Robbie Reid the Rigger 🔜 MIGW
@chowgood
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Freelance Senior Rigging TD | Open to work and commissions | He/Him | From Perth, Australia | Has a Simpson's quote for everything
Melbourne, Victoria
Joined March 2011
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New year, new me, new rigging reel! I've cleared out some of my older stuff and added my work on Mortal Kombat and The New Mutants
#rigging
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This time 3 years ago I was rigging the CG asset of Claptrap for the Borderlands movie. I worked on him for 5 consecutive months. Neither I, nor the artist who modelled him (Who I worked with the entire time), got a credit for the film
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In their Thanos rig, Weta Digital display a big exclamation mark when the clavicle nears feasible rotation limits. Inspired, I built my own indicator designed to subtly notify animators that their shoulder rotation *might* be pushed a little far.
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If this is true, it's a terrible precedent to start setting. VFX artists are already overworked with incredibly tight deadlines and insane expectations. Rather than ignoring deadlines...how about giving artists enough time to do their craft right?
The Duffer Brothers say they finished around 20 VFX shots on
#StrangerThings4
Episode 9 yesterday morning and uploaded them to Netflix’s server.
This means you may not see the fully finalised shots if you binge the series immediately.
(via:
@colliderfrosty
)
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Up until this point I've been exceptionally lucky to have received a credit for every film I've worked on. It just stings that the one to finally break the streak was the last film I worked on at a studio. And for such a significant character too
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Don't grind your teeth, don't tap your foot, crab is back on the menu. Streaming work on the crab monster rig again tonight, join us!
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To those saying I dodged a bullet, artists should still get credit for work done no matter the quality of the film. It's not a high bar to cross. I'm proud of the work our team did, and I thought the final product looked great
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Ok so this post is coming back up again after 4 years for some reason. As insurance: This is a joke post. I don't rig like this, this is not a feature of my rigs. I don't want animators coming for my blood
In their Thanos rig, Weta Digital display a big exclamation mark when the clavicle nears feasible rotation limits. Inspired, I built my own indicator designed to subtly notify animators that their shoulder rotation *might* be pushed a little far.
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In the end, I'm fine. I have plenty of credits on other films, and I'll still use the work in my reel. But it's harder for juniors and artists breaking into the industry to be left off the credits. It's disheartening, and it also makes it harder to verify the work you did
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Any of my animator mutuals want a free rig? I've been rigging this awesome model from
@h3ptapod
and I'm looking to beta test it fairly soon. The rig will be released online for free, just want to put it through it's paces first. Anyone keen?
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I've seen a few skirt rig demos around recently, so I wanted to share the one I've been working on. My automation is done through constraints, transform limits and some driven keys on the belt (To keep it as one joint). I will be releasing the full rig very soon, I swear
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Pixar's new approach of deforming/tweaking characters based on relatively sparse curve networks is really interesting. Kinda reminds me visually of characters built out of NURBS back in the 90s
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Redesigning a hero CG character half a year before delivery is insane. Based on fan feedback, a proper fix would mean scrapping nearly everything already done and starting again. Bid times exist for a reason, they can't just be cut in half without fucking over several VFX studios
Sonic the Hedgehog's movie director has heard the feedback and vows to fix the blue blur's design.
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I really gotta stop posting things before I go to bed...
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Free rig alert! The Guardian is a free Maya based rig, perfect for testing body mechanics and attack combos. It contains a full body rig, simplified face rig with actions GUI, sword prop module and automated skirt and hair modules. Download link in the next post...
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I finally got around to writing a script to convert skin cluster weights to blend shape weights. Really useful for extracting correctives from a full sculpt, or doing fun stuff like this...
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My experience with building game engine friendly face rigs has been an ever decreasing joint count. Here's my latest minimal face rig, 32 joints and 4 max influences. It's using my new face GUI workflow so it can hit core expression really quickly
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A random on LinkedIn tries to get me to work on an NFT project: A story in three parts
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Testing out looping motion paths to rig treads, belts or similar
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@Garbage_Animate
Part of a studio. I imagine it's because we both left at the end of 2021, and it took the film this long to come out
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I love knee splits. Eases the lower leg around the upper, rather than sheering through it. I use knee rotation to push my twist chains out here. A quick and easy way to improve initial deformation. Useful on elbows too.
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I ended up doing some more tests with the full body. Here's a few more transformation experiments
I finally got around to writing a script to convert skin cluster weights to blend shape weights. Really useful for extracting correctives from a full sculpt, or doing fun stuff like this...
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My disappointment lies with the general industry and how it treats/credits artists. It's a long on-going problem, and I'm sad to see it's still widespread based on replies. But I'm heartened by the support shown, and I hope it can lead to change for our industry
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Thanks all, this was intended as a little vent post to my small circle of film/game artist friends. It's gone beyond it's scope, so I'm muting now. To stress, it's been years since I was on the project, but I had a great time on the film and I'm proud of what was accomplished
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I've recently improved my motion path "point-on-curve" system. Have options to lock original length to the start/end of the curve, fraction and parametric stretch (Evenly along the curve or isolated between CVs), and start/end compression. Useful for spines, tails, lips etc
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How do you approach skinning a chitinous crab monster? That's a question we shall be attempting to answer on tonight's stream. Will the results be jaw dropping?
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I feel the number of Maya's I have installed is starting to become unhealthy...
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Howdy, I'm Robbie and I'm a rigging TD specializing in Maya. I've primarily worked in film and have recently expanded into games. I'm currently available/looking for freelance work.
💼
✉️ robbie.j.reid
@gmail
.com
#PortfolioDay
#rigging
#maya
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The joint layouts of a human and a bear are practically the same. I can reposition my joint guides to hit both using the same build. Keeping the modules open-ended means I can use them in a bunch of different circumstances
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Playing with a curve, up curve, motion paths and aim constraints. An interesting alternative to IK splines or ribbons as it maintains fairly even joint scaling, twist and blending to the original length. Nice as a base for rigging spines, necks, tails or tentacles.
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Here's a time-lapse of the 1 hour speed rig challenge I did on stream last night. We made it! But with a few bugs, so we pushed on a little further. Hour 1 got us a complete humanoid layout, hour 2 was additional limbs, and a final 10 minutes for fixes and the tail I forgot...
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Rigged up a t-rex on stream yesterday. Went through my joint guide system, setting up the animation rig and painting basic weights. 5.5 hours to get the 'first pass' done, here's it condensed down to 2 minutes
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@studio_galt
Nah, no additional compensation or royalties in film for VFX artists. Normally the credit is just the least you expect, but sometimes you are lucky to even get that
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@RubberNinja
Is it just me or are they lacking a tonne of expression? Face mask = Don't need to track or lip sync dialogue. Barely any eyebrow movement...blinks and body movement are about it. Most V-tuber software can do more than that at a base level right?
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Join the crab rave. Cleaning up this guy's rig and skin cluster on stream tonight. Live now
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Over my break I've been working on my personal rigging framework and it's joint guides. They can be easily transfer between similar characters, moving joint positions and keeping useable rotation values. Here's a recent test on a human biped
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Finally invested in a second hand iPhone to explore ARKit and other face mocap solutions. I've got a pretty decent workflow for human IK, so I'd like to hone in on one for faces as well. Already getting a lot more fidelity than previous solutions I've tried
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In recent refinements to my personal modular rigging framework, I've managed to swap out all constraints for matrix nodes and eliminate attribute cycles. Managed to get four rigs animated in a scene before dipping below 24 FPS, I think that's a pretty decent first test result
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Crunch is never worth it. Ever. I crunched on New Mutants. It released three years later. I've crunched on assets for films never released and assets that were completely omitted. Projects are fleeting, relationships and your health are not
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To hit our Jan 2018 deadline for New Mutants, I did plenty of unpaid OT, delayed a holiday and worked around Xmax/NY. Nearly 3 years later the film is now released...in the middle of a pandemic (At least, in places not under stage 4 lock down). Crunch is not needed or worth it.
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Brendan has been absolutely crushing it with his Guardian rig animations. So much weight and personality in the movements
If you want to try the rig yourself, you can grab it here:
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My skin weights keep accidentally becoming French 🇫🇷
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I'm back with my first stream of the year. Lets start by speedrunning a rig. Can I complete the challenge of rigging this crab monster in just one hour? Join and find out
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Crabisthenics. Poking and prodding the crab monster rig tonight, seeing what areas of control and skinning we can refine
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@henningsanden
I worked on parts of the old Steppenwolf rig, he was actually one of the more enjoyable characters on the project as the model was, well...comprehendible. Costume still required a fair bit of cheating, but this new one looks like a nightmare by comparison
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Cleaning up the skin weights of my face rig mask on stream tonight. Aiming to transfer it to the high res body and do some tests. Should I take my new max influence knowledge for a spin?
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As there's been a bit of interest in the crab rig from last weeks stream, I'm thinking of cleaning it up for a proper public release. So tonight we're slowing things down and starting some polish. Let's see what difference time can make
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The trailer is here! Check out Mixtape, the project I've been working on with the incredible team at
@bnd_studio
. It's been a blast rigging on this game, can't wait for 2025. It's going to be totally bodacious
Introducing, Mixtape, from the kids who brought you the Artful Escape.
Mixtape will be available day one with Xbox Game Pass (Series X|S, Windows) when it launches in 2025.
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This was the last film I worked on before I left Method Studios Melbourne at the end of 2021. Back then I mentioned a rig I worked on for 5 consecutive months. It was Claptrap!
Ever wonder what it’s like to have your face melted off?
#BorderlandsMovie
#ChaosLovesCompany
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I interupt my seldom posting about rigging and animation to share my first time landing a standing backflip (I'm very happy)
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"The model topology and pose has changed in this update"
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I recently commissioned a friend to take same professional headshots of me. Figured I finally needed something decent to represent myself. Do I go with A) Normal and professional or B) Madman holding a skull?
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We got the basis for the lid rigs going on stream last week. Tonight I'll test adding some more controls to the eye and brow area. Hanging out on Twitch now
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@Jaiydanimate
I interviewed at a place that does this kind of thing once, great guys. Not sure if it's universal for all animatronics studios, but they animated one control for one axis at a time. Need that precision to avoid accidentally killing folk
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Improvements to my personal points on curve setup, now with blending locked length from start to end. Built with curves, motion paths and standard Maya util nodes. Shown driving aimed joints along a curve + up curve, follicles on a ribbon and a surface on a surface.
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I've tried very hard to avoid turning my Twitter into a bunch bouldering sends. But I'm too happy that I got this knee bar swap today after weeks of attempts
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Thanks to everyone who joined the stream last night. Specially shout out to
@viktorasm
who dropped by and gave some ngSkinTools tips. I never knew holding S let you quick select influences...
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If you're interested in rigging, consider a move to Australia. There is near constant need for riggers here, and not enough people to fill the positions. I can list about 5 companies looking for them right now, all different skill levels, in games, film, TVC and more
Consider specializing in VFX, UI, or Rigging if you're aiming to enter the games industry. These fields are in high demand and there's an abundance of online learning resources.
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Me ripping every single movie I've worked on, scouring Youtube for behind-the-scenes, as studios won't give you final shots or dailies of your work
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After finishing an a-pose with my joint guides, I set the current joint length, turn off stretching and create an aligned t-pose. I can extract both to a meta data dictionary, setting the a-pose when binding and t-pose when building the control rig. No model changes needed
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When copySkinWeights glitches out and stops working for no discernible reason...
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Really glad I took a few months to develop my rigging framework. I just built eight bespoke animal rigs for a freelance project in two weeks. They can also export to Unreal, which I've never tried before now. Keen to keep refining and pushing the system more
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New Mutants came out this year...in cinemas...in 2020. After three years of delays, turns out it wasn't all that great. But now I can finally say we worked on the demon bear (Which I rigged) for the end church sequence. Yes, it had a full muscle sim under all those FX particles
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Concept:
@Hichamhabchi
Model, Textures:
@h3ptapod
Rig: Me
Test animator:
@brendancaseyart
Test animator:
@javier_barriola
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Back in 2016, I did a couple weeks work kit-bashing/rigging/anim testing a wooden clockwork bird for a Chinese film. The mandate was simple: make it 'cuter' than the original design. This is one of my tests. I finally checked out the film, and they rolled with my design! 1/
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I have goal to start releasing rigs online in the new year. More specifically, bespoke characters and animals you might not see very often. So let's start banking some rigs, starting with a king crab. Streaming now!
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The lesson I learn with rigging time and time again: Keep it simple. Knowing when to use a complex system with simple controls, or a simple system with simple controls. Sometimes one control + one joint gets the best results
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Testing my spine skinning when I only have joints in the file
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First stream back after my break, so focusing on my favourite thing ever...motion paths! Tweaking my aim/up utilisation to improve deformation along curves
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I love film VFX, but I do not miss it. And that sucks. Each time I've thought of going back I've been convinced otherwise. I've had to console too many people in tears over how they are treated by their studio or client. There is a human cost to this industry and it's maddening
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@FoldableHuman
People who think a real, finished Snyder cut exists don't know how VFX production works...
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BUG: Animation broken after face rig update
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I am looking for freelance jobs to fill my schedule over the next few months. If you know any studio or individual who is looking for Maya-based, game ready rigs I'm available for contract and commission work. DMs open, RTs appreciated. Let me paint weights so you don't have to!
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TIL: Manipulation in Maya occurs in DG mode. It will only use parallel if the object has two or more differing keys. If controls are unresponsive, using 'tag as controller' and ticking this box in animation settings will make this occur without any animation
#rigtip
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Checking out what's new in Maya 2024 tonight on stream. Looking at native multiple skin cluster workflows and more!
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@animboy90
It's insane. Clients and studios always ask for the world. It has a human cost and I'm getting really fucking tired of it
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Hey game dev TDs, what max influences per vertex are folks using these days? As a spoiled ex-film TD I have no experience with them. Curious to get broad overview as I delve more into game work. General splits between bodies, faces, different types of characters etc
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I'm going to be giving a talk at GCAP this year! It's called "How To Never Rig The Same Thing Twice", where I'll be giving away all my rigging secrets. Come see me and a bunch of other cool talks across the three days!
IGEA is excited to announce that the GCAP 2024 schedule and ticket sales are now live!
We can't wait to see you this year from the 7-9th of October!
Learn more, browse the schedule and grab your tickets here:
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I bought a new workstation last week and my Maya playback speeds have doubled. After reworking my rig modules last year I was getting generally 50-60 FPS on 2019ish hardware. Now on a brand new PC I'm getting 110-120...I could get used to this...
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@shambrookben
Cats was a massive fuck up though, with problems earlier in the pipeline causing bottlenecks and issues cascading downwards. They couldn't fix issues they knew were present as they didn't have render time/farm capacity. Surely it can't be the same with ST
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Doing more face rig development over on Twitch. It's sure to raise some eye brows
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If I can make it as a successful rigging TD, anyone can...
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Testing some joint driven eyelids. All vanilla curves, remap nodes, motion paths, aims and skinning. DQ weights help wrapping around the eyeball, lattice deformers help simulate the corneal bulge. Pretty clean results without any correctives or sculpted FACS shapes.
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It's time for my final stream of 2022! A big thank you to everyone who has supported them this year. Fairly relaxed one tonight, think I'll kick start a komodo dragon rig. Might even replace tea with beer. Live now
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Four years ago, when I was moving back to Australia, I told myself I'd go swimming in the ocean more because I missed it so much. So naturally, four years later, today was the first day I actually went in the water...
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Some squishy rigging over on Twitch tonight as we dial it back to the basics. Join us!
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Someone sent me a link to their 6.5 minute show reel on LinkedIn immediately after I accepted their connection. Nothing else. No attached message. That's a new one...
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Taking a break from crabs on stream tonight to bring back an old friend, the face rig! Needing to clean up my to-do list and check off some boxes. Join us, maybe you can help me break 300 followers
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