Raina Wu’s DynaRigBuilder Easily Creates an nHair-Based Dynamic Rig in Maya, That Can be Used for Animating Tentacles, Hair, or Rope
Ropes, chains, hair, tails, tentacles, fins and more. Rigging such elements can lead you to rely on a dynamic system. In Maya, that might entail working with Spline IK solvers and nDynamics to create that great looking animated movement that we are all accustom. Raina Wu is a rigging artist at DreamWorks who has posted a tool that can simplify and speed up creating these dynamic components in a rig. It’s called DynaRigBuilder.
DynRigBuilder builds a nHair-based dynamic rig in Maya that could be used for animating character hair, rope, etc.
DynaRigBuilder offers a compact panel in Maya that allows you to generate the joints needed, plus the IK / FK controls, and incorporate the dynamics into that rig at the click of a button. Placing some guide markers out in the scene helps the system understand where the rig will be placed. DynaRigBuilder the build out an nHair-based dynamic rig — poof!
The dynamic rig tool features:
- Interactive rig layout
- Spline IK with multiple controls and length preservation
- Variable FK
- nHair Dynamics with key-framed animation as guide (attraction adjustable)
- Animation blend between key-framed and simulated result
Wu is planning to add volume preservation, squash and stretch, and a control shape editor as future features. Visit the GitHub page to learn more.
