Translating Pixar's Norman Rig For Blender

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Hello fellow artists,
I thought it would be cool to translate Pixar’s Maya Norman rig to Blender since it’s available under a CC license. I’m not a skilled rigger, and it’d probably take me ages if I ever even attempt it. If anyone wants to attempt to do it, I’ve linked the .obj.

The real charm of the rig lies in that it’s low poly, and segmented, so it’s fast, easily animatable and customizable, letting animators focus on performance more than design or technical issues. It’s expressive face also allows for acting without distraction.

I don’t expect many responses, however I’m keeping an open mind. If anyone is interested in making this a collaborative effort, or simply wants to take my spot, feel free to PM me here or on SKYPE under the same username. Thanks in advance for any replies. Cheers.

Original download here: http://sites.google.com/site/normanrig/
Body obj sans blend shapes here: http://www.mediafire.com/?b60yw513tarc24q

Here’s some examples of what the mesh looks like inside Maya. These are not my animations, and not my video:

https://youtu.be/4NKZgLhrZJE

I downloaded this rig.
I’ll try to assemble something like this in Blender.
I need to think at the expense of FK / ik system.

Cool. Thanks for your interest, Dimitrii! Cheers.

ill try dude

Thanks for your interest. This could be a great opportunity for animators and riggers alike. Feel free to share your progress here in this thread, or link to it. I think I’m going to start on my version today or tomorrow. Cheers.

I am on it too …

First version without facials: http://ivogrigull.com/blog/?p=116 :slight_smile:

That’s great Ivo!

Nice Loolarge!!! Just out of curiosity, all the custom tools your using from the tool shelf on the right you’ve developed? Is that part of the whole rigging development you’ve been toying with and posted in the news&discussion section about?

Randy

I love you Loolarge <3

You even recorded it. Nice. I’ll make some facial shape keys if you’d like, or do you think a stretchy based bone setup like Ndee85’s would be better?

The shapes are already there, but they still need to be mirrored and set up. You don’t want to animate them by hand, it will make you crazy :smiley:

revolt_randy: Yes :slight_smile:

Awesome, I’m looking forward to animating this. Great work Loolarge.

Just want to add notes/warnings about known issues:

The skinning of the thumb sucks.
The visibility-expressions will produce dependency cycle warnings when creating a linked proxy, so don’t use references yet.
The shear, flex and spread attributes on the hands are not symmetric, the order is messed up on the right side.
There is a mode called “IK2” that is yet a bit broken/invisible on the UI side.
There are no facials :smiley:

Off to the familiy, see you after christmas!

Loolarge:

Just watched the timelapse… WOW. I love the autorig and bone tools you have created. Is that C and Python? Or just Python?

Have a Merry Christmas…

Loolarge, that is an amazing job. :slight_smile:

That second to last clip from the movie, A Christmas Story, is classic! Folks, this is what happens when you watch that movie for 24 hours, every Christmas, for ten years. You know where that phrase came from right off the bat.

OK, I must be an idiot… in the comments section you state:

To make the UI work, you have to run the “Norman_UI” text as script in this editor.

I can’t find a text file called “Norman_UI” – how do I run it?


MarkJoel60: Actually the script should load automatically on file load. When you select an arm control, do you see the category “Character Properties” in the right property panel (n-key)? The text editor can have multiple files open, so you need to click and select this text from the dropdown menu. Then click “Run Script” or alt+p. The Autorig is made in python only. Hope it works ok …

OK… yes, didn’t know about the multiple text files thing… THANKS!

But a question: what do I get when I run ALT-P that I didn’t’ have before? Because I run it, and I can’t see anything new… am I just missing it? Or could the script be running automatically when I load the blend file? …

I have the “Character Properties” section even before I run the script… Does the script give me something more?

(And, yes, the rig is working really well! I wish I had an easy way of transferring this to another mesh… I real.ly like your rig!)

Whoa this is perfect, Ivo. Thank you. what more can one ask for?