Welcome to the Humane Rigging DVD. My name is Nathan Vegedal, and on this DVD,
I'm going to pretend to know something about
rigging. So let's get started, shall we?
The first thing I want to do is just look at rigging from a bird's eye view.
Broadly speaking, when we build a rig, we're
actually building a tool for someone to use.
And because of that, usability is one of our primary concerns as riggers.
It's much like how software developers ought to keep usability in mind.
They could write an amazingly powerful piece of
software, but if it's a complete pain to use,
it's not really that useful to most people. Rigs are the same way. You could create
the most amazingly clever rig with perfect deformations and simulation, but
if it's hard for animators to use, it's nothing but
an exercise. It's not actually useful for real
animations. So remember, rigs are tools for people to use. Rigs are a means to an end,
they are not an end in themselves. Because of
that, I highly recommend that if you're serious
about rigging, that you take up animation as
well. You can still become a good rigger without
doing that, especially if you work closely with the animators that do use your rigs,
but it's going to be a lot trickier. If you do animation yourself,
it's a lot easier to immediately understand why some rigs suck and some rigs rock.
So with that out of the way, what can you expect from this DVD?
Well, this DVD focuses almost entirely on
building good control schemes for animators.
If you're looking for material on creating
great deformations or setting up simulations,
well, you've got the wrong DVD. But wait,
please don't throw this in the trash, seriously.
Even if you just want to learn deformations,
this DVD covers a lot of prerequisite material
for that, and that's because this DVD does
not approach things from a purely step-by-step
vantage point. Instead, I've put a lot of
effort into teaching the fundamental concepts
behind rigging and how to use them to do your own problem solving.
Imagine, if you will, a book on computer programming that tries to teach you how
to write every possible piece of software you will ever want to write step-by-step.
It would be ridiculous. It's not possible. There's too many things a person might want
to write. Instead, a good programming book will teach you concepts that you can use
to solve a lot of problems. The same applies to
any skill, in fact. Step-by-step drawing books
aren't that useful either, except perhaps
if you're just taking your first baby steps,
but ultimately you'll need to learn how to think about and approach drawing.
And a good drawing manual will try to teach that.
I am taking that same approach here. A lot of the material on this DVD isn't
even specific to Blender. I will be using lots of examples, of course,
but they are all in the service of trying to
teach concepts and teach you how to think for
yourself and solve your own problems. And I hope that you will approach this DVD
in that same spirit. If there is a rig that you want to build but which is not covered
on this DVD, I really encourage you to approach
it as a learning opportunity and try to figure
it out for yourself. That is how you will really learn rigging. Rigging is a lot
more about creative problem solving than it is about setting up specific rigs.
This DVD has been a project of passion for me, and I hope you get a lot out of it.
And since it's released under Creative Commons,
I really encourage you to make copies of it and
share it with other people. Don't just keep
it to yourself. Although it would of course be
nice for people to support the DVD too, if
they can, but don't worry too much about it.
So anyway, let's get on to the rigging now.