Free Rigs and Sets at Anim-Matt

https://anim-matt.gumroad.com/.

We're loving this new source of Free Rigs and Sets for Maya Animators at Animation-Matt https://anim-matt.gumroad.com/. It's a great resource, packed with free (and low priced) rigs for character animation. Anim-matt also has plenty of sets for animators to work in, including interior and exterior shots such as streets, bars and living rooms for characters to perform in.

Lipsync Tutorial with Marc Stevenson

Lipsync with Twigs the Cowboy rig

Undergraduate Programme Leader Marc Stevenson has created a series of Lipsync Tutorials for our students working on character animation. 

The tutorial uses the free "Twigs the Cowboy" rig which you can download here.  You can also find a copy of Twigs in UG Shares.  This tutorial is aimed at our animation students learning the art of dialogue and lipsync. 

Animate a Basic Walk with "Heavy"

Animate a Basic Walk with the "Heavy" Rig

Every animator needs to know how to animate a character walk. 

In this short tutorial, we show how to animate a simple walk cycle using the "Heavy" rig. (free for download at Creative Crash).  The video tutorial is recorded in Autodesk Maya, and is aimed at animation beginners. 

The tutorial uses simple thumbnails that show all the main poses in the walk.

Bouncing Ball Rig from Escapee Dave Mattock

Free bouncing ball rig from David Mattock

We're liking this new free bouncing ball rig from Escapee David Mattock, founder of the independent animation studio Full Rotation Ltd, whose clients include Netflix.

David has recently launched a new YouTube channel teaching animation, 3d modelling, and motion design; the channel also serves as a growing online community for animation artists and freelancers. 

Escape Studios Rigging Reel

Welcome to the latest Escape Studios rigging demo reel - a new edit dedicated to the art and craft of rigging characters and creatures for animation.  The relationship between rigging and animation is an important one, with animators constantly testing the rigs in the process known as "Rig Wrecking". Congratulations to all our students on their excellent work, and thanks to Escapee Miguel Teixeira for cutting the reel. 

Free Rigs, Sets & Props at Escape in UG Shares

Character in a Cartoony Landscape by Jamie Floodgate

Escape Studios' students can now access a very wide variety of production assets, including many production rigs from our students' short films, all now available at UG/Shares on the main drive. 

UG Shares is where we keep most of our production assets, including rigs, sets and props for student use.  Looking for a cartoony landscape, a friendly cartoon cat, a robot or a prison cell?  We've got an asset for you.

Meet Mr Buttons - the Cartoon Cat

Mr Buttons

Meet Mr Buttons, the cartoon cat created by veteran animator and rigger Keith Osborn, who has made his cute orange cat available for free download.

Mr Buttons is a fun, quirky rig, suitable for broad cartoony character animation.  Mr Buttons is the star of Osborn's book "Cartoony Character Animation with Maya", which we recommend for all our students.

We also have a series of tutorials with Mr Buttons (see below) on how to plan cartoony animation.

"Knight Spider" Competition from The Rookies

Knight Spider rig from The Rookies

"The Rookies" have a launched a new free character rig for Maya - the "Knight Spider", which you can download from their official site. 

It's a free Maya Rig and, while we haven't yet road-tested it, it looks suitable for some nice character animation.

You can download the rig here.

The Rookies has also organised a special character animation contest for the Knight Spider rig, which you can find here.  The contest is open to students and recent graduates; entries opened on 24 September and the contest closes on 14 January 2022. 

Why You Should Test Your Rig in Close Up

Low poly spider "Raa" animated by Alex Southcombe

There are many many free rigs and sets now available to students on an educational or freeware license for use in short films, creating a wide variety of creative choices for student film-makers.  

But not all rigs are created equal, and many problems only become evident when the film calls for a close-up, such as this image of the spider "Raa" shown on the left. 

"Flour Sack Suicide" Tutorial at Vimeo

We've uploaded a new tutorial series to our growing Vimeo Tutorial Channel, showing how to animate a leaping flour sack.

The purpose of the exercise is to learn how to simulate weight, and create an entertaining performance with a simple, basic Maya rig. You can find the flour sack video tutorial here.

Character Walks Tutorial with Monty

Character Walk with Monty

We've added to our growing series of animation tutorials, hosted at Vimeo, with a tutorial/webinar on character walks.

The tutorial uses the free Monty rig, one of the rigs that we recommend for student use in the early stages of learning animation is the Monty Rig.

Monty was created back in 2007 by Raveen Rajadorai, and is free for download at Highend3D.com.

Download Unreal Engine Paragon Assets Free

Paragon from Epic Games

Epic Games and Unreal Engine have released their "Paragon" online assets - free. Any student at Escape Studios who wants to use these photo-real characters in their projects can use "$12 million worth of assets" for no charge.

The online game Paragon was cancelled on March 19th 2018. Developer Epic Games (owners of Unreal Engine) announced that they would release all $12,000,000 worth of game assets for free use by anyone working with the Unreal Engine 4, via the Unreal Engine Marketplace.

The first wave of released content included 20 characters, with their respective skins, animations, VFX and dialogue, along with over 1,500 environment components.  To find the Paragon assets online, follow this link.

Introducing The Eleven Rig

Meet the Eleven Rig, available for free download at the Resources page of the Eleven Second Club.  Eleven is one of the most popular rigs used by our students, and can be used to create some great character animation.

Eleven is also very good for lipsync, body poses, and facial expressions, and is also relatively easy to learn.

Eleven does, however, have a few quirks. So, what are they and how can we navigate around them?

Free Horse Rig by Mothman TD

horse rig by Motorman TD

We're liking this horse rig available for free download from the Mothman TD website.

It's an excellent choice for animating quadruped locomotion, a useful alternative to the (also very good) Rhett the Clydesdale rig.

So, how can our students (who have spent the last 4 weeks working on animal and creature locomotion and behaviour) get the most out of this rig?

Wolfdog Rig

Wolfdog

We're liking this Wolfdog rig, available for free download from highend3d.com. Wolfdog is loosely based on the character Balto from the movie, and has a good range of controls and even facial expressions.

The rig does have some limitations, especially in the way the wrists and feet have been rigged, but you can get some really nice character work out of Wolf dog.

Leopard Rig by Truong

We're liking this Leopard Rig by Truong, available for free download at Gumroad. It is an attractive, well-structured rig with simple controls, and it's pretty easy to figure out how to use it.

In order to get real-time playback in your viewport in Maya, you need to go into your Animation Preferences (bottom right hand corner of the screen) and then Under Settings/Animation/Evaluation change Evaluation Mode to Parallel.

So, how do students get the most out of this rig?

New Dragon Rig from Josh Sobel

Josh Sobel is an excellent rigger and animator who has brought animation students a number of excellent rigs, including the excellent Kayla rig, and also the very useful (and free) Bonnie rig.

He has now released a completely new rig - "Arc the Dragon", which isn't free, but is priced at a very reasonable $18.

Arc is described as "a full quadruped with expressive facial control, intuitive body setup, full picker, pose library and limitless customization."

Meet Rhett!

Rhett The Clydesdale. Free at StockCG.com

Rhett The Clydesdale is one of a handful of excellent free rigs we recommend for learning quadruped locomotion.

Created by Noxlabs and available for free download at StockCG.com, Rhett is perfect for equine animation.

One of Rhett's great features is what he doesn't have - a tail. Not having to deal with overlapping action frees you to concentrate on the main event - quadruped locomotion. However, like most rigs, he does have some odd quirks.  So how can our students get the most out of Rhett?

Meet Animus!

Animus rig by Nick Miller and Lin Xiong

Meet Animus! This excellent creature rig, created by the very talented Nick Miller and Lin Xiong, is available as freeware for Maya animators.

Animus is a great rig, with a wide range of facial controls, which makes it perfect for sophisticated creature dialogue and lipsync. So, how does Animus work?

Scorpion! by Kiel Figgins

Scorpion by Kiel Figgins

We're recommending this excellent scorpion rig by the very talented Kiel Figgins, free for download at his official site.

It's a great little animation rig, not necessarily for realistic scorpion animation (it's a mechanical scorpion - made of shiny metal) but perhaps more like a giant monster scorpion, suitable for roaming city streets and destroying worlds.

So, where can animators find Kiel Figgins' scorpion and how does it work?