Our next Ask The Pro is on deck. We will be joined by Aaron Holly who currently works as a Character TD at Walt Disney Feature Animation. This session of ATP will begin on the morning of April 24th and run until at least the evening of April 28th.
Here is Aaron's bio:
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Aaron Holly has worked as a Character TD for over 10 years. He started his career in the videogame industry but soon moved into Visual Effects and now Feature Animation.
Aaron has worked at Disney Feature Animation for the last few years where he has worked on "Meet the Robinsons" and "American Dog." He started his feature film career at Tippett Studio where he worked on "The Haunting" and "Hollow Man" then moved on to work at Industrial Light & Magic, ESC Entertainment, DreamWorks Animation then finally landed at Disney, where he hopes to stay for a long, long time.
He has also taught undergrad and graduate students at the Academy of Art University and continues to lecture & teach, both locally and abroad. Aaron has always been committed to teaching and helping others who are pursuing a career in CG production.
In his spare time Aaron enjoys hanging out with his wife, their three dogs and traveling. He also enjoys creative writing, reading (anything and everything!) and movies.
Aaron has recently teamed up with some industry friends and started Fahrenheit Digital (www.fahrenheitdigital.com), creating CG tutorials and forums for exchange of information to artist everywhere.
Aaron will be free to join in at anytime, however, the forum Q&A is locked to everyone else until April 24th. Aaron, thank you for taking the time to be a part of ATP.
« Last Edit: April 15, 2006, 07:31:35 PM by Rick May »
Could you tell me a little about your work. I am working at a games studio, and have never met a Character TD. What kind of things do you do ? You do the skining ? make character rigs, ninja tech stuff ?
What do you think about the free rigs and rigging plugin rigs that are around. (if you have tryed any) . Like generi, TSM2, Finall rigg, Motion builder. And how do they differ from the ones used in the big productions.
I bet you HAVE met a character TD before but didn't realize it! We usually can be found hiding under our desks so that angry animators cannot find us!
I started in videogames but at a time where you were a complete generalist. Even when I started at Tippett Studio they did not have a formal rigging department; fortunately, that department started at the same time I arrived.
As for what I do, building joint hierarchies, skinning, writing animation GUIs, facial rigging and some R&D. These tasks vary from studio to studio and from production to production. The larger studios tend to have more established pipelines, so there is already a solid foundation to build on and less doing things from scratch. You start to miss the "gun slinging" environment where you can do a lot more and continue to build your skills. But some of this still exists in the larger studios.
I have touched some of the free or auto-magical rigs out there, but not extensively. I think it is great that people are putting their work out there & I am constantly trying to learn new things.
I believe that if you are an animator and simply want to grab a rig and start setting keyframes then these are great time savers. But if you are a Character TD or studying to be one, I would recommend learning the tools and techniques in depth. This could involve dissecting one or all of these rigs, picking apart the aspects you like and improving things you feel are weak. But as a rigger your sttength will come through your ability to craft solid, unique solutions for animators.
These pre-built rigs typically have a difficult time finding a place in the larger studios. And I imagine most game engines have such specific requirements that this is true in that industry as well. The pipeline and production needs tend to be more specific and they would rather build rigs that suit their particular needs rather than relying on something that was built without the studio in mind.
Are there some things you have to "fight" with animators in general over? Like a feature they want in a rig that you can't do or just won't do for whatever reason?
Fight with animators? Never... they tend to outnumber us! But seriously, when I was at Tippett I tended to throw in a bunch of whiz-bang techie solutions that looked cool but were not all that useful for the animators. One of the strongest lessons I learned from that place was "Trust them. They're professionals."
Basically, like Disney, the animators are SO good that the proof is in the pudding. The animators tend not to ask for a lot, just solid rigs and flexibility. And the more mature the pipeline the more they will have already solved most of their problems and have a solid framework and way of working.
And when I use the word "mature" I mean a pipeline that has been diong what they do for quite some time. For example, at a place like Disney they know that the principles of animation had been nailed down to perfection decades ago. They simply want the tools that will allwo them to achieve these things in CG.
Long answer. I could have just said, "The animators make it all look SO darned good that there is not that much fighting. We trust they need what they are asking for." Requests tend to be simple, functional and justified. Not all the time, but typically so.
Thank you for taking the time to get drilled by us animators now on to the questions.
1. Have you had to deal with motion capture and motion capture rigs? Motionbuilder? Where i work(cinematics for games) it seems everything is going that way now and it appears there's less of a need for complex rigs as a basic rig that can be taken into motion builder is all that's needed, it seems. But then, how can they do that with an alien with three arms and two heads, or a dragon with 20 ft. wing spans?
2. I've read somewhere that eventually characters will be setup with cloth and hair and be able to have the animators animate that stuff in realtime and giving the animator more control on those aspects of the characters. Do you see this as a possiblilty? and if so, how long before that can start happening? a couple years? Does this mean more work for the TD? or less work?
3. Are broken hierarchy rigs for Feature film use? or can games/cinematics take advantage of these rigs too?
4. Having a modeling background, do you feel that's helped you as a TD/Rigger? Also, is there a preferred way for you on how a model's arms and hands should be positioned for rigging? T-Pose? 45 degrees? palms forward or down?
5. Do you guys at disney use Maya for rigging and animation? Is rapunzal being done in maya?
That's it, that's all i got for now I'll post some more later.
It's so nice to have you here. I have some question which trouble me for a while.
When I was reading some rigging books, I always have something in my mind. the question is how to defind stable rig? And what is the process you will normally take to achieve that goal? how to prepare the rig to a lot of animators and not have too much problems?
And how to create the GUI faster for animator in production enviornment? do you use template or web base GUI? which way you like better?
We do not use ANY mocap; feature animation studios will typically shun mocap. I worked with mocap in visual effects and we typically used a layered approach. A mocap rig driving another righ which could then be used to offset the mocap while retaining that motion. But it has been a couple of years.
Technologies are advancing such that highly interactive cloth & hair are possible. Maya's Hair system is amazingly fast; then the trick becomes figuring out a way to make it animatable. And a couple of years ago I saw Alias demo realtime cloth. As fast as Hair and quite promising. WHenever I see things like that I immediately think "skin!"
Broken rigs seem to give the animators the level of flexibility they seek for posing. And although the motion may not be as exaggerated on a "realistic" character, the broken rig approach can still be used. As for using it in games... why not? As long as your animation style and engine will support it I think it can be a great way to "lock down" your poses. For example, everything from the shoulders up are PERFECT, but you need to adjust the hips. A broken rig can allow you to do that with zero effect on the parts you like. The main goal if flexibility in posing and being able to isolate regions of the body to reduce counter animation.
I think modeling has helped me as a rigger. I wish I was highly proficient in more areas of this industry; I believe anything I bring to the table will help me out. And many pipelines rely on "finaling." Basically, going into a shot, hunting down problematic deformations then modeling shpae fixes for them. And in some studios the character TD modeled face targets, etc.
I personally like a relaxed pose for rigging. Everything kind of rotated to a halfway pose; arms 45 degrees down, palms down (which is how our hands typically fall)... stuff like that. But sometimes, if a character runs on all fours, then arms up and in front with palms facing down might work better.
When I approach rigging I try to start by building a stable, functional and simple foundation. Like a drawing, painting or sculpture, if your foundation is not solid (i.e. proportions off, colors not balanced, etc.) then it will take a LOT of work to compensate for those problems later on. If you can do it at all!
I believe in the "Occam's Razor" approach to rigging. All things considered, the simplest solution tends to be the best. I try to keep it simple and sometimes feel there is a precedent to over-complicate rigs. I prefer to start with the most simple solutions (which tend to be the most stable also) and layer on complexity as needed.
When I was creating my tutorials I began becoming a bit worried that people would think the solutions were too simple. Not "techie" enough to be valid or taken seriously. But they work and are common solutinos, so a part of me wanted to show that you can get a long way with simple tools.
Another motivation was a former coworker who repeated the mantra "well, Maya is pretty limited out of the box." I disagreed and felt that quite a bit could be done out of the box. Sure, like any tool it could be enhanced (and thank goodness this is a relatively simple thing in Maya!). But one might be surprised what you can pull off with simple tools & techniques.
How did you get from philosophy to Character TD. What was school like at the Academy. What are you thoughts about paying the big bucks to go to school versus reading every manual you can get your hands on and developing skills on your own?
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now on to the questions.
