Project - Rigging the Character

This is how the final full body rig looks like for the main character, including the different elements that I will need to animate during the next stage and with everything named accordingly. This self-made rig took some time to complete, but I ended up with all the tools I needed to then animate the character and to rig him up to move how I wanted him to move. I added some rigging curves that I might not have needed for the animation of the character, but with these additional movements, I can alter some of the positions that the character will be in.

I did the face rig after the main body was functioning correctly and I started with the eyes first. This included the control for where the eyes where going to be looking and then the controls for the left/ right eye lids. I then did the eyebrows, which had 3 main controls for each brow. This worked out pretty well for a simple rig for the character's eyes and eyebrows, which do exactly what I needed them to do for the animation.

This is the controls for the teeth, which is as simple as it looks and I can separate the teeth and move them to the left or right too. This allows me to move the teeth to be open or closed when I use the mouth controls simultaneously and this just adds to the realism of the character instead of having the lips moving.

These are the controls of the lips and mouth area; one for the jaw opening/ closing; one for the top/ bottom lips moving around and another for the lips making a smile/ frown. I made them separately in case I wanted to make the character have an open or closed smile/ frown and for the corners of the lips to be open more on one side. This allows me to have a variation of expressions to animate when the character reacts to something during the animation.

Although I have many controls that are slightly squished around the area of the face, I feel like this will help me to animate the different expressions I want without the use of blend shapes. I won't know if the face rig will really work properly until I rig the character and so I might have to change it if my plans don't work out.

Overall, the way I rigged the face was pretty simple and effective to the way I want the character's face to move according to my storyboard/ research. The only part that I might have to alter in the skinning stage is the lip joints and the rest of the face is separated from the body mesh. Otherwise, that would help me to then save time on the skinning stage and to move on to setting up the stage and animating the character.