Cartoon Guy Rig

Artwork Finished Projects
21

Hi Michael - i enjoyed using your rig, because it was so quick to get started without having to mess about with add-ons etc - ideal for a Blending newcomer like me.
And the shapekeys were really nice - no probs with intersections or stuff looking weird.

I guess if i were to criticise, i would second the calls for more eyebrow control and a second spine controller.
[ Cessen, sorry to be pedantic back :stuck_out_tongue: but technically, the first bone of the spine in this character’s armature, the one controlled by the Hip Controller, is acting as a pelvis, not a spine, isn’t it? So wouldn’t that mean Dragu is correct in asking for a second spine controller…? Or have i missed something? :0) ]

Also, i think Bone Groups would have helped distinguish the left arm from the right arm, fiddly things like fingers, lips eyes, etc, that it can sometimes get difficult to pick out from all the shapes.

The sliders on the face controls were maybe a little fiddly to see/use (tho, as mentioned earlier, the actual expressions where great!)

I found it kind of confusing that the IK and the full body controller were hidden in layers i didn’t expect (tho that might be a Rigify thing). I would have them unhidden as default but, again, a different colour, using Bone Groups.

I wasnt so keen on the circular helper on the neck - it was tricky to select sometimes, plus circles can do weird things with your perspective when you’re trying to see what direction they’re rotated in (but thats just a personal thing, i guess - the flip side is that its easy to ee whats going on with the mesh when your helpers are less chunky. :0).

These are minor gripes, tho. I really enjoyed using it, and look forward to more rigs from you hopefully… maybe a chunkier one? Or a girl? (Or even…errrr… a chunky girl :0) - big thanks Michael! And big thanks to the Rigify Guy also, while we’re at it! :0)

Here’s a short anim done on your rig: http://vimeo.com/24557305

PS: anyone have a link to a tutorial for the jaw set-up on the rig?

22

Well, in that case there are zero spine controls. The idea behind the rig is that you rotate the pelvis and rib cage, and the spine works out what should happen in-between. So what we really need is to have a spine control at all! :stuck_out_tongue:

(Admittedly, spines are part of the rib cage, but to an extent they are part of the pelvis as well. The concept of the rig is to control the rib cage and pelvis. In general, as a rigging problem, I consider pelvis+spine+ribcage to be one collective thing.)

The jaw rig setup is here (I was way over-excited about it… ha ha):

hangs head in shame

23

Thanks for that Cessen (yes, you did sound quite excited - it was funny :0D)
Since you seem to be some sort of Blender Rigging Ninja, hopefully you wont mind me hitting you up for tips and tricks occasionally!

24

he looks pretty awesome :slight_smile: very expressive, when i get time i will download him and have a play :slight_smile:

25

professional work

26

@ Cessen :::
thnks for sharing jaw rig tutorial dude…you are great … besides that this cartoon guy rig is really very proffesional stuff … some of its techniques i really liked it … i learned a lot from this rig like… and will apply it in my matt’s next ver…
and ya bud do you have any comments about my rig … i wants to improve it …
any ideas any suggestions… wud love to hear it…

thnks

27

Cessen,

First of all thanks for looking at my rig (well pretty much your rig). I’m making some changes to the rig and I noticed that the new rigify has a foot rocker in addition to the foot roll. I also noticed that your method of setting that up changed from copy rotation constraints to rotation drivers. I was wondering about the scripted expression you used in the driver “max(0,var)” and “max(0,var)”. Could you explain how this expression works? Where did you learn it? If its confidential I’ll understand. Thanks again for your time and input and thank you for rigify.

28

Hey Draguu, i was interested to have a look at your rig, but Stuffit crashes everytime i try to open the .rar file. Do you have a uncompressed version anywhere?

Update: ignore that, Stuffit worked in the end!

29

thnks dude hope u lyk tht rig nd any comments most welcome
.

30

Hey everyone,

I’ve made some changes to the rig. I’ve added the extra spine controls and the face rig is now controlled by sliders in the N panel (they’ll show up when the jaw is selected). Some other changes include optional IK stretch for the arms and legs, extra controls for cartoony deformations, and the neck and torso also stretch if you move the head and ribcage bones. I added a light setup as well.

http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/characters/cartoon-guy-v1-2/

Let me know what you think.

31

Also I’m glad to have seen some test animations with Cartoon Guy.

Great work ft_tam!

To add to the testing I entered the 11 Second Club last month using Cartoon Guy.


The cockroach rig is also on blendswap.
http://www.blendswap.com/3D-models/animals/cockroach/

32

i have seen your 11second entry dude… u did it quite well… and thankx for new improved rig …its really good … and hey michael are you on face book?

33

Thanks, yeah I’m on facebook, search my full name Michael John Edewaard.

34

Ha ha. No, it’s not confidential. I never consider any of my work confidential, except in professional contexts where I am forced to sign an NDA (but then I likely won’t be releasing anything of the work done under the NDA).

The max() function in Python simply returns the greater of two values. In this case I am using it to clamp the value of var to be above zero (if it is less than zero, then zero is greater, and max will return zero).

Incidentally, I have improved the spine rig to allow additional controls along the spine:
http://projects.blender.org/scm/viewvc.php?view=rev&root=bf-extensions&revision=2034

You can thank Jeff Hogan of Hogan Films for funding the effort.

35

Cool, thanks. Looking back at my question I noticed I wrote “max(0,var)” and “max(0,var)” instead of and “min(0,var)”.

So if the max() function returns the greatest, then I assume the min() will return the lesser of the two values?

Glad to here about the new spine rig, can’t wait to try it out soon.

36

Michael, Cessen and others (sorry to side-track the thread a bit, but this seems to be where the rigging talent gathers, hahah!) I was wondering if you had any tips or tricks about setting up sliders in the 3D view. At the minute i’m working on an IK/FK arm and, although the drivers are all set up, i’m having trouble getting the Transform Channel variable to work in a neat and sensible way, ie: without having to drag stuff halfway across the screen to change the influence from FK to IK! :0D

Looking at your file Michael, i can see you’re making the sliders with bones not curves, and a limit location constraint, and not bothering about polynomials at all, which could be what’s causing me the problem i think…? :0) I guess that kind of answers my question but… if anyone could point me to a decent tutorial covering this, that would be ace. (My own digging around hasn’t turned up much - maybe i’m typing in the wrong keywords).

One other thing, related to this: another option I was looking at was transferring my FK/IK slider to the Properties panel. I was following this blender cookie tutorial http://www.blendercookie.com/2011/02/07/creating_fk_ik_rig/ which is really ace, but unfortunately, the python bit, which he uses to set up controls in the Prop Panel, no longer works in 2.57b. Does anyone know any tuts that cover a similar sort of thing for 2.57b?

Cheers in advance for any help!

37

ft_tam, I created a tutorial to show how to set up sliders in the 3D view and Properties panel.

Here’s the link:http://mjeportfolio.blogspot.com/

Hope this helps. This is my first tutorial so if you have any questions just ask me.

38

I just love this rig! Not hundreads of fancy controls, just the things you need.

Thank you for sharing mj!

39

Hi Michael - thanks ever so much for that tutorial! Work has been a bit bonkers this week (turns out i’m kinda writing a tutorial myself), so i’ve not had time to look properly yet, but I’ve put it aside for later this week. Really appreciate it!

40

Cool, hope it helps. What are you making a tutorial for?