Milestone 3: Rigging and Set Dressing

Discussion date: April 26. Please note that all submission material is due the morning before at 8am.

General Description

In this milestone, you will rig all characters (for body movement and facial expressions), and define environmental animations (e.g. squishing box, wiggly tower, feet on the ground) if needed. Doing so will require you to define deformations and add animation controls where needed. To test your rigs, you'll produce short animated clips to show how deformations change over time.

From a technical point of view, you are free to rig objects any way you'd like. At grading time, you will be judged on the quality of your deformed mesh.

Make sure all your objects deformed consistently with the actions you are planning to use for your story.

Submission Material

Place the following content under your group UNIX account in /net/da/cs42/[groupName]/milestones/03-rigging.

• [required] one Maya file contaning all the rigged objects; name this file "submission.mb".
• [required] one clip per character/object contaning a test animation for the body or animated environment; name this file "testRig#.mov". Please compress using H.264 in Quicktime. Playblast is ok if it shows the test well.
• [required] one clip per character contaning a test animation for facial expressions; name this file "testExpression#.mov". Please compress using H.264 in Quicktime. Playblast is ok if it shows the test well.
• [optional] other Maya files containing objects, to be used during the presentation.
• [optional] other clips, sketches, drawing, etc. in your presentation.

You might also have to open the Maya files during the presentation to help us see deformations better. I will probably open your files and try to break your character's animation controls. You'll thank me later! ;-)

It is the responsibility of the group presenter to have materials turned in on time. Notify the instructor in advance if someone else is running late or taking responsibility.