I took a break from game development over the weekend to start on a new tutorial series about rigging low res game characters in maya. I’m using one of my characters from the goblin abyss (see signature) to show the rigging process from start to finish and I will also be going into exporting the character and animation into unity.
At the moment I’ve managed to get 2 videos done, a intro and building the skeleton, but more will follow soon.
I hope these can help anyone who is using maya to create animations for unity.
The next videos are up on my web site in the tutorials section. The new ones are how to rig the legs with FK/IK switching and a reverse foot. At the moment it’s a 2 part video, but I plan to add an additional one soon which will clean up a few more things, add a stretch to the legs and show ways to avoid gimbal locking.
I have recently uploaded the final video for the rigging tutorials which finishes up the rig and goes into exporting animation into unity.
I also touch on gimbal locking and way to avoid it in maya.
can you please show up how to create animations for this character like jumping, weapon attack and how to jump on ropes or slide to left or right.
i’m looking for a year now forr a decent tutorial that really can work but none is there.
if you can create such tutorial in which creating the weapon rig, attacks and jumping’s …etc and then exporting it in unity and adding the right script on it to work smoothly then it will be reference for any beginner.
if u can do the weapon as bow then I will really appreciate it.
There is a new maya rigging video up for anyone who is interested. This one adds a new control to the rig to help control root motion before exporting to unity.
It’s not on my blog yet, but it can be watched on youtube;
Fantastic! I wonder if you could show how to add an extra bone, for a cloak or hair or some other added on bit of mesh. I have a tough time finding this. I am sure it is relatively easy, but I am a visual person so seeing it would be nice.
@Teila I have a few more tutorials planned to expand this rig, one being twist joints for higher res meshes and another is prop joints to add weapons and other props to the character.
Hair and capes could be another good one. PC and consoles can handle real time dynamics, but for lower end mobile it would still be better to bake this sort of stuff on export. I could show a way to create a dynamic cape in maya which can be baked on export to joint animations for mobile or lower end PCs.
Actually, perhaps baking dynamics for the environment could be another. I just made a character come crashing through a wall in my game which was done with Bullet physics, but baked down to a joint animation for mobile.
