Character Rigging WIP

 I'm super excited about some progress I've been making, and just had to share an update about it!
I've received a few requests for tutorials lately, wanting to know how I rig things in after effects. My long term goal has been to be able to create fully animated characters similar to what you see in the League of Legends login screens, and some of you seem to think I'm getting close to that already! (I disagree XD )

I've had some requests to show how to use DUIK, the rigging program the professionals use to create character animations in After Effects (Think League of Legends login screens, animations by 2snacks, really fancy stuff like that). I'd love to show you all how to do it, but... most of my stuff just kind of... looks like I have character rigs. Most of my animations are MacGyver'd solutions that are moved by hand and don't really have much automation to make things move. The thing is...  I don't actually know how to use DUIK!

Until now!



This here is Twiggy, MadHotaru's giraffe OC. I've made this gif entirely in After Effects, using only DUIK (which is free!) and no other plugins at all! I've started to learn how to use DUIK, and plan to make a few tutorials on the basics!



Once you have created a rig in DUIK, it gives full control over the head position, eyes, facial expression, mane, etc. without requiring you to do any actual scripting or manipulation of the pieces. Just scrub across the timeline manipulating the rig controls like a remote control, and voila! Super smooth and complex animations It takes quite a long time to set up the rig, but it makes the animation process o much quicker once it's done.

In this example, the little boxes in the upper right corner are my controls. Red controls the eyebrow height and angle, green points the eyes, and blue is the head position. The brown controller furrows the eyebrows together, and the two white boxes give each individual eyebrow a little lift for extra expressiveness. These six controls automatically move all the puppet pins and layers without any other input required. It makes animation so much quicker and smoother!


Pretty neat, eh?
Twiggy here isn't quite finished, I want to add more controls for the eyes, ears, and mouth. I'd also like to find a way to have her head turn slightly in each direction. There will be a more lengthy animation featuring Twiggy in the future!

I hope to use this rigging method for most of my future projects