philnolan3d Posted January 16, 2011 Report Share Posted January 16, 2011 For those who don't know Rhiggit is an auto-rigger plugin for LightWave created by Craig "Rebel Hill" on the NewTek forum. He has some really nice rigging tutorial videos so I was excited to try out the demo of his auto-rigger. It took me less than an hour to set up, keeping in mind that I was watching his tutorial video while setting it up. Here's a little test I did of the finished rig: It needed 9 or 10 simple weight maps to be set up in Modeler, then the rest is just positioning a few markers in Layout and hitting a button. The down side to the Lite version is that the character has to be in a perfect T pose, while the upcoming Pro version will allow the model to be in any pose. If interested here's an official video of the setup process: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member geo_n Posted January 19, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 19, 2011 Its pretty good and lw needs more of this stuff. But I hope core will bring us closer to what other software has now. Check out what other ca systems have. http://suntoucher-labs.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted January 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 19, 2011 I've only watched the first half of that video so far but I'm pretty sure everything I've seen is already in LightWave. Of course it's built in, this appears to be a plugin that you have to pay extra for on top of maya's price. I can't find any info on this though, it's just a video, so I'm assuming it's not available for purchase. Granted I'm not really an animator, it just looks like stuff I've seen others do and stuff I did in school a long time ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member geo_n Posted January 19, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 19, 2011 I've only watched the first half of that video so far but I'm pretty sure everything I've seen is already in LightWave. Of course it's built in, this appears to be a plugin that you have to pay extra for on top of maya's price. I can't find any info on this though, it's just a video, so I'm assuming it's not available for purchase. Granted I'm not really an animator, it just looks like stuff I've seen others do and stuff I did in school a long time ago. Dynamic parenting and constraints like that is not available in lightwave. Changing the hierarchy on the fly is also not in lw. Procedural and modular rigging, editable bones like geometry, etc are not in lw too. The only thing they have in common is ik and fk concept. Core will hopefully be lw future. Rhiggit isn't free and you do pay extra on top of many lw must have plugins. The costs balances out if it were maya vs lw plugins cost so lets not go there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted January 19, 2011 Author Report Share Posted January 19, 2011 Dynamic parenting is available in LW, we did it in school back in LW 7.5. I recall a project with a character throwing a Frisbee that a dog creature would catch, so the parenting changed from the character's hand, to nothing, then the dog's head. It's done with the Parenter tool, you can find that in the manual. I don't know what procedural rigging is must have missed that in the video. Yes you have to pay for Rhiggit, but Rhiggit is only using the tools that are built into LW, so everything Rhiggit does can be done with out it. Rhiggit only sets it up for you. The same guy who makes it also sells a tutorial DVD on doing all of it manually. You can download 3 hours of it for free. This is important because you can use Rhiggit, then send the project to someone else who doesn't have the plugin and they can still use the rig. Lino Grandi also has a very nice rigging tutorial DVD that you get free with a LW10 purchase. The only thing I saw in there that I didn't recognize in LW was the proxy object rig in the horse example. Which looks cool, but I'm not sure if it actually helps to make the animation any better or easier. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member geo_n Posted January 20, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted January 20, 2011 Dynamic parenting is available in LW, we did it in school back in LW 7.5. I recall a project with a character throwing a Frisbee that a dog creature would catch, so the parenting changed from the character's hand, to nothing, then the dog's head. It's done with the Parenter tool, you can find that in the manual. I don't know what procedural rigging is must have missed that in the video. Yes you have to pay for Rhiggit, but Rhiggit is only using the tools that are built into LW, so everything Rhiggit does can be done with out it. Rhiggit only sets it up for you. The same guy who makes it also sells a tutorial DVD on doing all of it manually. You can download 3 hours of it for free. This is important because you can use Rhiggit, then send the project to someone else who doesn't have the plugin and they can still use the rig. Lino Grandi also has a very nice rigging tutorial DVD that you get free with a LW10 purchase. The only thing I saw in there that I didn't recognize in LW was the proxy object rig in the horse example. Which looks cool, but I'm not sure if it actually helps to make the animation any better or easier. Ok now try using parenter to do what's on that video. Parent the hand of one character and all its ik system to the box, parent another characters hand and its ik to the box, then parent the other characters hand and its ik to the shoulder of the other character forming another hierarchy. Well you get it, some very complex things going on there. That's not in lightwave. What's in lightwave is simple on off parenting which most appz have. Procedural and modular rigging, watch the horse video. Non destructive rigging. If you are talking about built in tools then character studio and CAT is built into 3dmax and does much much more than rhiggit. Rhiggit is limited by lw itself not by the maker of the plugin. With CS or CAT you can send the project to somebody else, they can transform the rig since its procedural as well. Want two extra limbs, a tail, extra spine bones, its done with a few clicks and it doesn't break. Lino Grandi video is not even out yet and looks like will be available at the end of this year the earliest. I bought RH video and its the best rigging tut for lw out there. As a matter of fact I am waiting for the pro version of rhiggit because I can get a discount for buying the tuts but I'm not going to say that an autorigger like rhiggit is the same as the one in the video. You can post at newtek if you want to compare that system to what lw has to offer now. No one will say their at the same level at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Sandro Borg Posted February 1, 2011 Advanced Member Report Share Posted February 1, 2011 Nice one phil,I came across this site before xmas,and have heard nothing but good reports about his rig and videos since. I'm definately gonna get hold of the RH rigging tutorial videos soon as I get enough cash. I would love to be able to rig my models to the level he shows. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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