The lecture began, where I left off - when I previously modelled and UV Mapped fish, by teaching me how to use the rigging tools to attach a skeleton to the body of a fish.
I used a display layer to lock the fish’s mesh, using the reference button, to start rigging the skeleton without selecting the models mesh. Subsequently, I changed Maya’s workspace window from Modelling to Rigging, in the dropdown menu, to view the properties of rigging. I had to change the joint display to make the joint’s view smaller, therefore it was easier to work with.
In order to rig the fish, I used five properties: (Joints, IK Spine Handle, Clusters, Parent Constrain, and Nurbs Curves) to give the fish a skeleton and control levers. [View Video]
I enjoyed this particular lecture, however what started off as a simple task became complex, when more properties were added to the fish’s rig. So, with help from a YouTube tutorial and the software - ‘Advanced Skeleton’, I plan to download this in order to recap and refresh my knowledge.
I adore rigging models, although this skill also helps towards my project, but also allows more flexible movement with the models characteristics by jointing the rig to provide more variations and scope of movement in animation.
I will use the rigging method in my future projects for animal, human and inanimate characters to give an authentic motion characteristic.
