by creating a complete bipedal rig with custom manipulators to satisfy the animators need in a production environment.
Majority of the research successfully generates the skeleton of any given mesh through various techniques and the use that skeleton for animating the character through motion capture data or procedurally driven motion. The problem concerns the real life production environments where the animator uses the manually rigged character with custom controls and manipulators to create the animation, and thus the auto generated skeleton becomes practically unusable by the animator.
In this research work we use a template based skeletal generation mechanism called widgets, for bipedal character based on the actual human anatomy. Then this skeleton is automatically rigged according to the various standards and criteria researched and discussed with custom controls and manipulators. This system of automation will provide a practical solution to the real life problem of character rigging and animation.
The proposed system of automated rigging of biped character with custom manipulators, removes this boredom from the character riggers. This is achieved by producing the bipedal character rig automatically with all custom selection controls with inverse kinematics (IK) and forward kinematics (FK), thus making the process of rigging a stress free and timesaving. This system will facilitate the novice character rigger and animator greatly by simple clicking on few buttons and they will have their rig created and ready for animation.
- - - - - - - -