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Rigging a Human Body with Maya

The goal of this exercise is to set up a human mesh to animate and texture for a short film. This is what her acting looks like after compositing:

I'm following the Animator Friendly Rigging methodology, developed by Jason Schleifer. These are the phases I'm executing:

Torso joints

I'm using the basic mesh as reference in orthographic view for:

• Drawing joints for a spine
• Making an FK version for cumulative X rotations, and
• IK version, using an IK Spline for complex twisting.

Spine FK/IK

Writing additional lock controls on shoulders to toggle between neck following/not following spine rotation.

Neck controls

Same on neck controls.

Head controls

Adding controls on the head to toggle between eyes following/not following head rotations.

Matching IK/FK pose

Using MEL to snap, toggle, and match between IK and FK on a posed leg.

Fixed elbow

Adding attributes on the elbow to set it static and move forearm IK independent from upper arm. Doing the same for knees, hands and feet.

Hand refinement

The hand has several fine tuning controls, including individual transformations and default poses:

Reverse foot

IK Foot has a reverse mode with alternative pivot points:

Independent pivots

Spine and head have independent, movable pivots.

Scaling rig

The rig bases on one total joint, which enables it to keep all functionalities, even after scaling.

With a ready and functional rig, I'm applying simulation on the skin using Maya Muscle.

After animating, exporting mesh deformations using Alembic, into a new scene with environment and lighting. Click on the case study links to see what happens in the next steps of the pipeline:

Rigging

Visual Effects