Rigging Series

This is an introductory video on rigging in Houdini, which will go over rigging as an overview, HDAs, objects vs geometry, parenting and hierarchies, bones and nulls, animation controls, constraints, rotation order/gimbal lock, naming conventions, mirroring and rigging, and animation scripts.

In Part 1, we will create an HDA and start working on the spine. We will be using the Path Tool, Bones Tool, Follow Curve IK; we will create controls, create proxy geo and create HDA parameters.

In Part 2, we will work on the Neck, Head and Eyes. We will add 'space switching' to the Head and Eyes using constraints.

In Part 3, we will begin rigging the Left Arm. The arm will have both Forward and Inverse Kinematics, the ability to twist both the upper and lower arm as well as 'space switching' for the wrist.

In Part 4 we will rig the Left Hand and complete the Left Arm. The Hand will have global and individual controls for finger curl, splay, fan and flex. The Left Arm and Hand will be mirrored to the Right side. We will finish the Left and Right Arms by adding the twist for both upper and lower arm bones, and add some optional automatic controls to drive the shoulder.

In Part 5, we will rig the Left Leg. The leg will have both Forward and Inverse Kinematics and ability to twist both the upper and lower leg.

In Part, 6 we will build the Left Foot and complete the Left Leg. The foot will use a 'reverse foot' setup with controls for Roll, Heel and Ball Offset, Toe Pivot, Heel and Toe Twist, Side to Side and Toe Rotation. We will finish the Left Leg by adding the twist for both upper and lower leg bones and then mirror both the Left Leg and the Left Hand to the right side.

This video will be a wrap up on our rig, with some features to be added before finishing.

Topics covered include updates on our previous character asset created in the first series; we will also look at how to capture geometry in general, look at bones and capture parameters, capture and deform regions, capture pose vs capture frame, aligning capture pose, capture types and finally, how to fix problem areas in our captured regions.