Here's my first try at rigging characters. I think it's perfect for first-time animators. It's a knight with his head hammered with a huge mallet forcing his entire body to fit inside his helmet. Haha! It's actually a rig with just the legs. A bit of flexed added to the hair to add more dynamism to the overall rig. It's good if you want to practice your walk cycles. I included mine as a video example.
CHARACTERISTICS:
(If you are not new to rigging, you dont have to read this part) Unlike some rigs that you get, you either can't stretch legs or you can stretch them by sliders in the foot controls. I find that if you are just learning to animate, like me, having these limitations can be really troublesome. Aside from this, most rigs have knee targets that can get in the way especially when you haven't mastered simple steps when animating. So I have rigged my own legs-only character.
Changing the direction of the knee can easily be done by the knee control in the attributes of the foot controls. Stretching the legs are as easy as dragging the knee far from the rest of the body. The common attributes like foot roll, banking, toe bending etc are all setup for easy controlling.
Tips:
1) Alt + right clicking -> freeze rotations easily allows you to level your foot controls.
2) You could always put your environments in the environments layer to make things easy for you.
3.) Right clicking on the slider beside the numbers of any numerical input attribute resets the value to 0. It's a lot easier and quicker than entering 0, especially if you want to reset a bunch of attributes in an already animated foot control.
4) Enjoy!!!
DON'T FORGET THAT IF YOU WANT TO MAKE THE HAIR STOP MOVING WHILE ANIMATING, JUST CLICK ON THE BODY CONTROL AND UNCHECK (WITH AUTOKEY TURNED OFF) THE HAIR, TO KEEP IT STILL.
WALK CYCLES ARE THE BEST!!!
OH AND IF YOU WANT TO USE IT FOR YOUR ANIMATIONS, PLEASE INCLUDE MY NAME IN THE CREDITS. JOHN DAVID MARTE (email:redesigndavid@gmail.com website: redesigndavid.me).
Thanks a billion!!! And again enjoy!!!!
---------------added this part later----------------
Click here to view small assignment I had in school where I first tried using the rig. The idea was to have the walker walk, then climb stairs, then jump to another block. I had a little bit of fun in the end because I got carried away by the music I used.
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