In this last part of the tutorial, I will show how to create wing fold controls.
With every part of the tutorial, the rigging process becomes more complex. The rigging of a bird is always a complex task for riggers. I’ll show each and every step of wings rigging process to make your learning easy.
1. Creating Wing Fold Controls
Step 1
Create
a circle and place it at the right side as shown in the following image.
Step 2
Being in the
vertex selection mode, edit the vertices of the circle to shape it as a star.
Step 3
Rename this
star shaped curve as R_CtrlC_WingFold_01.
Step 4
With R_CtrlC_WingFold_01 selected,
go to Edit > Delete by Type > History command
to delete the history. Don’t forget to use Freeze
Transformation command.
Step 5
Select R_CtrlC_WingFold_01 and R_CtrlC_Wing_a01 control curves respectively and press P key to make
the selected control curve as the parent.
Step 6
Make a duplicate
copy of R_CtrlC_WingFold_01 and place it at the left side. Rename it as L_CtrlC_WingFold_01.
2. Creating Custom Attributes for Wing Fold Controls
Step 1
With both R_CtrlC_WingFold_01 and L_CtrlC_WingFold_01
selected, go to the channel editor. With Translate,
Rotate and Scale properties selected, do right click and select Hide Selected command to hide the selected
attributes.
Step 2
With both
control curves selected, go to Modify
> Add Attribute command.
Step 3
In the Add Attribute window, put the long name
as WingFold. In the Numeric
Attribute Properties, keep the values of Minimum as 0, Maximum as 10 and Default as 0. Click on the OK button.
Step 4
With R_CtrlC_WingFold_01 curve selected, go to Animate > Set Driven Key >
Set command.
Step 5
In the Set Driven Key window, select R_CtrlC_WingFold_01 and click on Load
Driver button to add the channel properties in the Driver group.
Step 6
Following
the same procedure, select
R_CtrlC_Wing_a01, R_CtrlC_Wing_b01
and R_CtrlC_Wing_c01 and then click
on Load Driven button in the Set Driven Key window.
After that, with
all control curves and their Translate
and Rotate properties selected, click
on Key button to set the initial key.
Step 7
With R_CtrlC_Shoulder_a01, R_CtrlC_Shoulder_b01, R_CtrlC_Shoulder_c01, R_CtrlC_Shoulder_d01, R_CtrlC_Elbow_a01, R_CtrlC_Elbow_b01, R_CtrlC_Elbow_c01,
R_CtrlC_Wrist_a01, R_CtrlC_Wrist_b01 and R_CtrlC_Wrist_c01 selected, load all
these in the Driven group.
With all Translate, Rotate and custom attributes
Fan and Twist selected, click on Key
button to add new initial key frame.
Step 8
With CC_FeatherMiddle_a01, CC_FeatherMiddle_b01, CC_FeatherMiddle_C01 and Rotate Z selected, click on Key button to add initial key.
Step 9
It’s time to
create secondary key. Select R_CtrlC_Wing_a01,
R_CtrlC_Wing_b01 and R_CtrlC_Wing_c01 and Translate XYZ and Rotate XYZ properties.
Step 10
With the
control curves selected, set it like wing fold as shown in the following image.
Step 11
Arrange
CC_FeatherMiddle_a01, CC_FeatherMiddle_b01 and CC_FeatherMiddle_C01 also like feather
fold.
Step 12
In this way,
adjust the maximum fold of wings and then add secondary key.
Step 13
After
adjusting the controls like wings fold, you can see the result as shown in the
following image.
Step 14
With CC_FeatherMiddle_a01, CC_FeatherMiddle_b01, CC_FeatherMiddle_C01 and Rotate Z selected, click on Key button to add secondary key as shown
in the following image.
Step 15
With R_CtrlC_Shoulder_a01, R_CtrlC_Shoulder_b01, R_CtrlC_Shoulder_c01, R_CtrlC_Shoulder_d01, R_CtrlC_Elbow_a01, R_CtrlC_Elbow_b01, R_CtrlC_Elbow_c01,
R_CtrlC_Wrist_a01, R_CtrlC_Wrist_b01 and R_CtrlC_Wrist_c01 selected, load them
in Driven group. With custom attributes
Fan and Twist selected, click on Key
button to add new Initial key frame.
Step 16
With the
same driven group objects selected, select Translate XYZ, Rotate XYZ
and Twist attributes.
Arrange the controls for the proper wings fold and
then click on Key button to add secondary key.
Step 17
To add some
more folds of the wings, select R_CtrlC_WingFold and set its value to 10
in the channel editor.
Click on Key button to add the final key.
Step 18
Following
the same way, set Maximum 10 value
for all control curves one by one.
Step 19
Finally, the
set driven key process for controlling wings for animation is completed.
Step 20
Following
the same process, complete the wings rig controls for the left side also. Now
it’s time to color the controls curves to be identified easily.
Step 21
With CtrlC_Pelvis01 selected, press Ctrl-A key to open Attribute Editor. In the Attribute Editor,
under Drawing Overrides tab, turn on
Enable Overrides option. Set the Color
as red.
You can see
the result.
Step 22
Following
the same process, colorize all controls curves with different colors.
Step 23
The rig is
finally complete. You can now animate it by using controls.
