Rigging with Michael Davies - Course Outline

Learn rigging from the man who rigged Smaug

We're getting ready for our newest evening class, starting on 14 May and running for 8 weeks until 9 July, all about the dark art of character rigging, and taught by the very talented industry veteran Mike Davies.

Mike's rigging credits include the Minions (for Illumination) and even Smaug (for The Hobbit), so we can't think of anyone better qualified to teach this class.

We've been working on a rough outline of this 8 week class, so that our students will have a better idea of what to expect on the course.

Rigging at Escape Studios (8 week course)

Week 1

·       Introduction and Course Overview

·       What is Rigging?

·       The Joint Tool

·       Creating a Skeleton

·       The Quick Rig Tool

Week 2

·       Skinning (Binding Methods)

·       Painting Skin Weights

·       Working with Low and High-Poly Models

·       Using Mixamo

Week 3

·       What are Forward and Inverse Kinematics?

·       IK Handles

·       IK/FK Switch

Week 4

·       Constraints

·       Control Theory

·       Creating Controls for Arms and Legs

·       Creating complex Controls with Set Driven Key

Week 5

·       Creating Torso Controls

·       Connecting IK/FK to other Controls

·       Customising Controls for an Animator

Week 6

·       Rigging Eyes

·       Using Deformers and Deformation Order

·       Creating Blendshapes with Maya or ZBrush

·       Facial Rigging with Blendshapes

Week 7

·       Creating User Interface for Controls

·       Creating a Global Move Control

·       Cleaning up the Rig

·       How can scripting make Rigging quicker?

Week 8

·       Putting knowledge into Practice with a New Character

·       Course Recap

·       What to do next to progress with learning?

To see more about the rigging class, follow this link. And to read an interview with Mike Davies, where he talks about his production experience, read this post here.  Finally, to see the official page and sign up, click here.