NAB 2018 Rewind - EJ Hassenfratz: Painless Character Rigging using Deformers and Splines

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  • Duration: 49:58
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  • Made with Release: 19
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In this C4D Live presentation from NAB 2018, motion designer and character animator EJ Hassenfratz shares how he took control of his career by getting back to the basics and creating personal projects that were exciting to him. This allowed him to transition from creating flying logos to incredibly charming and cute character animations. In this video, he shows that you don’t have to be a technical director to create a character rig that deforms well and animates easily. Hassenfratz starts by rigging a Penguin using only simple Bend, Twist, and Squash and Stretch deformers. Then he creates a simple rig for a sock with just a few joints and an Inverse Kinematics (IK) tag. He then shows how he created a delightfully squishy bear using the Spline Wrap deformer. He closes out his presentation with some great tips from how to reuse a rig across characters or automate your lip sync with the Sound Effector. This is a must watch for anyone looking to take their first steps into character animation with Cinema 4D.

00:00Introduction
06:48Demo Reel
09:11Penguin Animation
10:48Waddle with the Bend Deformer
11:09EJ_PenguinTwoUp
13:00Adding Life with the Squash and Stretch Deformer
15:17Addig Joints and IK to a Sock
19:04Adding Automatic Flopping
21:44Rigging a Sleepy Bear with Spline IK
24:15Using Spline Wrap instead of Joints
24:46Animating the Elbow with a Pole
26:39Rigging the Torso
33:04Connecting the Arms to the Torso
39:03Reusing Rigs with Different Characters
40:49Putting Boxing Gloves on a Bear
42:24Rigging a Mouth
44:26Automatic Lip Sync

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