Many animators wonder which rigging technique to choose when it comes time to build a cut-out character.
Animate Pro offers various types of rigs. The more that you explore the different rigging techniques available, the more you will discover what you like and be able to adapt it to your own preferences. At some point, you will develop your own personal rigging technique.
There are three main rigging techniques:
If the production has a cartoony and dynamic style, then the Open Rig is recommended. It provides the animator with the freedom to select and stretch whatever he wants, without affecting the rest of the character. The Open Rig technique allows the maximum amount of freedom and cheats.
If your production has a more realistic style, keeping human proportions and not involving a lot of stretching or deformations, it is recommended to go with Mix Rig. The Mix Rig is a combination of Hierarchy and Open Rig. This way, when you rotate the arm/shoulder, the rest of the arm (forearm and hand) will follow naturally.
The Full Hierarchy technique is not recommended since it gives less freedom to the animator. Use this technique only if you need to produce a very long and fast animation in a short amount of time. This means about 3 to 4 minutes of animation per animator per week. Obviously, we are not talking about a high quality animation here.
You can rig your character from your Timeline view, but Animate Pro’s Network View is very useful and much more powerful for this task, offering more options. The Network View offers a visual representation of the whole rig, making it much easier to follow the connections. Each drawing, peg or effect element is shown as a module.
You will notice that in this article, there is a peg attached to all of the drawing layers. The reason is that to give a maximum of freedom to the animation, the drawing exposure is done on the drawing layer and the animatio keys are done on the peg, which allows the move the drawings and keys independently with ease.
The open rig is the easiest way to build the puppet. Using this method, there is no parenting between elements (an “element” is a drawing module plus a peg module). Each part of the puppet is independent. The parts are simply hooked to one Master Peg, used to control the whole character.
Review the following before choosing this technique and rigging your puppet in open rig:
When working with an Open Rig, there are no restrictions on selecting and moving or scaling parts at any moment. The rigging allows the animator the most freedom.
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Although the initial impression may lead you to believe that the open rig takes more time and is more complex to animate, it is quite easy to use and to handle. All of the pieces are independent and can be moved freely without affecting the other ones. This rig is the easiest to use when creating key poses.
You can almost avoid using the Timeline view during an Open Rig animation process. The Timeline view usage can be reduced to a minimum as you can also decide to play with all of its parameters.
A traditional animator can essentially use all established animation principles. The animator can animate straight ahead, pose to pose, do a breakdown, deform, skew and swap any drawing. This does not require advanced digital knowledge or experience.
The auto in-between (Motion) should be used sparingly and in small increments. The animator has to do more keyframes and breakdown in the animation when working with auto in-between. If you prefer to have the computer control a part of the work, select another technique, such as the Mix Rigging.
Although automatic interpolation (using the Motion keyframes to create your in-between) may seem to be a faster and better method, it is not the best choice to mix with an open rigging. Since all of the parts are independent, the rotations are not followed between the individual parts. They will go straight from point A to point B.
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The basic open rig fits the above description fairly well. All of the elements are independent of each other and spread all over the Network View, linked to a master peg. This master peg controls the whole puppet in order to move it from place to place within the Camera View.
Connections between the pegs and the master pegs appear in the Network View.
In the Timeline view, the parented elements are placed under the master peg and shifted to the right.
The advanced open rig is not very different from the basic. The first steps are the same because you have to create a basic open rig before working with an advanced one. Once you have added the Composite, you are ready to add the extra components. The freedom to move everything around and to be able to select any part may be appreciated, but it can be time consuming and frustrating to have to select all of the facial features or the whole upper body, for example. Since the puppet is not always positioned for a quick selection, you can add extra pegs to help with this situation.
If you are drawing all of your angles in the same layers, the peg pivots may not follow your animation properly while using the auto-in-betweening feature. In this case, it is better to separate your angles in different scenes.
The Layer Properties opens.
Hierarchy is another available rigging technique, initiated the same way as a basic open rig. The hierarchy structured network connecting all of the elements. Each piece is connected to another, for example a character’s hand is linked to the forearm and the forearm is linked to the upper arm, all the way up to the master peg. The hierarchy rig resembles a real puppet, as all of the pieces are dependant on each other. This technique is useful if you are new to animation, or if you want to create quick and basic animation.
Review the following before choosing this technique and rigging your puppet in hierarchy:
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If you prefer to use a Stop-Motion keyframe and work pose-to-pose or with straight-ahead animation, this also possible. This works quite well on this type of rig.
Toon Boom Digital Pro provides two animation tools that can be used effectively on a hierarchy puppet: Inverse Kinematics (IK) and Transform Tool (Forward Kinematics).
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When using inverse kinematics, you can pull on the extremities to move the central parts. For example, you can lock the character’s foot to the ground and pull on the hand, causing the whole character’s body to follow like a real puppet.
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When using forward kinematics (Transform Tool), move a central part to have the extremities follow. For example, you can move the character’s shoulder and the arm and hand will follow.
The main constraint in working with a full hierarchy is that you cannot select a central part without also selecting its children. This means that if you want to move, scale, skew, rotate, or otherwise change this part, all of the children will receive and follow the modification, reducing that amount of control that you have over the animation.
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If you use Motion keyframes and want to modify some single ease or keyframe information, you need a better knowledge of the Timeline View and ease curve editing.
For example, attach the torso’s peg to neck’s peg; attach the torso’s peg to left arm’s peg; and attach the torso’s peg to right arm’s peg
Make sure that your head’s peg is not connected in the neck’s peg, but the reverse: the neck’s peg is controlling the head’s peg.
Now that you have reviewed open and hierarchy rigging techniques, you can select and combine points from both processes. This brings us to mix rigging, the final method. This process consists of leaving some parts as an open rig and creating hierarchies for others.
Review the following before choosing this technique and rigging your puppet in mix rigging:
Another advantage is to have the whole upper body as an open rig and to create a hierarchy for the lower body. This is useful in creating a walk cycle, or when using inverse kinematics to bend a character’s knees, perhaps to make him sit. By creating hierarchies for the arms and legs without connecting them to the body or hips, the limbs can be moved independently.
This kind of rigging requires more experience and experimentation with tools. The animator needs to use the Timeline more often than for an open rig animation. The mixed rig works well with Stop-Motion keyframes. Motion keyframe will also work, but will require some corrections and extra poses since there are still open rig connections.
