Key Challenges in 3D Production Today
Malcolm User Interface
Auto-Rigging and Auto-Skinning Tools
For far too long, Auto-Rigging and Auto-Skinning tools have failed to meet the needs of creatives. Rigging, Skinning and Animation is still far too challenging, and a huge time sink for everyone. The best tools in the industry are often just scripts or pre-made templates building very limited modules or bipeds/quadrupeds: a significant restriction on the creativity of artists, animators and riggers and their own skillsets. Even with non-modular auto-rigs, they usually have simple animation controls, complex interfaces, and productive use requires extensive training.
Highly skilled rigging specialists have always been needed to build rigs with complex production needs to a high standard.
Throughout the decades of innovation in 3D Art and Modelling, skinning is still very time consuming across 3D content production.
Ultimately, production projects are impacted, holding back productivity, restricting creativity and even new concepts and ideas.
3D Animation and Content Production
Rigging and Animation itself has always been a linear process from start to finish. Animation work depends entirely on stable, completed rigs built earlier in the production pipeline. Simple mistakes in rigs can massively set back production pipelines, and pipelines may not be able to easily accommodate fixes and changes late in production. Even early on in production or pre-production, rigging block-outs are often too time consuming, and too challenging to build due to technical limitations imposed by auto-rigging software.
Summary
To summarise, there are:
No big improvements or real innovation in auto-rigging software
Many failed efforts to improve techniques, or introduce new approaches
Long standing limits in tools bottle-necking creativity and productivity
Incumbent tools that don’t often effectively meet the needs of creatives
No good common standards or capabilities in tools across DCC platforms