Interactive rigging

Abstract

Skeleton-driven animation is a widespread technique, which is frequently used in film and video game productions to animate 3D characters. The process of preparing characters for skeletal animation is referred to as character rigging. Commercial applications such as Maya or 3DS Max provide many tool that support this process, including the 'joint tool' and the 'paint skin weights tool'. Most of these tools are difficult to use for novice users. Even for professional artists, it requires many hours of intensive effort. We approach the rigging process from a semi-automatic point of view, integrating the skeleton creation process with the skinning of the mesh into an interactive rig editing system. We also maintain an important degree of control over the final result of the rig, especially in its ability to refine the skinning results. Our method begins by providing an automatically generated, fully skinned rig as a starting point for interactive editing. In this framework, the skeleton structure and the skin weights can be interactively edited with the provided manipulation tools while receiving immediate visual feedback of the current state of the rig.