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Rigging training DVD from Nathan Vegdahl

35
By on Training Videos

Pre-sale of Nathan Vegdahl's new rigging training DVD has started.

Nathan writes:

I've been working really hard over the last few months to put together a training DVD for rigging in Blender. It's part of the Blender Open Movie Workshop series, and is published by the Blender Foundation, so you will be supporting Blender with your purchase as well.

Sample video from the first chapter of the DVD

I've worked (and am still working) hard on this, and I'm really proud of it. I've put a lot of great material in here and have taken pains to make the sometimes confusing topic of rigging as easy to understand as possible. So please buy the DVD! :-)

It goes all the way up through rigging a biped character, with a focus on using the rigs as examples to teach viewers to understand rigging and how to design their own rigs. It's not just rote step-by-step instructions--I've made the DVD so that people can really come away with an understanding of rigging, so they're not just limited to the rigs I show how to build.

Deformations are, unfortunately, not covered in any depth on this DVD. Rigging is a huge topic, so I had to focus on one aspect for this DVD, which is developing good rig controls and all the theory and practice behind that. See the e-shop link above for detailed contents of the DVD.

I plan to cover deformations in future training material. But the stuff covered in this DVD will be pre-requisite for that, and not to mention extremely important on its own (no matter how good a rig's deformations are, if the controls aren't good, it's not useful to animators).

Pre-order the DVD now from the Blender e-shop and receive a 10% discount.

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

35 Comments

  4. CGI Trainer / Peter Drakulic on

    excellent work,high quality,refreshing lecture here,imo,Nathan is teaching rigging in his unique,keep-it-fun-yet-comprehensive,brilliant,good paced way;judging from the sample ,this DVD is definitely worth the money...my last tuppence > it is...     

    Reply
    • Cessen on

      I don't think it's going to be an official option, but if anyone orders the DVD and wants a download as well, just email me and I'll give you a link to the materials online when the DVD is finished. :-)

      And, of course, it will be released Creative Commons, so it will probably be available online eventually regardless.

      Reply
  11. Chaos on

    Could you please enhace the scene illumination? characters appears like they had been filmed with an in-house cellphone camera. [/sarcasm_off]

    Reply
  12. Jay-Artist on

    I ordered it straight after I saw the vid the other day - looks like fun and the guys that put it together seem the same ;)

    Reply
    • Cessen on

      You're confusing unrigiditis and unriggitis.  The former is a disease whose primary symptoms are lack of rigidity and (in extreme cases) collapsing into a puddle of goo.  The latter, on the other hand, is a disease characterized by an inability to move.  The "Humane Rigging Fund" has a sister charity called the "Anti-goo-puddle Fund" which is collecting funds to help characters suffering from unrigiditis.

      ;-)

      Reply
  18. snot_nose on

    looks interesting, and funny. is it going also to talk about the spline ik - and its problems - and its workaround? what about facial rigging? and maybe some basic scripting for rigging?

    Reply
    • Cessen on

      If you follow the link to the presale page, there is a detailed table of contents of the DVD.

      But to answer your questions directly:
      It does not cover spline IK, no.  I will cover that in future material (maybe after trying to convince the dev's to change some things about how it works... heh).Facial rigging is, IMO, it's own complex topic.  I do not cover it on this DVD.  I do plan to cover it eventually, but there are a lot of other things to teach about rigging first (e.g. various deformation techniques).  Facial rigging is a big and complex beast!  And to be honest, I still have a lot to learn about it myself.Scripting is also not covered on this DVD, no.  But, again, in the future...

      Please understand that rigging is a huge topic, and I cannot possibly even begin to cover all of it in a single DVD.  At least, not if I want to teach it thoroughly and well.  I'm trying to cover things one at a time, in their order of (IMO) importance and requisites.

      You can build a good rig without knowing much about deformations as long as you know how to design and build good rig mechanisms and controls.  And that's what this DVD is all about.

      Also, note that I'm covering rigging from a "rigging for animators" standpoint.  I don't have much experience with motion capture, etc.  Although I'm sure many of the concepts transfer over.

      Reply
      • Brandon Ayers on

        Thanks for "rigging for animators", I struggle getting my characters animated because of the confusing process of rigging.

        Reply
        • Cessen on

          Err... to clarify.  I'm sure this training will be useful for animators who want to learn rigging.  But what I meant was that the training is oriented toward building rigs that animators will use for hand-animating characters.  

          There are other kinds of rigging.  For example, rigs oriented toward motion capture and mocap cleanup, or in vfx work there are often rigs built specifically for an animator to match exactly to a real person in the shot (for 3d masking, making vfx follow the character, etc.).  I'm not covering those, because I don't have much experience with them myself.

          Reply
  19. Meaningoflines on

    I will preorder this evening. Rigging is the most confusing and difficult to learn topic in Blender for me. It will be very helpful.

    Reply
  21. Sebaskt on

    25 euros, more than reasonable, specially coming from a guy who knows what he's talking about, Nathan sabeeee.
    "I plan to cover deformations in future training material." please!!!! I haven't found much training on that on blender nor in other software.

    Reply
  24. Niko40 on

    Looks awesome. The way you explained it all really makes perfect sense to me and was fun to watch. Well I know rigging quite well already but I think this might widen my view somewhat. Already learned a couple of nice things from the sample clip. So... Ordered already. XD

    Reply
  26. Arnaud Couturier on

    I really enjoyed the first chapter:
    it made me think twice about what I already know.

    Very good way of explaining:
    from problem to solution, and not just the solution straight away without explaining why it's solved a certain way.

    I'll buy it :)

    Reply

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