MOLID RIG
Rigging Assist Toolset
" I decided to use the tool in both my portfolio and game projects that needed many or quick versions of humanoid rigs. I could do everything on my own but the time saved in setting up a complex rig was spent actually polishing animations and textures! "
Molid RIG is a Maya MEL toolset, meant to assist the TGA Stockholm Game Artists with the rigging process, as we do not have Animation or Technical Artist students in-house. Rigging and animation, therefore, fall upon us Game Artists, giving us less time to polish our art.
If you ever have rigged a humanoid character, you know the pain of adding controller constraints in the wrong order, renaming 50+ joints, groups, and controllers, as well as how much time verifying rig functionality takes.
If you have created puppet control rigs, dug around in the node editor for custom attributes, or spent time delving into IK handles, you know a safe, easy-to-use rig takes time to create from scratch.
'Why not eliminate ~80% of the time it takes to create a safe, stable, and easy-to-use rig?'
That is what I asked myself, and from that idea, I began working on Molid RIG.
HUMANOID RIG ASSIST PIPELINE
01 BASE SKELETON CREATION
Creating a whole humanoid skeleton, including hands, usually takes about 60 joints.
Renaming every single joint by hand takes time, as well as structuring the joint hierarchy.
The first part of the toolset creates a named, base half skeleton to be put into place, structured joint re-orientation, as well as mirroring the created left half to the right.
02 IK/FK/RESULT CONTROL RIG
Rigging upon the character skeleton directly can cause a few issues, and therefore we like to set up a "puppet control rig", a copy that controls, or "puppeteers" the character skeleton. It consists of IK, FK, and Result joints, IK/FK switches, ready to handle different control setups.
This part also includes IK controller setups for legs and arms, including pole vectors and custom attributes for the feet.
03 QUICK FK CONTROLLERS
Creating a single FK controller manually takes ~15 steps to completion.
This part of the toolset consists of Template FK Controller Creation and FK Constraining.
Simply select one or more joints, use an FK Template script, reshape to your liking, then use the FK Constraining to seal the deal.
Base templates for Arm/Leg, Spine, Fingers, Arrow/Master and Cog/Hip exists, but shape can be customised after creation.
04 CUSTOM IK/FK SWITCHES + HORSE SUPPORT
Horse skeleton creation following the 01 and 02 parts' structure, but not yet fully finished. Does not create auto IK/FK switches, or IK controllers yet, but still sets up a full IK/FK/Result Control Rig.
This part also has custom IK/FK Switch creation, requiring a joint to be selected, which then sets up a Switch controlling the entire joint chain it belongs to.
For an extended breakdown of each script in the Molid RIG toolset, you can find the instructions here.
Rigging 'Speedrun' & Walkthrough with Molid RIG
A relaxed walkthrough showcasing a full humanoid rig from scratch using Molid RIG, while explaining the process, functions, and a bit of background for the toolset.
The speedrunning aspect is more to showcase how quick each step of the toolset is for setting up a full rig and verifying it using Molid RIG.
MOLID RIG BACKGROUND
Molid RIG is a Maya MEL toolset, meant to assist the TGA Stockholm Game Artists with the rigging process, since it falls upon us Game Artists, giving us less time to polish our art.
I began working on the first iteration of Molid RIG for Game Project 4, in April 2022, as we had just finished our rigging course, and I desired a way to ease our rigging process for the game projects. This included the base skeleton setup, auto IK legs and arms, and the FK Controllers with constraints.
What began as a mere FK Controller creation script, flourished to include full IK/FK/Result skeleton support, more customisability, flexibility, and safety for our riggers - even beyond humanoids.
Molid RIG, at first only used by my project groups for P4 and P5, quickly spread to be used by several artists across project groups for P6, as I released the first "public" iteration in September 2022.
This release, Molid RIG v1.0, was the first to include the IK/FK/Result Auto Setup, Hand Creation, hip/cog/master/arrow FK Controllers, and FK Controller Mirroring,
created and implemented within 30 hours of work.
Between v1.0 and v1.6, until I picked Molid RIG up for the portfolio course, I spent ~10h fixing bugs and cleaning the functionality after feedback from other colleagues using the toolset.
Picking up Molid RIG for my portfolio resulted in Molid RIG v2.0, the release you see here!
Covering approximately 45 hours of work, I rewrote the majority of the scripts for safety, flexibility, and future customisability. Quadruped (horse) support was developed, and the logic I figured out writing these scripts was then applied when rewriting the humanoid scripts for optimisation.
In total, I would estimate around 100 hours of work time on Molid RIG so far.
But there are still many functions I wish to implement.
Facial rigs, better hand controllers, cloth rigs, and more flexibility with names and joint counts,
just to name a few points on my wishlist.
Check out more projects:
