Rigging the Head & Feet

For the past two days, I spent time learning how to rig the head and the feet. I combined this blog post to make it worth two classes, as rigging the foot was much more complicated than I thought.

I followed Academy Phoenix's tutorial series for this lesson as well.

I am breaking down this lesson into three parts- one for rigging the head, and two for rigging the foot.

1. Rigging the head

2. Rigging the foot(with FK, IK, set driven keys)

3. Creating foot controls

1. Rigging the head

- Place three joints while selecting the top spine joint- one on the center of the neck, one by the jaw(or next to the ear), and one on the top of the head.

- Click the joint by the jaw. While selected, place one more joint at the end of the jaw.

- After making sure every joint is in place, grab a NURBS circle to create a controller. Put the pivot center on where the head joint(one next to the joint) is. Shape accordingly.

- Create another NURBS circle to create a controller for the neck. Follow the same process with the other controllers.

- Constrain the controllers to each joint, then parent the controllers to each other- head to neck, and neck to shoulder.

2. Rigging the foot(with FK, IK, set driven keys)

- Delete the constraint on the foot control. This is to be attached later again after the foot rig is done.

- Place two joints while selecting the ankle joint- one on the center of the foot, and one on the end of the toes.

*My feet rig placements seem to be altered during the progress somewhere, and I could not figure out how to correct it with a working IK rig. I plan to go through a troubleshooting practice to avoid my mistake before I rig other models. You should not do this!

- Go to the IK Handle tool settings, then change the solver to 'Single-Chain Solver'. Create two IK joints- one from the ankle to the center, then one from the center to the toe.

- Create groups for the ankle IK handle and the toe IK handle, including only the IK handle. Name each ankle group(the foot handle) and the group(center-toe). This enables the rotation control of each ik handle.

- Center the pivot of each group to the center of the center joint.

- Group the two groups previously created with the ankle-center IK handle, then name it 'heel'. Move the pivot to the rear end of the foot.

- Group the previous group again, then name it 'toe tip'. This will enable control from the end of the toe, enabling any kind of 'tip-toe' motions. Move the pivot to the end of the toe.

- Group the toe tip group again, and name it 'foot'. This will enable control of the entire foot.

- Constrain the foot control with the foot group.

- Repeat this for the other foot.

3. Creating foot controls

- Go to Channel Box while selecting the foot controller, then press 'Add Attribute' under 'Edit'. Add a divider by selecting the 'Enum' datatype, and changing one enum name into any shape you desire.

- At the same window, add two attributes- foot roll, and toe roll. Make sure the data type is set to 'float'. The minimum and maximum values can be set to any value. I set it from -10 to 10, as per following the tutorial.

- Go to the 'Set Driven Key' -> 'Set' to open the set driven key setting window. While clicking on the foot control, press 'Load Driver' to show the attributes of the driver.

- Select the toe tip group, ankle group, and the toe group, and press 'Load Driven' to show the attributes of the groups.

- Select 'foot roll' to key the movement, while making sure the attribute value is set to 0. Key in while selecting 'Rotate X(or any value that makes the foot move in a rolling motion)'.

- Adjust the foot roll value to 10 (the maximum value). Tilt the foot forward rotating the toe tip group pivot. While selecting all the driven factors, key in the movement by pressing 'Key'.

* Keying in an additional movement of the feet being squished on the ground at attribute value 5 makes the cycle more realistic.

* Remember the values so you can set the same with the other foot!

- Adjust the foot roll value to -10 (the minimum value). Tilt the foot backward by rotating the heel group pivot. While selecting all the driven factors, key in the movement by pressing 'Key'.

- We're continuing onto the toe roll. Select the toe group and press 'Load Driven' to show the attributes of the groups.

- Select 'toe roll' to key the movement, while making sure the attribute value is set to 0. Key in while selecting 'Rotate X(or any value that makes the foot move in a rolling motion)'.

- Adjust the toe roll value to 10 (the maximum value). Tilt the toes up by rotating the toe group pivot. While selecting all the driven factors, key in the movement by pressing 'Key'. Do the opposite after adjusting the toe roll value to -10(the minimum value).

- Repeat this for the other foot.