This video download of Rigging Revealed Video: Professional Techniques for LightWave from NewTek by LightWave provides over 5 hours of motion capture training, or "rigging", from character and creature artist Lino Grandi. This video is designed to help artists master the art of rigging in LightWave with techniques for creating character animations that are similar to ones found in feature films. The video download consists of 19 files - 18 video files and 1 content file, for a total of 2.57GB. In the video, Lino Grande discusses the LightWave rigging process and offers instructions for the rigging of bones, as well as joints, building skeletons, and rigging without weight maps. Rigging without weight maps allows you to change a character's geometry after a rig has been created without having to spend the extra time to repaint weight falloffs after each change. Lino also provides instruction on creating controls and IK setup. "Controls" involves the creation of 'control handles' so the animator may more easily move and pose the character. With a good rig, you might have many factors that are interdependent on each other, and it might not be readily obvious what part of an animation to grab in order to make a pose. Well thought out controls can be made so that this process is more artist friendly. In IK, or Inverse Kinematics, motion from an animation travels from the extremities to the more proximal joints (closer to the body). IK allows users to perform anchoring, tracking, magnetism, and sticky feet, as well as advanced animations, such as bipedal or quadrupedal locomotion. This tutorial is designed for LightWave versions 11 and higher.
