New Project: RiggingDojo.com the online school for character techinical artists

So this is a bit of an advertising post, if you don't want to read it turn away now. Don't worry it will not be the end of content on this blog or support for the book or ads on the side bar.

...Still here? thank you.

So I have decided to co-found a new online education project especially for character artists.
Called Rigging Dojo.

http://www.riggingdojo.com/

You can find out more at the site, so I won't bore you with that.

I did want to talk a bit about how this all happened. First was that last few years two of my friends and I separately were all talking but not with each other about having a really hard time finding good character technical artists and talk of training and mentoring and schools came up...well I said "hey I we are all talking about this separately, lets join forces" and then here we are.

And to be fair, as we were working on the details a few things happened. One some other amazingly talented people had the same idea and http://www.td-college.com/ was born and kind of kicked the wind out of us for a bit. After talking it over we re focused on what our original goal was; Wanting help fix the disconnect happening for people that read the rigging books and post questions on forums and watching all the video training but were still struggling, and create a place for them to get real guidance and production based training no matter what their experience level. The other issue was the huge number of people needing help learning MotionBuilder and dealing with pipeline and character rigging issues that adding motion capture to your workflow brings.

So if your a reader of the Inspired rigging books or have watched all the amazing Jason Schleifer masterclasses or your working in production all ready but want to learn more or are in school learning modeling and want to see it ready to be brought to life (yes we are a bit like DR. Frankenstein) or are struggling with motion capture, then come over to the Rigging Dojo site and see if it is right for you and let us know what you think.

Make sure you check out the other options also.
Like the guys over at http://animationrigs.com/
and of course http://www.td-college.com/
and http://www.digitaltutors.com/
since I know not every one has the same budget, needs or learning styles.

Thank you for your time and never stop learning,
Brad Clark

LINK: Dog leg rig and others - inspired by our inspired rigging book

I love finding links to people getting use or being inspired by our rigging book.

Here is a nice tutorial on useing the Maya spring IK with an automatic lower leg flex control.

"Dog Hind Leg Tutorial
By, Tyler Thornock

This tutorial will help you setup a dog/animal's hind leg with a single control to make it easier for the animator to move. This basically artificially sets up a spring ik. So if you have Maya 7, you may want to use it, though this setup does give you more control in the end. This setup may be confusing for some, but the stuff you learn can be applied to many other areas.

Well, the first part of this tutorial is "borrowed" from the Inspired 3D Advanced Rigging and Deformations book, however the book does not setup the rotation of the second part of the leg to be driven automatically which is a pain because the animator would have to rotate it appropriately every time they move the leg. With this setup, the animator can control the rotation or leave it automatic, unlike using a spring ik."

http://www.charactersetup.com/tutorial_dogleg.html


And here is another site with a spine rig tutorial, a reader of the book, taking ideas from it and expanding on them and then sharing it with the world. I just wanted to share the links to their sites and say thank you for giving back to the community.

"
By
David True

Maya Stretchy Spine

The objective of this tutorial is to create a Spine Chain that will stretch and Give you warning if stretch too far or Squash too much."

http://www.darksuit.com/tutorials/StretchSpine.html