General requirements for all character rigs

Beside the special requirements for creating “cartoony” animation, there are general requirements that all character rigs should have.

1.The rig should be as simple as they could.

It is important to limit the amount of controls that the animator can work with, do not overwhelm the computer and the animation with the extra feature which is not necessary. Animators have to work with fast updated and respond computer to check the animation, put out all the control and feature we don’t need can save the resource of computer. In the case of Maya, instead of using expression, I tend to use others each as set driven key and utility node, expression will slow down the computer as it will evaluate every time we change the parameters.

2.Controls should be unique and make immediate sense.

Animators have to due with a mass of control; them will be confused and spend time to find out what they want if every single control appears the same. Controls should be unique and understandable looking for intended use.

3.Animators can only select what need to be animate

Animators always select and moving object which an untouchable, it may damage the rigging system and cannot be recover after animated. Lock and hide those objects before the animation process.

4.Clarity

All the objects and controls shoulder named correctly and understandable, animators and other rigger will be searching by the name of objects. And a messy scene will make it more difficult for others to modify and further develop, delete all the objects or node which is not necessary, try to optimize the scene after the rigging process.