Optimise Truong Maya Rigs for Unreal Engine

Truong CG, who creates many of the best free (and nearly free) rigs for student use, has released the video above to optimise his rigs for Unreal Engine.  All of Truong's latest rigs are fully compatible with Unreal Engine since they are all joints-based for both body and face. However, for Truong's older rigs, this video will help optimise the rigs for use in Unreal Engine, giving all the advantages of real-time rendering. 

Meet Sam and Amy - Two New Maya Rigs

Amy and Sam

We\re liking two new Maya rigs - Amy and Sam, made by Freelance 3D Generalist Gabriel Salas, and released to the animation community. The rigs are not free but are priced competitively for student use at $15.

Sam and Amy are Asian-American characters through which Gabriel hopes to "balance the limited choice in terms of race that animators have when picking a character rig, so that they have the tools to generate more racially diverse content in their animation exercises".

The rigs include diffuse textures for the body and shoes, and you can find them on Gumroad.  Sam is available here and Amy can be purchased here. Both rigs are priced at $15, and are for educational use only. 

So, how do our students get the most out of Amy and Sam?

Best Horse Rigs for Maya Animators

Right now we're encouraging all our animation students at Bucks to make sure they have plenty of horse animation on their demo reels, as one of our favourite London studios crews up for a big horse-related project.

The Animation Apprentice official site (to which all our students have access) has a series of horse video tutorials, teaching students how to animate a walk, a trot and a run.

Meet Thep! Free Mummy Rig from Squiggly Rigs

We're liking this cartoon mummy rig named Thep; he's fun and cartoony and you can get a great performance out of him. You can find him here for free download at the Squiggly Rigs official site.

Thep is the first character made with the Squiggly rig system.  Built to allow plenty of flexibility and exaggeration, Thep comes "equipped with some cool features to allow him to act as cartoony as possible without losing appeal".

Thep is a good choice for students starting on acting and lipsync; he works well with a cartoony voice, such as one from the Sesame Street wav archive.

Consider Thep for acting and pantomime shots, or for short dialogue scenes; he has good facial expressions and a wide variety of mouth shapes.

What is The Animator's Resource Kit?

We're recommending this very useful animation blog - The Animator's Resource Kit, a useful one-stop-shop for lots of animation materials, including reviews of some of the best and most useful animation rigs.

It has plenty of information on subjects like links to animation forums, communities, animation competitions, Maya rigs, tools - and places to submit work.

How to Use The Morpheus Rig

This month our MA students are working on a piece of 11 second character animation, suitable for entering in the monthly 11 Second Club.

The 11 Second Club has a useful Resources page, directing students to a variety of character rigs which are reliable and well-supported.

One of these is the Morpheus rig, created by Josh Burton.  Some of our animators are using Morpheus for this month's competition, so we've created a useful guide to some of the main problems with the Morpheus rig, and how to fix them.

Foxy Tail Rig - Great for Learning Animation

"Ultimate" Tail

Here at Bucks we're recommending this free "Ultimate Tail" Rig for all our students, available for download from CGMeetUp.

The "Ultimate" series are all well-tested rigs, which are specifically designed for learning animation.

We especially like the foxy "ultimate tail" rig, great for learning overlapping action. The rig has relatively few controls, and it's an excellent platform on which to learn the basics of animation locomotion.

This Rig Goes to Eleven

Here at Bucks New Uni we are recommending the Eleven Rig to all our student animators. "Eleven" is available for free download at the Resources page of the Eleven Second Club (the clue is in the name).
 
Eleven is one of the most popular rigs used by our students, and can be used for some great character animation. It's also a very good rig for lipsync, body poses, and facial expressions, and is dependable and easy to learn.

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

Thinking Animation - Free Rigs

We're liking the animation resources website "Thinking Animation". Among other things, the site is a great source of free animation rigs, including some cool stuff you can't easily find elsewhere.

Fancy working on Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy or even Elsa from Frozen? You can download the fan-made rigs, and test them out, perhaps even animating a line of dialogue from the film.

Wolfdog Rig - Free Animation 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.

Free Horse Rig for Maya Animators

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 get the most out of this rig?

"Arc the Dragon", from Josh Sobel Rigs

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."

Great Free Animation Rigs at Mothman TD

Here at Bucks we're pleased to recommend the superb Mothman TD website, packed with excellent free rigs for use by Maya animators.

Probably the single most useful rig for our students at Animation Apprentice is the horse, excellent for studying quadruped locomotion, but there are many other free rigs which are very useful for learning different aspects of character and creature animation.

Meet Willy!

Our online MA animators are digging into dialogue and lipsync this week, and one of the rigs they are using is Willy - an excellent free rig, created by Matthew Moore, and free to download for use by Maya animators.

Willy is a broad, flexible and cartoony rig, very simple to use and great for the early stages of learning animation - especially dialogue and lipsync.

However, like all animation rigs, Willy has his quirks. So, how can our animation students get the most out of Willy?

Meet Bonnie!

Bonnie

Bonnie is a free character rig from Josh Sobel, creator of the excellent Kayla rig which can be downloaded for just $12.  Bonnie by contrast is absolutely free, and is an excellent rig for learning character performance and dialogue.

Josh Sobel describes Bonnie as "a free legacy rig. Bonnie has been downloaded and animated over 20,000 times, and though she's a bit dated, you can still pull a decent performance out of her for the low, low price of free".

Bonnie can be downloaded for free from Josh Sobel's website. We're recommending her to all our students for character performance and dialogue animation.

Meet Norman! A Versatile and Free Animation Rig

There are many free rigs available to Maya animators hoping to practice and learn their craft. Norman, Max, Morpheus - these are all excellent rigs, easy to download, all free for non-commercial use.

But beware - all rigs are different and each one has its own quirks. All take time to get used to, and each one has its frustrations.  Norman was one of the first character rigs made available for student use, free on a non-commercial license. Norman is reliable, relatively simple to use, and highly customisable.

Charlotte - a New Free Maya Rig!

Digital artist Ahmed Elmatarawi has just released his newest baby - Charlotte - a free Maya rig available for student and non-commercial use around the world. We haven't tested it yet, but the video below takes you through the rig in detail, and we look forward to seeing what our students can do with her. One of the great benefits of working in Maya is its growing user base, bringing us new and better animation rigs for student use all the time. So who and what is Charlotte?

Introducing The Shaththan Rig

Shaththan Rig

Here at Bucks we're always on the lookout for great creature rigs that are capable of producing a full range of facial expressions so that our students can study creature animation and get an excellent performance. One rig that has been giving us good results is the free Shaththan Rig, created by the very talented Revanth Ravi, and now available - free for student use - at Creative Crash.

Introducing the Animus Rig!

Animus rig by Nick Miller and Lin Xiong

Finding great rigs to study creature performance isn't easy. Here at Bucks we've just started to use the Animus Rig, created by the very talented Nick Miller and Lin Xiong, and released as freeware into the Maya community. It's a great rig for a number of reasons, one of the most important being the wide range of facial controls, which makes it perfect for sophisticated creature dialogue and lipsync. So, how does it all work?

CGMeetUp post Free Maya Rigs

CG MeetUp - full of great resources for animators

CGMeetup have posted a list of free rigs for animators to download and start using themselves. Here at Bucks we encourage all our students to try out new rigs and see where inspiration leads you. There are more and more excellent free rigs being released into the Maya community and this only helps our students to produce more and better work. To find the list of free rigs, follow this link.