I think today I'll do a book feature. Sure, why not!
Actually, this particular feature will be a series feature of three absolutely essential books in any rigger's library. I'm talking about The Art of Rigging, made by CG Toolkit. You can buy the hard copy of the third volume off their site, which mostly focuses on hair, cloth, and facial motion capture, and you can also purchase PDF copies of the first and second. You can still find hard copies of the earlier two, which feature basic and advanced setup, respectively, but there's a good chance you'll pay upwards of $200 for each (yup...one used on Amazon for $280. Ouch.) Sometimes however, you can get lucky on eBay and pick them up for around $50 each, which is what I did.
These books are serious gold - they go over different bone setups, controller setups, facial, scripting, everything that you need. My only nitpick is that they occasionally do things the "hard way," but overall the robustness of this book makes up for it.
In my opinion, they're the perfect books to grab a cup of coffee and curl up with on a rainy day.
serialization fun!
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I’ve been tinkering around with this little project for awhile now. I’ve
always wanted to try to write a simple little serialization format. I know
there...
12 years ago
Looking at the book's website, it seems at first glance like it's pretty Maya-specific.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who has read it, do you think it would still be useful for me to pick up even though I plan to stick to other software?
The third book is pretty Maya specific, just because it specifically covers Maya's fur and cloth system. The first and second books, however, cover more basic rig and control setup, and although they're based in Maya it's not specific to Maya. I'll let you take a look at my books next time you visit (or I visit, one of these days) if you'd like.
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