Revolutionizing Rigs: Modern widgets for Character Animation

Animation rigs haven't changed much over the years, especially if compared with the other tasks of a 3D pipeline. There's no lack of significant research though, so what is holding rigs back?
Blender offers the opportunity to rethink how we approach characters: in this talk, Paolo Acampora walks through the making of a modern animation system.
"Revolutionizing Rigs: Modern widgets for Character Animation" by Paolo Acampora --
Learn more about Blender Conference 2023 at conference.blender.org/2023/
#BCON23 #b3d

[@Antonio-wi7ll]

Paolo is awesome!

[@Kavukamari]

just about two or three years ago people were still wondering if blender was going to be in professional pipelines, and NOW this is the talk we're having, that's kind of amazing

[@zeeyannosse]

haaaaaaa ! great awesomenesssssss!!1 whOOOoooooo !!!! I have to pause at 2:34 ;))) and share my gratitude towards >>> this is wonderfull pure moment of joy to discover the character of the blender community ! fantastico !!! merci beaucoup ;)) cheers !!!

[@GUNI_guni]

Damn, the title wasn't lying

[@phalhappy8612]

I'm honestly surprised when I hear prefessonal riggers say "rigging hasn't changed much since 90s", because we should be having the most available resources to learn rigging than other chapter in 3D, yet it is the exact opposite.

[@ventiladordesuco]

I think that's bc rigging is super context dependent. There's no solution that's a perfect fit for all projects. That said, I don't think the real problem with rigging is about controllers, rather, the binding process. The weight painting is the real 90's workflow that never fades. It's much like the UV paradigm, there's another talk that goes into UV with the same argument: ancient problems with ancient solutions

[@darkwraithcovenantindustries]

This dude is a boss. Paolo is such an endearing character!

[@thomaskumlehn5107]

I very much like, that he repeated the questions at Q&A

[@Fozz84]

whoop, first view and it's on a subject I love!

[@Fozz84]

The scroll wheel could be a good substitute for a pie menu. That way you can switch between parts after pressing "g" just by muscle memory (or by looking at the info bit at the bottom of the screen). personally I always run blender with my terminal window open. the extra info is super useful for me.

[@Nuttoz]

I want to try it out quickly.

[@cristiangambadori220]

As an animator I don't have any problem with rigs. I also hate to work with nodes, that apparently are very appreciated by Blender devs.

[@Nuttoz]

3 ways to Rigs.
You can use style that your Prof' and try to use nodes sometime.

[@hereb4theend]

I love this guy! 🥰😍🤩😊

[@renatogangemi]

I wonder if it would be possible to create an animation system using face sets and pose brush. Face sets could function similarly to weight painting and could be enhanced with features like "masking by face sets" or the creation of temporary anchor points, right? Also, utilizing the system of vertex groups and blend shapes could be considered, couldn't it?

[@bosunomoloso]

This speaker would be a very awesome movie villain 😊

[@chadyonfire7878]

this sounds kinda promising

[@barchuk422]

one thing for sure, it's hard to create such technology alone, and it sounds like paolo needs to work on his egocentricity to allow space for other people to adopt and grow his tools

[@shebuislam4]

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@JaXuun]

this exactly shows why blender is blender. why easy when it can be convoluted and difficult. dinosaur mindset.

[@gomax1990]

Useless feature... complicated

[@hermano8160]

well, right now bones in Blender aren't really great to handle if you ask me. They are either big chunks, in the way all the time, or too thin to select.
From my limited exp with posing the most annyoing thing is that the (rigify) bone shapes aren't really that intuative and I am not sure why.
Still: I appreciate the idea of advancing the whole rigging workflow. Is this the best approach though (ontop of the object surface)? I'm not sure either.
The sculpting tools are the most accessible thing in blender.
In a perfect world posing will work more like a mix of moving rigid objects and fast switching to something like sculpting - like shape keys and stiff bones combined in one, being able to move sticks around but also 'grab the material' and smush it around for the fine details withing constraints.
I am also not very experience but wondered right from the beginning why the rigging does awesome things but at the same time have so unintuative design choices.
I guess every software comes from a certain path. It explains the amature layers - they really are bad and only legacy.

[@me-jd7mu]

i think it would be really easy to understand and easily animated, except for the face controls, but i think some mixed system will work great

[@gomax1990]

@@me-jd7mu still complicated...best for developers not for us