Unit 1 — Pipeline, Design, and Model

Weeks 1–3

Everything that goes wrong in a rig can usually be traced back to a decision made before rigging
started. This unit is about making those decisions well.

You will find out where rigging sits in a production pipeline, design your character as a
technical document rather than an illustration, learn the topology that makes a joint bend
instead of crease, and draw your first joints.

By the end of this unit you should be able to

Explain where rigging sits in a pipeline and what it receives and hands off
Build a Maya asset file that resolves to a single top node
Read a concept drawing and derive rigging requirements from it
Produce a registered design sheet that loads directly into Maya as image planes
Solve a topology problem that changes face-loop count or redirects edge flow
Explain why it takes three edge loops to bend
Draw a joint chain with correct orientation, and prove that it is correct
Recognize when a skeleton should be redrawn rather than repaired

Weeks

Week	Topic	Due
1	The pipeline, the concept, and the rig spec	Exercise 1
2	Topology and asset setup — double session	Exercise 2 · Exercise 3 · Project 1
3	Skeletons I: joints, orientation, spine and legs	Exercise 4 · Project 2 + revision

Graded work in this unit

Item	Points
Exercise 1 — The Bouncing Ball Rig	10
Exercise 2 — The Topology Puzzle, the Muscle, and the Repair	15
Exercise 3 — Registered Image Planes and the Asset File	5
Exercise 4 — Spine and Leg Chains	10
Project 1 — Concept, Design & Rig Spec	75
Project 2 — Character Model	125

A note on this semester's schedule

The Fall term runs fifteen sessions, with Week 14 falling on Thanksgiving Break. To fit,
Week 2 is a double session covering both topology and asset setup, and there is no in-class
modeling studio.

What this means for you practically:

Your modeling happens outside class. Budget for it.
Exercise 3 is a short take-home checkpoint, due early in Week 2. Do it first — it
catches design-sheet registration errors before you model against them.
Project 2 is due Week 3 with its revision due the same week, so the turnaround is
tight. Start in Week 2, not Week 3.

If your topology or scene setup is giving you trouble, ask before Week 3 rather than after.

The two conventions this unit establishes

CPEV — one asset, one file, one node

Every Character, Prop, Environment, and Vehicle lives in its own Maya file and
resolves to a single top node. Assets are then referenced into shot scenes where many of them
coexist.

Consider a shot with four characters and six props. If every asset dropped fifteen top-level nodes
into the outliner, that scene would be unusable. One node per asset is what makes it tractable.

MSR — MoveScaleRotate

The single top node of a rigged asset is called MSR. Moving, scaling, or rotating it relocates
the entire asset in a shot without breaking anything inside it.

MSR                     — the one node a shot scene sees
├── Geometry            — meshes, bound and unbound
├── Joints              — skeleton, root joint at origin
└── Controls            — control curves, offset groups, rig systems

You build this in Week 2, empty, before there is anything to put in it. Everything you make for
the rest of the semester goes inside it.

One important detail: the Geometry group has its inheritsTransform turned off. Bound
meshes are already moved by their skinCluster, which calculates from the joints. If Geometry
also inherited MSR's transform, every mesh would move twice.

Next: Week 1 — The Pipeline, the Concept, and the Rig Spec