3D Character Rigging - The Spine

Description
In this tutorial we look at how to setup the spine for a character. We will be using multiply/devide notes for that. But dont worry it is easy. We will be setting up:

- Controllers
- Constraints

Chapters
1. Intro/Controllers
2. Controllers
3. Constraining
4. Constraining

Programs Used

Maya

Tutorial by
Dennis Jensen

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Hei, Dennis!
Thank you so much for these videos!
I’ve been playing around with Maya on and off for many years, and I’ve never used the hypershade for anything but texturing and material handling.
You’ve opened a whole new world of possibilities for me, and I constantly realized how much I’ve made it hard for myself with my sub-par rigs.
And on a side note; what makes these videos truly enjoyable, apart from the obvious competence you display, is how heartwarmingly optimistic you remain, even when faced with some unknown problem.
Really funny how you remain human, so it feels more like listening to a good friend than a faceless instructor.
Ps! I love how you say "fuck it" some times. It really helps keeping it on a personal and friendly level, together with stories like the one about your christmas party with the drawn penises :D

Many thanks from Stockholm, Sweden!
/Tom
D. 2012-02-03

Hello again. I think it is how it is set up. I also did some of my bones differently so I think that is what is messing me up.
D. 2012-02-02

Hello Dennis,
Thanks again for doing this rigging series! I am fairly familiar with rigging, but watching your videos, I am learning new things! I ran into one problem, that I was able to fix, but I was wondering if you knew why the problem happened. I had just gotten done with the Multiply Divide Node for the Root Control and the first two joints. When I rotated the x axis the controls would go forward, and the bones went backwards. I fixed it by making the input 2 in the Multiply Divide Node negative. I’m not quiet sure why it wasn’t rotating correctly when the .5 was positive. I’m following your tutorial, but doing a few things differently. Instead of parenting everything, I am parent constraining most of the controls and their groups. Do you think that is why I had to make the .5 negative? Thanks for the help!
D. 2012-02-01

Hey Dennis, I’m trying to figure out the best method to use a spline IK on the spine, with clusters driven by the controllers. However, I’m not really sure how to attach the neck and head to these clusters. Also, I’m not sure what type of constraint is best to use for controllers and joints.

Any thoughts?

Ps, your off topic stories make your tutorials fun.
D. 2012-01-03

Troy:
Hi.

If you need a functional rig with muscles moving and a real skeleton with all the bones inside it would be a big project. I havn’t been working that much with muscles but if a guy should make the rig and everything it would take a long time. One solution might be as you say to buy a model, and then build the rig on top of that. You can find a lot of models here:

http://www.turbosquid.com/

I tried to find a rig with the muscles and bones working but I’m not sure there is one at the site. So you will proberly need to find a artist who is up for the challenge. I hope it helps a little bit :) Even though most of what I said is the same thing you said.

Cheers
/Dennis

D. 2011-10-20

Hi Dennis,

I really like you putting all this effort into teaching us. I am new to maya and plan on doing some work for my personal training website. I need to rig a guy with all the muscles. Since I am new and really like to do more of the animations. I am having a hard time finding a good quality rigged figure. The best I found is to buy a figure at about $900 and pay someone $4,000-5000 to rig it. Do you know where I can get a rigged skeleton with all the bones and muscles as separate pieces?

Thanks so much for any response,
Troy
D. 2011-10-20

Dennis, you're doing an awesome job! Forget what the other nit-picky people say about you making mistakes, at least you take the time to identify and correct them. Rigging is a tough technical job and there is almost zero resources out there for it that I could find. This is like a gold mine!

I did have a few quick questions about the spine rigging:

1. Once I have point-constrained my spine controllers to the joints, they no longer follow the main controller on the hips when I translate, only when I rotate. How do I fix this?

2. My hip controller stretches when I rotate it. As far as I can tell it seems to do with the parenting because when I unparent the controller from the main controllers it doesn't stretch anymore. Is it okay to re-attach this into the rig through a parent constraint instead of a direct parent?

I hope these questions make sense. Most likely they'll be answered in the following tutorials. Thanks again Dennis, you rock!

p.s: the foot-mouse video I gotta try!
D. 2011-06-01

THX!!! I have been looking for a tutorial like this for along time!!! and I finally found your tutorial!! and its awesome. Thx alot for this, keep them coming
D. 2011-05-28

Love the tutorials, since this is my first time rigging in Maya.
I'm kind of glad you had some mistakes because it helped me figure out mine
D. 2011-05-06

Hey Jason.

that is a good idea. Sometimes I get cauth up in the moment and forget about that stuff. Nice feedback.

For your question:
The multiply divide node takes a value, lets say X, and divide or multiply X with a other number, let say Y. This is usefull in the spine because I can the rotatation of a controller, to rotate 3 joints. So When I rotate my controller, it will divide the value with 0.33 and the plug this value into the other joints rotation.

I hope it makes sence. I'm gonna send this answer as a email to you aswell.

Cheers

/Dennis

Ps. Thanks for vour comment btw :)
D. 2011-04-12

Dennis,

One question: What is a multiply divide node and how did you know that is what you needed?

You need to explain the nodes and what they do. If you could answer the question "why" when you choose to do something a little better, that would help.

Otherwise, for me this tutorial went exactly (step by step with the same problems) as you said it would and I was able to follow you perfectly. I actually like it when you run into trouble and fix it.

Jason
D. 2011-04-12

Hi Dennis,

Really enjoyed watching your rigging tutorials. Though I'm no stranger to rigging, it gave me some different and new approaches to problems.

Keep up the good work and thank you very much - George
D. 2011-04-03

hi Dennis,

this is a great tutorial.Thanks for this free great tutorial.
D. 2011-02-07

Hi Dennis!

First of all, I'd like to say Thanks for creating these videos. They've been really helpful to me. I'm still a student of the rigging art, so I really appreciate it.

I have one question regarding the spine controller rig. Why did you have to use the multiply-divide nodes? And why couldn't you orientConstraint the joints to the controllers?


Thanks!
-jay


D. 2011-02-01

Hey DQvsRA

Welcome back and thx for the feedback. I know there are some mistakes, but if I had to do them without. I would have to reverse it a lot before making a tutorial, and it would take a lot of time. So there would be fare less tutorials. So it is a compromise. But I still feel like it is good, I only make one or two misstakes and it takes like 5 min too correct them. Yes you will have to watch the 5 min of me correcting it, but it is only once in yourlife and you will have learned how to rig a spine :)

I'm sorry that you didnt see the whole tutorial, I will try to make less mistakes next time.

Cheers
D. 2010-12-19

Bad, many misstakes and many misstakes, after you deleted Rotate Place Solver i'm end watching because it's waisting time on misstakes. Please be more accurate ...
D. 2010-12-19