Maya Tutorial Reorienting Cluster - Fahrenheit Digital

[jamil1985]

hey Aaron! I visited the Fahrenheit Digital website and alot of us are wondering when will the rest of the other tutorials be released? We have been waiting for a while, unless we have missed any cancellation news about the tutorials.

thanks.

[Kiyamlol]

do u have tutorials liek this specific for facial rigging? and weight cluster painting? that would be very useful cheers~

[deshayarts]

Helpful...thanks!

[YUPchannel]

the orientation parameter assign to the nobe 1 locator wasn't that confusing. Well it does kinda look like you'd just took a flat plane and mess around with it vertices and assigned a handler to pull them,.. sorry but that what it look liked to me,.. Livewire-

[windjohnson]

You've got good voice there.

[forsakeny]

I would usually just parent the cluster under a nurbs circle and use that as a manipulator but this seems much more efficient. Very useful tutorial, thanks Mr. Holly.

[aaronholly]

Hey Sune! Once the Facial Rigging DVD is out the door I will start creating more of this type of freebie tutorials, posting them both here and on the Fahrenheit web site. Perhaps as a podcast.

So everyone please chime in and let me know what types of problems/techniques you would want to see that can be explained with short tutorials.

[scenesfromadream]

what version of maya do you use? i notice you use a mac, im switching from lightwave to maya but dont know if maya will run ok with mac. thanks in advance

[jamil1985]

@aaronholly heyyy Aaron! Do you think it is appropriate to use this cluster orient technique to create face ctrls?? I did that now i think im facing some blendshape problems. I replaced the cluster with the locator ctrl and then selected all mt locators and grouped and parented to the main head ctrl so they move with the head. Now whenever i use my blendshape and rotate the head it messes up or does not follow appropriately. Any ideas? thanks.

[aaronholly]

@jamil1985 The issue with clusters on a face with blendshapes is that you'd want the cluster handles to inherit the deformations of the blendshape AND then be able to deform the mesh without introducing a cycle. There are ways to trick the cluster into behaving this way or ways to rig a secondary mesh.

[jamil1985]

@aaronholly thanks for replying, it seems like even after creating joints for the face and creating blendshape i still run into that problem. I created ctrls for the eye lid to create simple blink blendshapes, it works fine but when i rotate my head with the eyes shut, the eyelid just messes up? But it works good if the head is straight. Any rotation just offsets the eyelid for some reason. I dont know what im doing wrong, its a simple basic local blendshape.

thanks for your help.

[jamil1985]

@aaronholly heyy sorry, i managed to fix the problem, it was rearranging the inputs that was causing the blendshape not to function properly.

thanks anyway.

[SuneKempf]

You just soved a probelm of mine. I'd made a script that converts a skinClusters influences, into clusters. It worked fine, but when i wanted to parent the clusters to the original influence joints, I got wierd transformations.

Well.. Not anymore :-)

Thanks!

[SuneKempf]

Ups.. I still get strange deformations, when trying to parent the clusters together in (or into) some sort of hierarchy, once i start moving things around.

[tckronos]

excellent speaking very nice tut in general A+

[aaronholly]

A character TD working at Disney. My name is Aaron Holly; been pushing pixels for a few years and decided to come clean on a long-standing promise to begin creating Maya tutorials.