Original subtitles

- Let me present to you the new character

we will be using called Tridents.

You will find in the chapter five file folder,

the file called Trident rig final.

It's a new character rig that is quite more complex

that one we add before.

Fortunately, the UI has been properly organized

by my friend, Fin.

If you don't get this specific UI,

just open the text editor,

open the TRIDENT_riggy.py

search for the file in the library

and press the play button.

The register option under text should be enabled.

You will find a UI that is very close to what we add from

the squirrel character and the Mac,

allowing us to show our ID,

the different controllers of the character.

Starting with the root bone as usual.

But before, let's have a look at the outliner.

We have a master collection called Trident character,

including two secondary collection.

One including the rig and the other

including the different parts of the character.

The character himself,

but also the weapons he has.

By default, the character is shaded in solid mode,

showing its diffuse texture.

You can switch to previous mode

to see the full rendered character.

If at some point you see a bright pink color,

it means that one of the texture is lost.

All the character's textures can be find

in the textures folder of chapter five folder.

The texture path is set to relative,

so if you keep your blend file close to the texture folder,

you will never lose them.

Let's have a look to the rig.

For this rig, I've created two different roots.

One master and a secondary root.

It can be useful in certain cases.

Let's have a look to the torso.

We have a master controller as for our squirrel character

and then the controller for the hips

and a controller for the chest.

You will also find a controller for the neck

and the head.

All those controllers can be freely rotated,

scaled, or translated.

When activating the torso tweak layer,

you will be able to access those yellow round controllers.

These are tweaker bone that will allow you to modify

the shape of each joint of the character.

It's perfect to fix some poses

or create squash and stretch effects.

All the yellow controllers on the character

are tweaker bones.

This torso tweak layer also give you access

to secondary controller of the torso

that uses a forward kinematic for each joint.

Splitting the hips controller into two parts,

the chest controller into three parts,

the neck and head in one part each.

The face layer will give you access

to the main face controllers, including the jaw,

the nose, the mouth, the cheek

that can be moved individually

to shape the face of the character at will.

The eyes and eyebrow of the character

have automated shapes.

They can be moved up and down or on the local y-axis

to get to different shape, like a happy face

a frown, a surprise,

following you to rapidly create different stereotyped

expressions for your character.

The face secondary, will give you access

to all the face tweaker bone.

Allowing you to shape the eyes at will,

rework the brow shape to draw whatever you want.

By default, the legs of the character

use inverse kinematic mechanism,

meaning that if you move the foot,

the knee will automatically bend.

It's the same behavior we had

with the squirrel character controllers.

The poles controller will allow you

to orientate the knee at will.

There is also a forward kinematic layer

and we will see or we can switch from inverse

to forward kinematic a little later on.

You will also find our yellow tweaker bones.

The biggest one on the main joint, like the ankles,

knee and hips will allow you to reshape the whole leg

based on its natural joint.

While the secondary controllers will allow you to completely

modify the shape of the leg to create rubber limbs.

Very nice for cartoony animations.

There are also a couple of controllers

to reshape the butt of the character.

And we will find the same kind of arrow key

on the arm of the character.

We will find the shoulder bones

as being the root of the arms

and then forward kinematic controllers,

tweaker bones, etc.

It's also possible there to switch

between the forward kinematic and inverse kinematic.

We will check that in a few second

when looking at the rig properties.

The finger controller are pretty straightforward.

Near the pinkie, you will find this master pan bone

that will allow you

to curve the whole palm of each hands.

the same root will allow you to orientate

the thumb and each finger as its own master bone.

On each finger, rotating the second joint bone

will allow you to bend both the second and third joint.

Finally, each joint can be rotated, scaled,

and moved at will.

The different weapons, are all both the same way.

You will find a master bone that more or less

have the shape of the current weapon.

Allowing you to orientate Eaton's space and move it.

Then, you will find a forward kinematic chain

that is ideal to curve the weapons and give them nice shape

whenever you are doing stylized animation.

And as usual, the yellow bones will be our tweaker bones.

Moving them with allow you to modify the shape of each joint

of the different weapons.

You can hide or unhide all the tweaker controllers

and layers using the eye icon on the top right corner.

Let's have a look to the rig property.

The head follow and neck follow sliders

allows you to enable or disable the fact

that the neck is following the orientation

of the chest or not.

It's the same principle regarding the head and the neck.

If I disable the head follow and I rotate the neck,

the head stay in the same orientation.

This is super useful for dance animations

or run cycles, for example.

And then we will find the same option

for the arm and the legs.

When enabling arm follow, we can see that now

the arms are following the rotation of the shoulders.

While when disabled, they will keep their own orientation,

making it easier to stabilize their orientation.

By default, the legs are set to inverse kinematic.

This is perfect for any contacting controller.

In this case, the legs contacting with the ground.

But we can switch to forward kinematic

by switching this value to zero.

We can see the leg snapping into another position

following the orientation

of the forward kinematic controller,

so it can be enabled in the layer system.

This can be useful to draw nice arcs

whenever your character is making big jumps

or kicking something for example.

We will find exactly the same mechanism for the other leg,

but also for the arms.

Setting the values to zero,

will switch to forward kinematic.

To one, will switch to inverse kinematic.

By default the arm are using forward kinematic mechanism,

but you can switch to inverse kinematic.

Again, this is super useful whenever your character

is contacting with something.

When doing push ups, for example,

or interacting with another character.

You will find the parent option for the legs and the arms.

By default the leg inverse kinematic controller

are parented to the root, so they don't move

whenever the torso is moved.

And the pose target is independent.

When switching the parenting value to one,

the pole will be parented to the foot controller.

Meaning that rotating the foot will also rotate the knee.

This is the method I generally use.

Switching the value to two will also parent the foot

to the torso controller, but not to the hips.

That can be useful whenever

you make your character jump for example.

You will find the same option regarding

the inverse kinematic arms controller,

but only when one value that allow you to parent

the inverse kinematic controllers to the torso root.

Again, they won't follow the chest,

but they will follow the torso root.

I've heard the same kind of mechanism for the weapons.

Allowing you to whether snap them to the left hand,

right hand or not snap them at all

so that they can move freely in space.

This can be useful

whenever you want to throw the weapon for example.

The weapon emit option will allow you to play

with the strength of the emission shader on the weapons.

If you press play, you can see

that the shader is currently animated.

Bringing a magical touch to those weapons.

On top of this, you will find a weapon spawn option

that will allow you to make the weapons

progressively disappear or appear

with a nice dissolve effect.

As for the squirrel character,

you will find visibility properties

that allows you do hide different part of the character,

making its silhouette easier to read

or allowing you to focus on specific part when animating.

Last but not least you will find a snap utilities.

This will allow you to change

from inverse kinematic to forward kinematic

and also align the controllers together.

Allowing a seamless switch between the two mechanisms.

A disclaimer here. Due to the complexity

of the rig mechanism and the rubber limbs system,

it can be sometimes not 100% accurate

but the pose can be fixed in one second.

And this is way faster than trying to align

the controller by hand.

I'm not used to have this in production

so this is really a bonus.