Is rigging worth learning or keep it simple and use skeletons only?
For example if you watch this video, it seems that skeletons are very powerful. But how rigging is supposed to help the animator better on his work?
“Skeletons” are rigging. Rigging refers to any virtual device(s) used to articulate a model for animation. It usually includes bones (a skeleton) but may also include a large number of other methods and modifications such as constraints, modifiers, shape keys, control objects, and so forth.
For folks just starting out in animation it’s often better to keep rigs simple, such as a “skeleton-only” approach, because it’s easier to understand and work with only a small number of influences on the animation. But more advanced models may require more advanced approaches to articulation, and rigging becomes more complex as a result. There’s also a matter of convenience – some rigs are so complex that they need an extra layer of control objects to simplify their use. For the animator a lot is happening “behind the scenes” so to speak, since he/she only handles the controls. But a rigger knows that under the hood a lot more is happening.
I see… But it’s true that advanced rigs make animation very productive. For example I tried a Sintel rig from blendswap and I was amazed by the ease of use, in comparison to the video above that you have to animate bones 1 by 1.
Yes, and that is why the art of rigging has developed in so many directions – it can make the art of animation a lot more fluent and painless, as well as open up greater possibilities for how a model responds, and how much finesse you can bring to your animations.
I noticed in some of the video segments that as the arm flexes, the bicep contracts. I doubt this is the result of only the base skeleton shown in the video, it usually is done with additional layers of bones or other devices that respond to the basic flex of a joint to produce secondary deformation in the model mesh – and that defines another layer of rigging!
I like the Sintel rig as well, it’s a lot of fun to use, which is why I’m using it as the basis for a more complex rig that has more muscle-group response built in. You can see some results in the Neziņa thread in my sig.