abAutorig overview, how to create a rig in 5 minutes

Posted on March 17, 2010 15 Comments
Filed under Animation, Character design, Education

[update] if you found that video through Google and missed the Pyro abAutorig tutorial make sure you check the following series of posts for a full tutorial with audio explanations and skinning tips. Original post after the link]

abAutorig Pyro tutorial Part I

The following video is a quick 5 minutes intro to the excellent abAutorig mel script.

Double Click on the Vimeo logo to get the full screen video in full HD res.

Comments

15 Responses to “abAutorig overview, how to create a rig in 5 minutes”

remi on March 17th, 2010 02:03

He did you see that someone automated Jason Schleifers rig from animator friendly rigging? That’s also very nice!
Olivier Ladeuix on March 17th, 2010 05:47

Hey Remi, well Jason’s DVDs are a very solid foundation in rigging and I would absolutely recommend them but Jason uses a lot of Set Driven keys and expression which I have been told are very slow to evaluate.

abAutorig is entirely node based which supposedly is much faster but I am not a professional rigger so I have no real clue.

I might give Jason’s autorig a try but there are licenses, copyright, intellectual property issues so I prefer to stick with abAutorig which is free for any kind of use with no restriction whatsoever according to the author.
remi on March 24th, 2010 23:57

I actually love this rig… abAutorig…
But then the skinning starts :( I hate that
Olivier Ladeuix on March 25th, 2010 10:29

skinning shouldn’t be too hard if you have a good technique. I should show you how I deal with it.
Joost on March 25th, 2010 15:04

He there Olive,

Looks like a nice program. I tried TSM for a recent animation job. It was a quick en easy setup and the weight painting was also a pretty easy proces. But it the rigs felt a bit heavy to work with. Maybe I should try this Ab autorig. BTW I have you tried Stretchmesh from Kickstand? That makes weight painting a breeze. I tried it on a character I rigged with TSM and it worked already pretty well without the weight painting.

I still have to try it out for facial deformations, but it seems that this is also a good alternative for The Face Machine which only works fine on realistic human faces. And after rigging one face with TFM I had the feeling again that I lost speed because of the rig. But Maybe my iMac with Maya 2008 is just slow.
Olivier Ladeuix on March 25th, 2010 15:31

hey Joost, no I have never tried Stretchmesh. I am not even sure what it does to tell you the truth. Keith Lango was raving about it some time ago on his blog but maybe I don’t have enough experience with rigging to fully realize its benefits.

I don’t think weightpainting is too hard to be honest. You just need a good technique and the Fahrenheit Skinning DVD really helped me. I also use a specific mel script called SkinningTools v2.0 by David Walden. It is just an interface for the usual Maya tools but it is better organized than the usual Maya interface.

I don’t know if you do that but I normally create an animation of all the joints then step through the timeline adjusting the weighting.

Regarding Facial rigging, the Fahrenheit DVD is also a very good one. I also started a thread on CGTalk a while ago regarding Warner Brother facial rigging and got some really interesting answers.
remi on March 29th, 2010 10:44

Hi guys,

Well, i’d love to see you do it one time :D
Regarding the stretchmesh, I have tried it, and it does work pretty darn good!

But you can’t share rigs unless everyone has the plugin… it’s good for making blendshapes and then deleting the history!
Olivier Ladeuix on March 30th, 2010 03:43

it’s on my TODO list ;-)
The Walk Challenge – A contest :Animation with a moustache on May 3rd, 2010 05:25

[…] I thought I would be better off using the Norman rig rather than Bishop or a self made one using abAutorig. Norman is also pretty generic and adapts very well to modifications so it is easy to make it look […]
saurabh on May 12th, 2010 07:08

hi,

Your blocking is looking so cool. I am sure you must ve enjoyed doing it. All the very best.
“Skating away” short film :Animation with a moustache on August 22nd, 2011 01:24

[…] Related posts: abAutorig, Pyro tutorial Part 1 abAutorig, 5 minutes overview […]
MAYA | Pearltrees on March 30th, 2012 05:12

[…] The following video is a quick 5 minutes intro to the excellent abAutorig mel script. Double Click on the Vimeo logo to get the full screen video in full HD res. abAutorig Pyro tutorial Part I Related post: abAutorig overview, how to create a rig in 5 minutes :Animation with a moustache […]
Shogu on May 8th, 2013 13:43

Hello,
I download this script but how install it ? Which folders ?
Shogu on May 8th, 2013 13:45

Hello, sorry i didn’t see the video
thank you
Olivier Ladeuix on May 8th, 2013 14:32

I am glad you got it sorted, yes it should have been shown in the video. Thanks for checking the tutorial