InstantRig - Auto Rigger for Max

InstantRig is a modular auto rigging script for Max focusing on keyframe cartoon animations. It helps artists to create flexible, animator friendly and production quality rigs in minutes. We also provide rigging services, scripts, character rigs and tutorials for Maya and Blender.

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Freelance Rigging Service

If you are looking for a freelance 3D rigging artist with industry experience for your Maya, Blender or Max projects please get in touch with me via email or fill this form to get instant quote.

FIRAT KIRAL

support (at) instantrig (dot) com

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freelance 3D rigging artist, rigging expert for hire, rigger, character rigger, freelancer

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Sell Your Tutorials On CG Market

Making money from ads by publishing free tutorials is a challenging business model. Because this model requires large audience and high traffic to make a decent income. Some cases you’ll need to reach audience treshold before you can start making money from ads.

On the other hand, publishing paid tutorials is a more profitable way. Paid tutorials are currently in high demand and no need any audience tresholds to start making money.

Growing your audience by making money from the beginning is a more motivating way to continue pursuing your passion.

Finding tutorial ideas

Millions of content are published every day on the internet. When you publish a tutorial, chances are it’s going to disappear in the noise. 

To stand out from the crowd, you need to provide value by offering a solution to a problem and ensuring that they will walk away with something valuable. 

Have your own opinion and don’t be afraid to share your personal experiences. Visit forums and community pages to find problems that people are looking for solutions. And convert these problems into tutorials.

Where to sell tutorials

Cg Market is a platform that allows you to publish paid or free tutorials or digital content with simple steps. With CG Market, it’s as simple as publishing a blog post, with a payment wall. So your audience can pay to access your tutorials. 

You can go and register to cgmarket.net now if you haven’t already and start selling your tutorials. Please see video above for details.

Conclusion

Monetizing tutorials offers a more profitable and motivation path compared to relying on ad revenue. By providing valuable solutions to real problems and sharing your unique insights, you can build dedicated audience from the beginning.

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InstantRig for Max Now Free

InstantRig was around for almost 7 years and helped many animation projects. InstantRig is now free, please find it at the link below.

You can download here.

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Hulk Rig is Avalibe to Download Free

Hulk model rigged in 3ds Max, using CAT and CAT muscle including advanced face rig.

You can download here.

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Cgmarket.net is Online! Greatest products from the best creators

You may have already realized that all digital marketplaces take huge commissions, often making more money than the artists themselves. 

CG Market is a new platform for buying and selling 3D products, offering a better experience. If you are an artist seeking a marketplace to sell, share, or promote your 3D works, you should check out this platform to reach a wider audience.

CG Market offers all basic marketplace features plus stores where you can create your own store and sell in a more organized way. You can share your store with your community and start selling your products.

CG Market beta has started with Stripe payment integration, allowing your customers to directly pay into your Stripe account. So you don’t have to wait for the platform to pay you.

I am looking for feedback and suggestions. Please feel free to create your store and start sharing or selling your products. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact me at https://cgmarket.net/contact.

Cheers!

Key Features:

Focued on 3D Artists: CG Market is designed specifically for 3D artists, providing a platform where they can sell, share, and promote their digital products without any restrictions.

No Exploitative Commissions: Unlike other marketplaces, CG Market does not exploit artists by taking huge commissions, ensuring that artists can sell their products without losing a significant portion of their earnings.

Customizable Stores: Artists on CG Market have the ability to create and customize their own stores, enabling them to showcase their products in a way that aligns with their brand and style.

Direct Payments via Stripe: The platform supports direct payments through Stripe, allowing customers to pay artists directly into their Stripe accounts without any delays. With only a 2.9% processing fee and a competitive 5% platform fee per transaction, CG Market offers some of the lowest fees in the market.

Beta Version for Feedback: As the platform is currently in beta, users are encouraged to provide feedback and suggestions for improvement. This open communication channel ensures that the platform evolves based on user needs and preferences

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Blender Weight Layers Addon Paint weights like a pro!

Using layers is a proven concept that has been used in many applications for a long time. Layers are enabling artists to stack multiple weight layers and control influence on the final result by focusing spesific regions on each layer. This is valuable when dealing with complex characters or creatures rigs. It also useful to make fine tuned corrections without directly modifying the base weights.

You can get the Weight Layers addon from link below: https://cgmarket.net/weight-layers

Weight Layers is a paid Blender addon that allows you to create and manage weight layers for your armatures and enables a flexible workflow for creating and editing skin weights. It is designed to be simple and easy to use, while still providing a powerful set of features.

Divide and paint is the best strategy for painting weights for characters. It is easier to paint weights in focused areas and also easier to debug and fix issues without breaking other weights already painted. I hope you find this tutorial useful and see you in the next one.

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The Impact of AI on the 3D Animation Industry

When the 3D era began, we witnessed many artists fighting against 3D, but change was inevitable. Those who did not adopt the change and refused to learn new tools unfortunately were naturally left behind. 

So, with the new AI era, does it ring any bells?

You may think that you need to adopt and learn new tools to integrate AI into your work in order to survive. But things are different now. AI doesn’t need you at all, so your services are no longer needed. 

Why do I think this way? Because it animates and renders all together. We may only need simple 3D animatics to be done by real people to provide a brief to AI for generating a movie at most. 

So, what should we do as 3D artists? I foresee that the game industry will survive longer than the movie industry. Because games need real-time interaction with the player and a 3D world, it may take some more time for AI to take over the game industry. We 3D artists better have a Plan B to switch to the 3D game industry without being too late.

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Export Vertex Weights in Blender Export and import vertex group weights in blender

Weights Extra (Blender 2.8x, 3.x, 4.x)

This addon is a handy tool designed to simplify the process of vertex weight exchange. It enhances Blender's capabilities by providing a set of features that make importing and exporting weights easy.

The addon stores weight data based on vertex IDs along with mesh data so weights can also be imported to different meshes with different vertex count and topology. Import and export operations are done in world space, so you don't need to worry about transform values on the mesh or armature.

Import Methods

Auto: Automatically chooses the best method for the imported mesh.

Vertex ID: Matches and imports weights based on vertex IDs. Source and target meshes must be identical.

Closest Vertex: Imports weights based on the closest vertex. Works best transferring weights from hi to low density mesh.

Closest Point: Imports weights by calculating projected point on the closest triangle. Works best transferring weights from low to hi density mesh.

Maya Support Weights extra supports maya ngSkinTools addon data format and allows exchanging weights between two addons.  Means that you can import ngSkin data to blender and import weights extra data to ngSkin. This exchange only support vertex ID transfer between identical meshes due to different coordinate systems.

Installing Addon You can either unzip and copy weights_extra folder to your blenders addons folder or you go to blender preferences -> add-ons tab, click install and select weights_extra.zip file. Make sure Weights Extra addon is activated by searching its name on addons panel.

Tool Panel When you activate Weight Paint mode, tool will show up at the bottom of Tool panel.

Exporting Weights Click export button. It only exports vertex weights used by armature, all other vertex weights will be ignored.

Importing Weights Click import button and select the import method if needed. Its default to ‘Auto’ and will pick best method that fits to current import scenario. It replaces only armature vertex groups, all other vertex groups stay intact.

API Methods You can use its python api to import your own scrips.

from weights_extra import import_weights, export_weights import_weights(object_name, filepath) export_weights(object_name, filepath, method="AUTO") # method is optional, default is "AUTO", other options are "VERTEX_ID", "CLOSEST_VERTEX", "CLOSEST_POINT"

Please visit https://cgmarket.net/weights-extra to get this addon.

Hope you find this tool useful, enjoy.

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Layered Face Rigging In Blender Live shape keys in geometry nodes

Live blendshapes in Maya or morph targets in Max have been a common rigging practice for long time. Live updates on shape targets allows riggers to create more complex and flexible rigs by layering rigs. It means you can rig each shape target independently and combine them as one facial rig on main face mesh, all without needing complex setup typically required when working on a single mesh. 

Unfortunately blender shape keys doesn’t support live update from source shape targets. It only stores 3d coordinates of each shape key inside the main object. But with the recent geometry nodes feature, we can now add different meshes as live sources and create rig layers.

Basic Setup

We’ll try to create 3 layer face rig. On the original mesh, we will control general areas of face and go into details on second mesh and have lattice on third one. You can find tutorial files here. See gif below to get the idea.

Geometry Nodes

We add a geometry node modifier to main mesh from modifiers tab then create first layer as shown below image.

It’s a simple graph, we get vertex positions of second mesh from ‘Object Info’ node and set to original mesh. See the result gif below.

We repeat same steps for second layer for getting its vertex positions. Then we use ‘Mix Color’ node to add those two source mesh vertex positions together. But there is one caveat, since we add both positions together, main mesh will be twice as big. To prevent this we subtract original mesh vertex positions at the end. So we only receive changed positions from source meshes. Check graph below.

Second layer result well be as in the gif below.

Done! We successfully added 2 layers to our face rig. Some of you may see a pattern here. Instead of creating and connecting all those nodes for each layer, we can make it modular by grouping layer nodes. See gif below.

After grouping layer nodes, we can expose the object input so we can easily assign layer meshes from group node.

Now its ready for chaining. We replace first layer nodes with the group by cloning our first group and assign firt source mesh. Then we connect each layer starting from original mesh. See gif below.

Almost perfect, see results below.

As bonus we can also add blending factor for changing influence each layer. To do this we simply expose ‘factor’ from add and subtract nodes.

That’s it. Hope you find this useful for your rigging projects. You can find tutorial files here.

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Exporting Rigify to Game Engine

Exporting clean FBX data is essential for maintaining integrity of 3D rigs in game development or transferring animation data between different applications.

Blender and Rigify are among the most used tools in 3d animation industry. While Rigify rigs highly flexible and animation friendly you may, encounter some issues when it comes to exporting animations as FBX. Some non-deform bones that are in a parent-child relationship with the actual deform bones inside the rig, exported hierarchies are not clean and contain unstructured bone chains.

Luckily there is a quick and simple way to achieve a clean hierarchy. You can re-parent all deform bones by following these steps:

Enable 'deform bones' layer

Select all joints and clear parent

Reparent them desired way (by keeping offset)

Export fbx with 'only deform bones' option

Now you see clean bone hierarchy when you import your FBX file to other applications.

Rigify rig should continue working as usual in blender after this update but I recommend saving a version before modifying it.

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Collobox: Digital Content Collaboration and Sharing

Collobox is a web applictaion that provides a platform for sharing and managing your work files in an organized way. It makes easy to store, access and collaborate on files with your team members or clients in one location. This can help us to avoid confussion and ensure that everyone is working with the most up to date information.

As a freelancer or a busines that collaborates with remote workers,it can be difficult to manage and keep track of all the files being shared, includng revisions and different versions. When dealing with multiple projects, relying on email attachments or cloud storage platforms can become overwhelming and inefficient.

By default all the files are private and only team members can see and download them. However you can change the privacy settings and make files public if needed.

Overall Collobox is a great tool for anyone who needs to manage and share work files regularly. It is simple to use, offers great features and is a secure platform for sharing files. Whether you are a freelancer or a business owner, Collobox can help you stay organized.

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Why Blender is not Industry Standard Yet

While Blender is a popular and free software for 3D animation, modeling and rendering, many studios still use other software like Maya or Max. But why? Here are some factors that affect studios’ decisions.

Industry Standards

For many years same software are on the lead for visual effect, animation and game development. Many studios built their pipelines around these software and artists are already well-trained in using them. Switching to a different tool like Blender would require training and adaptation. Which might be extremely time consuming and costly.

Integration with Existing Tools

Studios often use a wide range of software and plugins that are built to work with Maya or Max. These tools include render engines, physics simulations, pipeline management systems etc. The compatibility and integration of these tools with Maya and Max are well-established, therefore, it is easy for studios to incorporate them into their workflows.

Flexibility and Customization

Maya and Max are highly customizable and flexible, and its possible to build custom tools and plugins to meet specific needs via their Python or C++ APIs. Even though Blender is also customizable, it only expsoses limited APIs over Python. Its not possible to create fast C++ algorithms or plugins for Blender. Currently only way doing this is by bluiding Blender from source code and redistributing it. This is not a viable option for studios.

Support and Documentation

Maya and Max benefit from wide ranging support resources and documentation such as official documentations, user forums, tutorials, and a large user base. These are very valuable for artists and technical professionals when facing issues or learning new techniques. Although Blender also has a strong community and support system, what it has is not extensive as the support available for Max and Maya.

Collaboration

studios often collaborate with other studios or freelancers, and they are using software that are widely adopted in the industry. Maya and Max have a strong presence in the industry, which makes it easier to share assets and work with external partners. While Blender has gained popularity, it does not have the same level of adoption, which could cause challenges when collaborating with other studios.

Conclusion

The choices of software ultimately depends on the specific needs and preferences of each studio. While many studios continue to use Maya or Max, there are also notable examples of studios successfully adopting Blender as their primary software. Blender’s open source nature and continuous development make it compelling option for those who are looking for a powerful and cost-effective solution.

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Farlee Ui

It’s a cool picker from Darwin Giordano. Check link for more.

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Amazing picker tool from Darwin Giordano

Tool that works in conjunction with InstantRig.

Generate Position, Rotation and Scale keys for all character controls.

Hide controls

Hide bones

Selects all controls

Resets the controls to their initial value. 

Download here.

Enjoy.

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"ANGRY BECKY" - by Eri Umusu

Here is the another great project done with instantrig.

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Never Give Up

Here is the another funny animation project done by Marian Jurik.

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Here is the script written by Darwin Giordano which helps to display the keys in the trackbar. It only works with instantrig. You can download script here (up to 2017) or here (2018 and later) for free.

For more from Darwin please check this https://twitter.com/dg3duy