Face

Finally I have rigged the face using blend shape for the eyes and joints for the mouth to try and further my skills using both techniques. I think blend shapes are very quick and easy to do however joints give you more freedom to move the joints in certain ways. Rather than making another GUI I have tried to make my rig clean by putting controllers next to the areas of the face that they move such as the overs the eyes and mouth.

Bottom Lip Close

Bottom Lip Open

Eye Blend Shapes

Eyes Closed

Top Lip Close

Top Lip Open

GUI

To further increase the ease of use within the rig I have set up a small GUI on each of the arms and the legs so that the user can easily use the attributes on the hands and feet such as the finger movement, finger spread and also the feet movement.I have done this by using set driven keys to ensure that the GUI will work with the controller to move the fingers and feet.

Finger Spread

Foot GUI

Hand GUI

Arms

The arms come next after the spine and they are very similar to the legs and from the use of set driven keys it was easy for me to set up the finger clench and finger spread. As well as the hand controller I have added another pole vector locator onto the elbow which will do the same as the knee controller keeping the elbow in the correct position. To clench the hand you can rotate each joint on the axis then set the key to key it in place.

Pole vector

Finger Clench

Hand Controller Attributes

Hand controller

Spine Clusters

Following the legs I worked my way up the body, next was the spine for this I added a IK spline handle and a curve to put a natural bend in the spine matching a real skeleton.

As well as this I have added two clusters onto the spine bones so that I can group some of the spine bones together. Then I added controllers onto the clusters and then limited the movement so that you can recreate the little spine movement of a real spine.

Lower Cluster

Lower Controller

Upper Controller

Upper Cluster

Knee Pole Vector

In addition to the feet control I have to introduce another constraint for the knee to make sure that it was always pointing the correct way even if the leg was moved. To do this I had to create a locator and the constrain it using the pole vector to the leg IK.

Foot Control

After putting the Ik's I then went onto put the controllers on the rig starting with the legs and feet. I used a Circle curve and shaped it into a foot and positioned it under the foot while also freezing the transformation and centering the pivot. Then constrained to the point and orient of the ankle.

In addition to the constraints I also added a variety of attributes to further enhance the foot controller, Ball lift, Toe lift, Toe Roll Y and Toe Roll X. These attributes do a variety of things to the controller however they make the foot more lifelike when animating such as you can pivot on the toe and other movements.

Using set driven keys I was able to set the limitations of what the attributes could do which proved very helpful in the later stages of rigging.

Toe Lift

Ball Lift

Toe Roll Y

After finishing the attributes for the left leg I then did the same for the right making sure I was using the same work flow, I didnt just want to copy it over as i felt i would learn more by doing it over and over.

IK's

After putting in the bones I added the IK's which connects and enables the bones to correctly move with each other. Again I have properly named the IK's so that I know what each one is and is easily accessible.

Bones

To rig a human body you first need to put the bones throughout the body in there correct place starting from hips. I first made the leg and then duplicated them over for the other leg and then parented the hip joints to the lowest spine joint. For personal preference I also have added an extra joint in the place of the tail bone which is there so that I can easily select all the bones  and acts a parent bone.

When I have properly positioned the bones I then went onto correctly naming each bone so that when putting the controllers and constraints I knew which bone was which, in the later stages of the rigging process this really helped.

I took special care when putting in the bones for the hands so that I could put them in the right place concerning the mesh.

Movement Control

Finally I had to create an overall movement control to move the car as a whole unit while also moving the controls. This was done by rather having a point or orient constraint I used a parent constraint and put the it above all the other constraints in the grouping hierarchy to make sure it would overrule the other constraints. For this constraint the pivot point was placed in the middle of the car.

Body Suspension

The body suspension was by far the hardest thing to rig as it needed a expression in order to change the movement of the controller into the rotation that would happen on the vehicle. I first had to group the whole vehicle into two groups called the front and back suspension.

I then positioned the pivot point to correlate with the group, for the front suspension the pivot point went onto the front axle and vice versa for the back.

After this I created the controllers for each of the groups, then on the rotateX attribute I put an expression to convert the movement of the controller into the rotation on the car.

Finally I limited the rotation so that the suspension wouldn't be over exaggerated and very lifelike.

Bonnet

The bonnet was done very quickly as it was very similar to the boot to rig, I had to group the geometry together and create a controller to go with it, then positioned the pivot point correctly at the front of the car as that is how it is in real life. I have also limited the rotation so that you can't move the bonnet further than it would actually go.

Boot

 At this point most of the other areas were fairly simple to rig, I again had to group together the proper geometry as at first I forget to add the mercedes badge into the group and then I made a controller to an orient constrain against the boot. I moved the pivot point into the correct position which would mirror a real car, at first I had it in the middle of the boot which when rotated made the corners go inside the boot which wouldn't be lifelike.

Doors

After getting the wheels to properly spin, turn and have their suspension working I turned my attention to getting the doors to work. First I went through the geometry and grouped up the door geometry. When I had got it all together I made another controller and put it into the right position ready for the constraint.

I then positioned the pivot point into the correct place which would be at the front area of the door where it connects to the car which would be where the hinges are on a real car. After this I constrained the controller onto the door onto the Y axis and then limited it so that it would only open to a certain way to mimic a real car. In addition to this I also limited the doors so that you wouldn't be able to rotate the doors into the car.

Wheel Suspension

To correctly rig the suspension on the wheels I had to use a different constraint as they will be translating not rotating on a specific axis. To do this I just used a point constrain rather than an orient constant and then again set limits so that the wheels could only go to a specific point rather than have the wheels go above or below the car. As well as this I set the pivot point to the bottom of the wheel as it would be where the point of contact would be against the floor to show the suspension properly working.

Turning of the Wheels

After making the wheels turn I then went onto making the front wheels turn. This was done in a similar way to the previous way of making the wheels spin. I first made the arrow using the curve tool however this time I made it double sided, then used the non linear bend again to put curvature into the arrow. After this I selected the arrow and clicked the group which had the wheel in and put an orient constraint onto the Y axis.

The image here shows where the pivot point is on the wheel for it to turn, it has to be on the inside so that it will correctly turn. I have also put a limit on the extent that the wheel can actually turn from left to right just like it would in a normal car.

Spinning the wheels

To get the wheels spinning properly I had to make sure the pivot point is in the right position at the center of the wheel so that It will spin on the correct axis.

After this I then made a orient constraint against the X axis in order to make the wheel properly rotate. I then did this for the other wheels to get the rest of the wheels spinning properly as well as this I limited the information so that the control would only rotate or translate the correct way. I made the control into the right shape by first creating an arrow shape from the curve tool and then putting a non-linear bend deformer onto the arrow and changing the curvature to properly bend the arrow, then I deleted the history of the control to get rid of the line however keeping the curvature in the arrow.