This should be a fairly short explanation about this class. Not because there wasn’t anything learned, but because I feel like there should be some mystery left behind what is done in the world of a Setup Artist. Their work is so…. Unseen, that nothing would be possible in the CG world without them! Yeah, it’s that intense.
Without revealing too much, a Setup Artist takes a character model, set, or prop, and attaches attributes to it that allows appropriate animation to take place. Sweet huh? In more light, they attach a skeleton to the character, and give attributes like foot roll, finger motion, smile, frown, and anything else that is required in the storyboard to accomplish the appropriate action.
So for CRI, we had to complete a series of skill tests in order to get the file for the final project. These tests were how to set up skeleton structures, how to group them, bind skin, weight and anything else. I managed to speed ahead and get these tests done early, and was able to begin the final. What our instructor was looking for was intensive Pre-Pro for composing the rig, logging time spent on certain areas, and making a super-awesome rig that can be animated without breaking.
The final rig was to be composed onto the character Dr. Bloopdool, an Octopus Aquanaut. The storyboards revealed basic movements ranging through arms and face tentacles, and many other things that needed to happen. I spent intensive amounts of work on creating dynamic effects, and even made switches between dynamic and ik/fk driven parts. For instance, the belly and rear of the head have a jiggle deformer that jiggles the region in which it resides when a fast action occurs. There are also Dynamic/IK switches for the tail and face tentacles, and IK/FK switches for the arms and legs, as well as stretch.
So I’ll end this entry with a few playblasts of what my rig can do, and you’ll see a bit of what I’m talking about.