Posing your characters FAST with Maya Quick Rig!

We're back! Kicking off the new year with a video showing how you can create a rig in Maya to pose your characters. I really like this method because it allows you to explore different poses for your character in a non-destructive way.
Let me know topics you would like to see in the comments below!
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Chapters:
0:00 - Intro
2:13 - Rigging Prep & Overview
2:45 - Quick Rig Setup
7:29 - HumanIK Overview
8:30 - Adding finger joints to the Quick Rig
15:30 - Assigning finger joints to HumanIK
17:25 - Parenting rigid geometry to your rig
20:00 - Painting skin weights
25:24 - Adding accessories to your rig
27:30 - Adding Eye Controls to your Rig
29:39 - Outtro
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[@justincase7773]

If you do a lot of this type of rigging its worth noting that the Michael Comet scripts are still working all these years later in Maya 2022.3. so orienting those joints can literally be done as easy as choosing the axis you want down the bone and the one you want pointing up and press a button, it will do an entire joint chain at a time. Great video btw loving the Zbrush content as well, Very well explained! Subscribed.

[@hartgameart]

That's an awesome tip! Definitely will have to give that a try next time around.

[@stevenjamestaylor]

are you serious- do the old Maya 8 scripts still work? re- Comet orient joint -- wild

[@justincase7773]

@@stevenjamestaylor hmm after looking at his website I guess they are Maya 8. I could have sworn they were updated in 2010 or 2012. IDK, but they still work. They were written in MEL.

[@stevenjamestaylor]

@@justincase7773 yea they are from the way before times -- I remember using his tools a decade ago- never imagined they would still work! huzza

[@Svi3sa]

This video is EXACTLY what I needed- thank you! Stuff that helped me (in case it helps others): - Didn't do the human IK fingers. I added the bones and left them as FK, and just added my own controllers. I found the fingers deformed a lot better this way and are easier to pose. - When doing skin weights, remember to go from the top of the hierarchy, to the bottom. - For editing the eye pivots, snap to points just didn't want to cooperate for me. So, selecting the eye mesh, then the head bone and doing modify> match transformations> match pivots sorted it out. :>

[@lowpolyart345]

wow this is the most usefull video about posting on youtube. thanks a lot it helps me very well to figure out this whole situation with rigging! please don't stop making such awesome videos any further!

[@matiaszadicoff9186]

Very useful! this is the tutorial I was needing, thanks!

[@MILADISGONE]

You Are Awesome... I've been looking forward to this tutorial all over the internet...

[@heldes2108]

Super helpful video. Very to the point and love that you put timestamps, wish more people would do that.

[@philmehrart]

Great breakdown - cheers matey!

[@yastremski]

You're my hero

[@TriGon_Art]

Great one I love using the quick rig! at 9:20 you can use the D key instead of insert to edit the pivot :)

[@hartgameart]

Oh my god. Over 10 years using maya and I never knew this 😂 Thank you

[@TriGon_Art]

@@hartgameart I can't even imagine the pain you have went through, In these past 10 years hahaha

[@WanderTrust]

the one time i hear a tip that I actually know...there are plenty I havent learned in 10 years though XD

[@tinyrainbow0505]

Thank you I'm gonna use this tutorial for my next render

[@butterscotchbitz4520]

This was very helpful! apprecaite it

[@annatiseiko3733]

Great tutorial, thanks a lot!

[@techbit7607]

Amazing tutorial, thanks alot!

[@kanonkagerou3207]

Im total noob in rigging but its a perfect for me to learn for posing, it was hard for me at the begining (I know nothing about this process, a was strugglying some time, I know its tutorial is not for a total noobs, but I decided to learn this process with this :D) but after maybe 3-4 trys I finally did a rig and can pose my character! (also did little research about rigg theme) but this tut is really awesome!! I really enjoy your tuts, thank you for them!

[@hartgameart]

That's awesome! It can be tricky but it's awesome to hear you got through it. Even when I run through this process myself I sometimes run into things or issues that I've never seen or encountered before but such is the fun of 3d!

[@pitchblockgames9395]

GREAT VIDEO!!!

[@christiansalgado9038]

wow this is awesome, i did have a character with armor but i couldn't rig it properly, thanks for all the tips

[@shimmery1210]

You can hold D to manipulate pivot if you don't have the Insert key. Moreover, I think Mixamo does better job if you want to quickly rig a humanoid character. And you can set it up with HIK very quickly in maya.

[@JustoFigueroaArt]

Best posing vid right here...Thank you for sharing this knowledge with us Hart! Also the format of talking over a sped up recording is great, so as to know exactly how you did it, while also not wasting too much time. Question: how would you go about having multiple poses (brainstorming what to go for the final presentation) using this method? Is it possible to store the joint values somewhere and load them up fast and easy, so as to change constantly from pose to pose as you work on them?

[@hartgameart]

Thanks for the kind words! This is definitely something I wish I included in the video. I think the fastest way to store a bunch of poses on the timeline would be the following. Shift select everything in the Ctrl_Reference group _OrcRig_Ctrl_Reference in my case) in the hierarchy and hit S to set a key on everything Turn on autokey (little button in the bottom left) Drag to a different keyframe and pose your character Frame 1 should now have your default pose keyed and new pose should be on your selected key frame if you want to load your default pose on another keyframe go back to frame 1, shift select your controls exactly like in the first step, on the timeline right-click on the frame and hit copy then drag to a new frame and right click > paste This should pase all the keys into the frame and set it back to default then proceed to make a new pose The quick rig system technically has buttons for this in its menu but when we modify like in this video they usually break so this is the quickest work around I can think of. I'm sure there is a script or something that could be made to make this easier but at least this should work!

[@JustoFigueroaArt]

@@hartgameart Yeh that makes sense. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[@davidsbull7620]

So glad to see you posting again! Always love your videos, super informative c: Just a question, will there maybe be a video on retopology in the future? I'm struggling so much with getting it done, and distributing the poly's well.. Maya's retopology tools feel so tedious.. any recommendations?

[@hartgameart]

Thanks! I've definetely thought about maybe doing a retopo video. I agree with your opinion on maya's retopo. I've never been a huge fan but I know people use it successfully in a professional capacity. Personally I use a program called Topogun which is pretty intuitive but still not without its issues. 3dcoat also has pretty decent retopology tools as well. I'm also curious at looking at some retopo tools in blender in the future too.

[@davidsbull7620]

@@hartgameart Would LOVE! a video on topogun! Especially now since it's getting updated again. I've been thinking of buying the license because of the tools they have, it just looks.. easier than most other tools i encountered! Even tho Blender also has retopoflow which looks good. But yeah would be amazed to see Topogun retopology!

[@mrnitro30103]

cool tutorial! how would you zero out the controls positions when they all have weird numbers in the translations/rotations?

[@utmostkibbles9125]

I haven't had time to fully watch this all the way through, but is there an easy way to add roll bones to the arms?

[@ConraDargo]

My character's eye meshes popped out and ended up on the right side of the head when I did the Constrain>Aim thing 🤣 At first I got an error about the destination being locked, so I deleted the history and that fixed it! But then the eyes went outside the skull instead ^^' Welp, don't really need that kind of control over the character anyways! Thanks for an excellent tutorial!

[@Kannaos]

Okay, got the same problem and I think I figure it out. You can change the pivot of your eye's group, but the pivot center of your eye's mesh must be in the center of the eye, not the joint of the head, that's why the eye just popped out. Hope this is it, until now everythings seem to work :)

[@davidedezotti2856]

Hi I'm having an issue since I repeated the finger rigging process twice but it didn't work. The problem is that the new finger joints created are not connected to the close geometry and I don't understand why since I have literally copied what you did. Is it because of the new version of Maya maybe?

[@silver_3d24]

Why do the bones of the hands come out crooked? I can't get them to rotate correctly in the direction, and the hand is deformed. From the beginning of the setup it already puts the crooked bone

[@killbill8211]

12:25 Why I can't select and rotate axes of joints in Slelect By Component mode with "question" button turned on??? Joints are not selecting in this mode. WHY ITS HAPPENING?????

[@Chase3d304]

I have a character that is mostly human shaped but has a tail, am I able to use the quick rig and then add joints for the tail to it in the process?

[@hartgameart]

Hey Chases! I think you should be able to do this the same way I added joints to the loincloth in this video. Might take some tinkering but should be doable!

[@MsUndertaker99]

Create Skinning does so terrible result in my model, it looks like i'll have to paint skin weight all by myself and this is insanely stupid. I did everything just like you in video, but Maya refuses to do it's job correct. Does anyone know how to fix this? It will take eternity to paint everything by myself

[@Skrool23]

Hi love the tutorial,but i have done everything,but the finger bone that i created Following along don't creat any influence on the hand mesh,even after parenting to the hand joint,and Create/update the skinning. Im hopeless :( can someone help me?

[@Kannaos]

Same here :(

[@alliestrauss]

Hello from 2023😄 I wanted to ask why the pelt on his shoulder is triangulated. Is it a decimated model from zbrush that you will retopo later? I am very new to all things 3d, sorry if it's a stupid question.

[@hartgameart]

Hello! That's correct. I used a decimated model from zbrush as the low poly. I really only did this out of laziness and likely would take the time to hand retopo it in a professional environment (time permitting!)

[@andreirafael5582]

QUESTION: I followed all your steps and the sking wont work on fingers, and at the same time when I parent I don't see the pink hightline even if I have checked the box on Display-Animation-Highlight Affected. thank you vary much for this tutorial

[@felixart5614]

I wanna know as well. I cant get the fingers to work for some reasons

[@TTomeRR223]

Hey man ! really hoping you'll see this , using maya quick rig and whenever I move my arms they get snapped back to their original location , no matter what I try to do , but you don't get that error , what am I doing wrong ? Thanks for a great tutorial , even if I'm 11 month late ! subbed ♥

[@hartgameart]

Hey Tomer! I'm racking my brain trying to remember what causes that because I'm pretty sure I have run into it before. Going to think abou it some more and i'll get back to you if I remember what caused it.

[@tinyrainbow0505]

Hi Hart, I found that when I exported the posed character, the mesh was reset to the default position , not keeping any pose, could you help advise which step should I follow to 'bake' to pose to the character?

[@hartgameart]

Hey Luu, This is something I wish I covered in the video! The easiest way is to go to edit > delete all by type > history before you export your model. This will bake the transformations to your model. Keep in mind it will break your model off from your rig so I recommend saving a backup rig scene so you don't accidently save over it. Another workflow tip I forgot to go over in the video is saving keyframes. For example on frame 0 you could right click any controller and then choose "select hierarchy" and hit S on your keyboard to set a keyframe on all of the controls. From there you could slide to say frame 10, pose your character and repeat the process. That way you can have a library of poses along your timeline. You could technically export the entire rig with the model to most game engines and it should read but I find when I'm just trying to do presentation poses the above method is quicker with less headaches. Hope that helps!

[@tinyrainbow0505]

@@hartgameart Thank you Hart I followed it and the model is posed when exported now, thank you for the tips

[@bethanyewert5197]

parenting xgen scalps to joints doesn't work

[@unnf9971]

I heard real men pose by moving every single vertex by hand.

[@hartgameart]

facts ong

[@stasieknie6081]

Bro why you said that you have bad pc, when your whole setup without pc cost 2x more than my pc xdd

[@hartgameart]

haha sorry!

[@laurentiubodisteanu563]

Awesome tutorial, thanks alot!