Rigging Techniques Cartoon to Realistic by Nico Sanghrajka

Building a robust and solid baseRig and learn tips and techniques as well as production proven workflows along the way.
You will see me work and learn how I approach rigging after having worked as a character TD at companies such

Dreamworks PDI, Framestore, MPC, ILM and Atomic Fiction.

This workshop is intended for riggers that already have some knowledge of rigging and is not meant as an Intro course.

The workshop week by week

Week 1: Week01 – Basics: Starting out with a solid base Part 1
Introduction
What makes an advanced rig? | Analyzing some existing rigs | Model pose and topology considerations for rigging | Naming convention | Joint placement | Joint orientation (rotation axis) | Modular rigging (break it down) | Creating the FK spine | Custom attributes | Color coding | Locking and hiding attributes

Week 2: Week02 – Basics: Continuing to build the base rig.
Arms and legs | IK­FK­blend | Blend­color nodes vs orient constraints | Creating hands and fingers | Foot setup with multiple pivot points | Utility/math nodes | Macro finger attributes and secondary micro controls

Week 3: Week03 – Basics: Connecting everything together and rigging the rest of the base rig.
Connecting everything together | Point constraints and orient constraints | Creating shoulder, head, jaw, and eye controls | Rough skinning | Managing the visibility of controls

Week 4: Week04 – Getting more advanced: The Spine
Building a more advanced spine | How many joints do I need? | IK ribbon spine | Squash and stretch spine | Volume preservation and color­-feedback | FK spine with variable controls | Reverse FK spine

Week 5: Week05 – Getting more advanced: Arms, Shoulders and simple PoseReader
Advancing the legs and arms | Squash and stretch limbs | Condition node | Split knee and split elbow | Shoulder blade setup | Building a native Maya pose reader | Auto clavicle | Optional: bendy limbs

Week 6: Week06 – Deformations
Deformations | Looking at edgeflow and topology | Weights painting | Additive vs subtracting | Smoothing | Weighthammer | Influence objects | Optional: building a low-res cage | Corrective shapes | Pose­based deformation

Week 7: Week07 – Faking Muscles and adding Dynamics
Anatomy and muscles | Faking muscles and skin sliding | Dynamics in rigging | Soft bodies and dynamic curves | Delayed animation ctrls

Week 8: Week08 – Tying up some loose ends
Testing the rig | Picking three (extreme) poses | Make sure all is working and ready for anim | Creating a script to reset all the control back to default