Game Character Rigging Fundamentals
Rigging is an essential part of game development and it is integral in bringing the games that you love to life. This course will teach you the fundamentals of rigging characters for games. Software required: Maya 2017.
What you'll learn
For many, rigging is the last area of game development they want to learn and it's easy to understand why. You don't play a game to be wowed by the controllers used to animate that dragon or marvel at the adventurer's joint system. It's one of those disciplines between forward facing art and back-end design that takes a back seat to most everything else you can see happening on the screen. However, understanding how to rig is what will take your dragon or adventurer character further than ever before and give them potential for a life of their very own. In this course, Game Character Rigging Fundamentals, you will find that rigging doesn't have to be overwhelming if you learn the fundamentals in a comfortable and digestible way. First, you will start the basics of creating joints and building a skeleton. Once that's complete, you will jump right into creating animation controllers and their constraints to help the joints move. After that, the character can be bound to the rig and you can modify those skin weights. Finally, to give the rig more complex movement, you will create set driven keys for elements like finger gripping and foot roll. By the end of this course, you will have everything you need to rig your characters and an excellent foundation for moving on to more advanced rigging. Software required: Maya 2017.
Table of contents
Course FAQ
Character rigging encompasses everything from the controllers used to animate a dragon to the structure an adventurer's joint system.
While character rigging often takes a back seat to most everything else you can see happening on the screen, understanding how to rig is what will take your characters further than ever before and give them potential for a life of their very own.
This being a fundamentals course, you will find that rigging doesn't have to be overwhelming if you learn the fundamentals in a comfortable and digestible way.
We will start the basics of creating joints and building a skeleton before jumping right into creating animation controllers and their constraints to help the joints move. Finally, to give your rig more complex movement, you will create set driven keys for elements like finger gripping and foot roll.
For this course, we will be using Maya 2017.
About the author
I grew up in Northfield Massachusetts and after graduating from high school, I moved out to Arizona to study game art at The University of Advancing Technology where I received my Bachelor's Degree in Game Art and Animation. Since then, I have been working as an independent game artist producing content for numerous game projects. My main focus is in art such as game characters, assets, and animations but I also enjoy creating other media like stories and film. In the end, I'm here to express my... more