Vid Tutorials that ARE NOT Blender?

[Karl Reisman]

A friend wants to make rigged mesh for Sl. He's a professional, but likes playing. He would like good viodeo tutorials for 3ds max  or Maya. He does high level rigging for his day job, but is curious about second life, and wants to see if he can make his monsters as AV's for SL. Perhaps in ime for halloween?

--Karl

[Baloo Uriza]

You can ask the vendors of those products, I bet they have training courses. If you want free documentation, Blender is pretty much your only option.

[Chosen Few]

If, as you say, your friend is a professional rigger, then he should have no trouble whatsoever rigging SL avatars.  There's no reason he should need any special video tutorial.  Everythig he learned on day one when he began his rigging carreer is what applies.  In Maya, simply smooth bind, adjust the weights to his liking, and he's done.  That's it.

The avatar skeleton itself is exceedingly basic. As a professional, if it takes him more than just a few minutes to rig a standard character model to that skeleton, I'd be very surprised.

If, on the other hand, you're asking on behalf of someone who's brand new to rigging, then the best answer I can give that person is first to read through the chapter on rigging in the "User Guide" section fo the Maya help (just like every other Maya user on the planet has already done), and then, if he still doesn't get it, to search YouTube for "Maya character rigging tutorial" or "Maya paint weights tutorial".  There are tons to choose from. 

for example, is pretty good (but do keep in mind, it might not make complete sense to anyone who hasn't yet read up on the fundamentals).

The information is not SL-specific.  Rigging is rigging.  It's not about learing to rig SL avatars.  It's just about learning to rig, at the most basic level.

[Chosen Few]

---

Baloo Uriza wrote:

You can ask the vendors of those products, I bet they have training courses. If you want free documentation, Blender is pretty much your only option.

---

That's not accurate, Baloo.

Just because Maya and Max cost money doesn't mean there's no free documentation.  And just because Blender is free doesn't mean there's no paid training for it.  For just about every software tool on the planet, including those three, there's a wealth of both free and for-pay documentation available.  There's no direct correlation between software cost and training cost. 

 

The full Maya help documentation is freely available online, from Autodesk, and has been for many years now.  Here are the URL's for help severs for the last five versions:

• Maya 2013 Help:  http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2013/en_us/
• Maya 2012 Help:  http://download.autodesk.com/global/docs/maya2012/en_us/
• Maya 2011 Help: http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2011help/index.html
• Maya 2009 Help:  http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2009help/index.html
• Maya 2008 Help:  http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2008help/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

And here are the Getting Started guides, and lesson files, for the last two versions:  http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=9502844&siteID=123112&linkID=9242256

 

There are also countless thousands of video tutorials on YouTube, written tutorials on sites like CreativeCrash, and many others, all over the web. Even sites like Digital Tutors that exist to provide subscription-based training tend to offer plenty of free tutorials, as well.

Google "Maya tutorials", and you'll get over seven million results.  Most are free to access.

I would imagine all of the above is true when it comes to Max, as well.

[Pix Jigsaw]

Karl --

Is he looking 3D max or Maya videos specifically on rigging mesh for SL?  That's how I read your post, but the responses seem to be focused on general video training for Max and Maya (which he probably already knows about if he works with those packages professionally). 

I did a quick google and didn't see much specifically for SL rigging for 3D max or Maya.  Your friend might have to watch a Blender tutorial and adapt the basic process to his package of choice. 

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

As said before, the rigging itself shouldn't be an issue if your friend does this on a professional level.

A couple of things you really need to know about SL rigging and 3ds max though:

- You need an exact copy of the SL armature, hierarchy and bone names

- 3ds max skips unused bones on export, they have to be added by hand to the dae file

- Some versions of the collada exporter don't seem to work, at least for some people

It's all explained a more detailed here:

Mesh/Exporting a mesh from 3ds Max

And as Chosen said about Maya, 3d max has excellent free documentation and tutorials, all downloadable from the autodesk website. I think the tutorials of 2007 to 2013 are available.