Controls 1

[00:00:01]So, in this video, we're going to get into controllers. Okay, we're going to cover a couple of topics. We're going to cover um nerves, curves, and we are going to cover um constraints.

[00:00:18]Um and then we're also going to cover um IK handles. We're going to put an IK handle on the foot. IK stands for inverse kinematics. It's going to allow us to move the foot.

[00:00:33]Um, and I'll show you that.

[00:00:37]Um, so let's start with making nerves controls.

[00:00:43]So, we're going to create a nerbs primitive circle.

[00:00:53]And I'll do that quite a bit for this character. So, I just added that to the shelf.

[00:00:59]There's a circle. Um, I'm going to have the normal axis on Y.

[00:01:05]Great. So, there's my circle. Now, I'm going to scale it.

[00:01:11]And now, I'm going to um position it where I want it.

[00:01:17]And where I want it is um right on the hips.

[00:01:27]Okay.

[00:01:29]So um to do that, let's um actually I'll bring it out this way a little bit.

[00:01:47]So um if I put on point snap this will snap to points. Um uh the point points also include joints.

[00:02:01]So now if I turn off or if I go just go to the gecko um and if I turn on T that will template it and so then it won't um select the the the gecko points at all. So we'll just do that.

[00:02:21]Um, so we're just going to snap it um to the hips. And it is snapped.

[00:02:33]All right. Now, um, something very important.

[00:02:39]Um, we want everything zeroed out. So, I'm at frame one, and I've snapped this where I want it.

[00:02:51]So now what I'm going to do is freeze transformations.

[00:02:55]And this is probably so important that I'm going to use my middle mouse button and I'm going to move that over here. So it's the first thing we see and I'm going to freeze the transformations and you'll see what happens over here. So freeze transforms.

[00:03:12]Boom. Everything is now zeroed except for it's got a scale of one.

[00:03:17]every controller we make and every item that we make, um, with a few exceptions, um, we want to make sure they're all zeroed out. If we don't do that, then the rig will be garbage.

[00:03:35]Okay. So, we've got a controller here for um the hips.

[00:03:49]And um I like that. So, I'm just going to leave it.

[00:03:56]And um now for the legs, we're going to do a different kind of control.

[00:04:04]We're going to make an like a handle.

[00:04:08]So, I'm going to make another circle.

[00:04:10]Oh, and there's something else I should do. Uh, let's go back to the joints.

[00:04:17]And I want to make sure this animation is off now. So, make sure we're at one.

[00:04:26]And so what I can do here is click and drag, right click, break connections, and that'll get rid of the key frames.

[00:04:39]So we don't want any we're going to want we're going to want to be done with the key frames at this point now that we're making the rig pieces.

[00:04:49]In order to select the curves, you need to have this selected. So we can select the curves.

[00:04:56]Um, okay. So that's good. Um, this being the hips, you know, I might want to make some modifications to it. So I can rightclick and go to CV or control vertices.

[00:05:13]And because these are hips, let's maybe just kind of make a shape.

[00:05:19]Shift.

[00:05:22]So like the hip hip bone or the pelvis bone kind of like that.

[00:05:30]And so that just give us a gives us a um just a shape we can we can use make it stand out from some of the other shapes.

[00:05:46]Okay.

[00:05:49]We're going to build one of these uh for each one of these objects, including the jaw.

[00:05:55]We're not going to put one on the hand end or the Yeah, the hand end or the head end.

[00:06:02]We're just going to put one on each joint.

[00:06:08]So, let me show you that here. So, let's make another circle.

[00:06:15]Great.

[00:06:22]And let's move this up.

[00:06:27]And so, for instance, we're also going to want one on the uh this first joint right here.

[00:06:40]Um so, uh let's We still have snap on, so we can snap it to the first spine joint.

[00:06:50]And then now that the origin is snapped, we can then maybe scale this up and and we want to differentiate it from here. So we could rightclick and go to the control vertex or we could right click and go to the hole.

[00:07:12]I could select the hole and then just move this up a little bit.

[00:07:18]Whoops. Okay. So, here I want to take snap off. So, I'm only move moving the control vertices.

[00:07:26]And so, that's the controller for uh the first spine joint. And you know, maybe I want to come in and oops, let's select this again. The whole And you know, maybe I want to maybe I could rotate them back to object mode. But the important thing if we click on W um is that the uh the pivot point is on the first spine.

[00:08:08]Um, now we do the same thing and come up the chain.

[00:08:13]Um, let's do the arm.

[00:08:19]So, before we do that, uh, let's freeze the transformations. So, make sure all of our controls are zeroed out.

[00:08:31]And if we want to alter the shape of it, we can go to CVS and, you know, click these and move them around.

[00:08:40]Okay. Uh let's make another one. In fact, we could uh just duplicate this.

[00:08:44]Control D.

[00:08:46]And let's move it.

[00:08:49]And let's move it up here. Uh in fact let's um if we hold down V as in verticy I don't have my geometry selected and it's templated. We could snap this V. Whoops. Space bar V and snap to vertices and doesn't appear to be snapping to the joint.

[00:09:37]Okay. I guess I just need to turn this on.

[00:09:43]Okay. Yeah, it did snap.

[00:09:48]Okay.

[00:09:50]Yeah, the pivot point is snapped there.

[00:09:52]Um, then we could go to the hole again, select it, rotate it, turn it back a little bit, move it down.

[00:10:11]Unfortunately though, I lost the snap.

[00:10:13]So, let's go back and do that again.

[00:10:17]Snap it there. There we go.

[00:10:20]object mode.

[00:10:25]All right. It doesn't matter if these intersect um for the collar bone. Uh I'll let you be creative there. You want to make it um distinct, but we do want to make sure that um we deleted the for frozen the transformations.

[00:10:48]We're going to do this um all the way down the chain.

[00:10:53]We'll do the arm, elbow, and the hand.

[00:10:58]We'll do each one of we'll do one for this, one for that.

[00:11:05]Each one of these joints, one for the neck, one for the head. Um we're not going to worry about doing that on the tail just yet.

[00:11:17]Okay. Now for the so that is making um controllers and uh eventually we're going to constrain um the joints to the controllers but uh for now we'll just let those be. Let's make another one crate.

[00:11:43]Let's scale this. And let's move it over here.

[00:11:49]And let's maybe scale it that way. Want it to maybe look kind of like a foot.

[00:11:59]Control vertices. Maybe just grab the inside. Pull it in.

[00:12:06]Pull this out.

[00:12:10]So it looks kind of like a foot.

[00:12:19]And so again, we're going to want to, you know, maybe I should probably scale that, too.

[00:12:29]Using our modeling tools.

[00:12:33]Move it up a little bit. Make sure it's off the floor.

[00:12:39]Okay. Now, I want this to stay here, but I want the um the pivot point to be here.

[00:12:47]So, if I hold down D or if I hit insert and then it'll stay.

[00:12:54]And if I put uh the snap verticy back on, I can snap.

[00:13:03]Oh, come on.

[00:13:07]There you go. That's snapped. I can snap it uh to the joint um right where I want it. So click insert off. So if I select um this controller, it's pivot point is right there. And that's exactly what I want.

[00:13:27]Okay.

[00:13:29]Again, I got to freeze transformations.

[00:13:32]And I need to name these. So, we're going to name this um L foot foot. And I'm going to do another underscore. And I usually do C TL for controllers.

[00:13:53]Okay.

[00:13:57]Now, what we're going to do is we're going to make a um well, first of all, let's do some constraints. So, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to constrain um the orientation of the foot. I'm going to constrain it to the um orientation of the foot control.

[00:14:29]Okay. So, um the way constraints work, go back to rigging and we've got constraints.

[00:14:38]So, we're going to make um one point. I guess we could do a parent um but we're going to do one point constraint for the most part part or well, we're going to do three. Sorry. So, we're going to add that with the option box. And we're going to do a bunch of orient constraints, point constraint, orient constraint.

[00:15:02]So, when you parent something, you select the child first and then the thing you're going to parent it to, and you hit P. With constraints, it's the exact opposite.

[00:15:14]So I'm going to select this joint and I'm going to shift select um the control and then I'm going to go to orient constraint with the options. Now I want to maintain the offset.

[00:15:32]So what that means is um um wherever the orientation is of this now um it's going to be relative to the orientation of that but um it's it is still going to follow it. So the offset just keeps the relative um offset and so we're going to constrain it in orientation. So let's click apply. And then that's going to make uh remember the settings apply and also make the constraint.

[00:16:10]So if we go to this joint um which is the left foot.

[00:16:32]Okay. So, I did that backwards because I need the constraint to be on the foot, not the U controller.

[00:16:42]So, when I've made a constraint, it appears like this as a child. And so, I'm going to delete that. Let's try this again. Um, you know, I've done this thousands of times, but I still run into uh the order of things. And I think I just did it in the wrong order. Let's do this one first and then that one.

[00:17:13]If I replay this, I'll laugh at myself.

[00:17:19]Okay. Orient add. Okay. Yeah. So, it's this one first and then that one. Um Yeah. Because with constraints you can select one and then you can select multiple things to be constrained to a single object.

[00:17:35]Okay. So the foot and you can see in the hierarchy here the foot is constrained um here's a ramp constraint and it's constrained to the left foot control.

[00:17:51]So if I go to the left foot control if I move it um nothing's going to happen. Now again, when you're testing stuff, hit Z right away.

[00:18:04]But if I rotate it, that joint's going to follow along with it.

[00:18:12]And so that's our first working control right there.

[00:18:18]After you test it, hit Z. Make sure it's right back so that you don't have any rotations.

[00:18:25]Okay. So this now controls the orient uh the rotation of the foot.

[00:18:30]We need to also have it control the um um well the motion of it position.

[00:18:43]So here um and we're going to do this uh one for the foot and we're going to do a different kind of um constraint for the uh We're going to make an IK handle for the foot and we're going to make um a spline IK handle for the tail.

[00:19:06]So now we're going to go to skeleton and we're going to go to create IK handle.

[00:19:14]Oops, there it is.

[00:19:17]So IK handle, we're going to do a rotate plane solver.

[00:19:23]That's the default.

[00:19:26]So, we're still in the um the uh I handle control. So, I'm going to click the hip and then I'm going to come down to the foot.

[00:19:46]That just made an IK handle.

[00:19:50]This is what an IK handle does.

[00:19:54]Um, I need to turn that on.

[00:19:58]You select an IK handle. And if you go to move, it's going to move the foot up.

[00:20:09]The IK handle is cool because um, it calculates all the rotation here by just moving that. Again, let's hit zero to put it right back where it belongs.

[00:20:23]Now, um we don't want to be grabbing IK handles. We only want to be grabbing curves.

[00:20:33]So, um the foot control is going to handle the whole um kitten kaboodleoodle here. Well, at least most of it. So, um, here I'm going to do a point constraint. And so I'm going to let's select this first.

[00:20:56]Um, oh, okay. I somehow made two of these.

[00:21:03]That wasn't smart.

[00:21:10]Let's get rid of that one. Let's see.

[00:21:16]Okay. So, I'm gonna undo that.

[00:21:23]So, apparently I um must have duplicated this not under not realizing it. Um this is the one that has the constraints on or that has the constraint. So, I'm going to go to this one and delete that. Then come back here and rename this to take a one off.

[00:21:44]Okay. And so now I'm going to grab this and then I'm going to controlclick this um IK handle which I should probably probably rename to L_foot_.

[00:22:05]You can leave it at IK handle or you can just say IK. I usually do, but you've got the icon, so you know it's an IK handle.

[00:22:15]So, let's select this and controlclick on the I handle.

[00:22:21]Now, we're going to do a point constraint. Same as before, we're going to maintain offset.

[00:22:28]Apply.

[00:22:30]Close.

[00:22:32]So, now we grab foot control and we move it up.

[00:22:39]And we can do all this sort of stuff. And we can then rotate it. And then we get that.

[00:22:48]So now we're cooking with gas.

[00:22:51]I undid everything. Make sure everything's zeroed out.

[00:22:55]First major control.

[00:22:59]Okay. Um, let's do a now we're going to constrain some of these here. So, let's grab the control and we need to name it. So, this going to be yips control.

[00:23:27]And then this one is going to be spine_ctl.

[00:23:39]Maybe I could call it spline zero.

[00:23:47]This one is going to be the l_arm CTO.

[00:23:58]Just make sure that the naming is consistent.

[00:24:02]Okay, so here's what we're going to do.

[00:24:07]Um, I am going to Now, this is basic. This is like the most basic rigging we could do. There's other ways we could um to make it work a little bit better, but this is fine for now. So, we're going to grab this and then we'll grab the this joint.

[00:24:34]Come back to orient constraint.

[00:24:38]Add.

[00:24:40]So now when we rotate this, it rotates the joint.

[00:24:48]Let's make another one. So I'm not going to duplicate this. Well, actually I could um control D one time.

[00:24:58]Let's move it.

[00:25:01]And let's I've still got snap mode on.

[00:25:05]So I'm going to turn it off and just use V.

[00:25:10]Snap it. It does sort of snap. It's not It's not snapping the way I There we go. Okay, now it's snapped. You kind of almost feel it. It's like um and it finally snaps. Uh, so I could take this now and maybe scale it a little bit.

[00:25:36]Um, whatever I want to do. Maybe even rotate it a little bit.

[00:25:44]But actually, I think what I'm going to do here is right click the hole and I'm going to rotate just the hole.

[00:25:55]And I'm just going to keep the orientation the way it was.

[00:26:02]Okay. Um, freeze transforms zeroed out. Everything has got to be zeroed out.

[00:26:13]Now, let's do the same thing. Let's grab this. Let's grab this.

[00:26:19]And I should probably name it before.

[00:26:23]So this is elbow control el elbow not elbow joe whatever I named it elbow ctl gra that shift grab that orient constrain add.

[00:26:47]So, if I do this now, this is rotating, but uh what do we have going on here?

[00:26:57]Well, this is doing what it's supposed to. It's retaining the same orientation that that had. So, let's hit zero to get it back. So, um rigging is hierarchies and constraints, um at its basics.

[00:27:17]So if this rotates, well, we want this one to rotate along with it. So what are we going to do? Select this. Gra that P.

[00:27:27]So that's not now a child. So if I rotate this, that's going to go along for the ride and everybody's happy.

[00:27:35]Okay. So I'm not going to finish the whole thing. Um I what I'll have you do is um create one of these for now again the pivot points here for this one. I just moved the geometry up so it wouldn't be overlap this.

[00:27:59]You'll make one of these for this, this, that, and this this. Um, these will all be parented to this or up the chain we go. They'll be parented.

[00:28:12]So, when I rotate this, it's going to rotate these controllers, which will also rotate the arms, and the head's going to be involved in that, too.

[00:28:24]Okay. there's something special we're going to do um to the hips and I will show you that um next week.

[00:28:36]So, for right now for the hips, why don't we just say this is the one thing we'll do a point constraint on.

[00:28:48]Okay, so we slip select the hips control.

[00:28:52]Let's control-click on the hips.

[00:28:56]We're going to do a point constraint, maintain offset, add. And we're also going to do an orient constraint, maintain offset, add.

[00:29:09]Then what you could do is just um then parent this one to that P. So then if you rotate this, the other one goes along for the ride. Notice how the feet stay still, which is super cool.

[00:29:31]Uh that's another benefit of IK zero to get back where you were.

[00:29:37]And the rest is pretty much um you know, you need to make the constraint here.

[00:29:45]Your constraints show up. Uh so if if the joint has a constraint on it, that means the joint is constrained to something and it should be all of these.

[00:29:59]That's how you make the controllers.

[00:30:03]Um I'll make a video later for the tail.

[00:30:07]Um yeah. Uh so I'm not going to finish off the whole thing. Um, you'd also want a rotation control for the toe and that would be parented to the foot.

[00:30:27]Um, so I'll have you guys get busy on all of that and then there's a couple more fancy things we're going to have to add. We're going to need to add a pole vector um constraint and we're going to have to add a spline IK for the tail to make that much easier. You don't have to make a bunch of these, but the rest you should be able to do on your own. Don't worry about the eyes.

[00:30:51]Um, make one for the jaw.

[00:30:58]And there'll be another video coming up after this to show like the finalizing of more fancy controls and then grouping everything.

[00:31:09]So, that's our video on controls. Um, thank you for watching and happy rigging to you.

[00:31:21]Let's turn this back and have a great one.