I remember when traveling up to Vancouver for game design courses, I had the basic idea in my head that I would be doing something with characters. I had always drawn little characters on my own as a kid, from just doodling in Geometry class to passing out full blown comic strips to my friends for shits ‘n giggles. Little did I know what all it takes to bring a character to life from 2D on paper, to 3D on the computer. The one word I cringe at when dealing with 3D software: Rigging. NnOooOoO!!! The word alone brings me daymares. Creating computer generated bones to animate a character is tedious and like this Gamasutra article states, “a pain in the butt.”
As software changes and improves almost constantly, with ZBrush and subdividing meshes making it way easier to generate realistic looking characters, rigging for the most part has stayed difficult to use. Basically not very user friendly. Of course it’s been improved upon over the years but not like other important parts of modeling and animating. We do see a lot of Motion Capture taking center stage in some movies and even games so, is rigging becoming a thing of the past? Check out the Gamasutra article and see what you think. There are other methods of animating that aren’t as ridiculous as rigging and keying frame after frame after frame. But will these new methods rule the day or will rigging, in some way or another, always be around?
I don’t know about you but rigging for animation is such a turn off. Only thing I can tolerate animating is a camera because it’s simple to key and adjust to create smooth movement. So what about you? Do you have trouble with rigging and animating? What have you done to make your job easier? Is autorigging a waste because it’s not specifically built for the character you need to animate?
The Gamer Report 