Frustrating path of rigging...

Good day! I want to touch the nitty-gritty subject of becoming a rigging master.

I was studying the blender around 9 months and i always want to do a reallistic human rig  that can do everything. So to speak honestly, i did not have much sucess. I tried to rig using Autorig-Pro, but the author was extremelly uncooperative, and ignoring like a half of my questions so i refund addon, not to mention all problems that occur in Rigify rig were presented here as well. When doing a research on my own i was kinda shocked - despite Blender hitting 20 Years of existance, there's not much detailed tutorials on a advanced rigging and skinning. When i stumble on this site i rejoiced in delight - finally, the source of the blender specific courses and tutorials for a low montly payment! I enjoyed the suggested basic rig tutorials, they well explained and informative, but after then... That's all? Why the rigging section is so barren? Where's is courses on advanced deformations, using either bones and/or shape-keys? Proper manual skinning? How to human rig hips, which is the main area that's new people have most struggle with? Anatomiclly correct Splits, extreme poses like action or fighting game characters will actually do? To me it seems either professionals who have passed the nightmare of studying either doesn't want to share presious info or everyone knows all, but again for some reson not willing to share. So to put it like that, if you want to learn the Physics you won't come with Physics laws on your own right? Like even in test rig, which is exuquisitly done by the way, there's no correlation to the course, like how it exacly done? There's mesh deform and lattice modifier, but that's not touched in tutorial at all. And when you click on the def.bones layer they not even showing the weight's. Look's like rigging skill is some black magic or knowledge from sacred black monolith, who gives it only to choosen one. I don't understand why science of rigging threating like it's a war secret's or something. Only real good tutorial channel i know is Dan Pro. But he is just a one person, he can't cover everything and the last video was like 9 moths ago. Most videos on youtube is useless shlock for people with short attention spans, which will quit after 2 weeks. And i also don't get why there's so much information on the animation, but not the rigging, or animators just outsourcing all hard work to capable people?

And what about game models? Im pretty sure you can't just using automatic weights and throw dozens of bones into the game rig,  due to performance reason's and yet they need to be look reasonably good as is, especially in cutscenes, without usage of complicated render specific features like, corrective or subsurf modifiers. Or the fact that you can't have a preserve volume option in game engine, so weight paint should be different.

So to sum it up, my question is this - dear riggers/animators how are you went you way though? Do you studying a ceratin books? Or you just spending thousands of hours without much konwledge blindly fightting yor way though the hard way? I  have hard time to find a even non-Blender specific teacher in my country, sadly because there's not much traction in that area. English is not my main language so i apologise for any grammar mistakes or poor wording. I hope i doesn't sound harsh, just a thoughts of a man that spare around 900 hours in blender with no sucess and frustrated beyond belief...

  • spikeyxxx replied

    Somebody here already mentioned it, but this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3J-XN38EnhQ&list=PLE211C8C41F1AFBAB

    is an excellent tutorial series on humane rigging by Nathan Vegdal!

    I agree, that there are almost no good rigging tutorials, but then again, rigging is really hard and there are not a lot of people that can do it.

    Maybe it's so that those that can rig, must work 60 hours per week to get their job done (because there are so little riggers and so many things to be rigged), so no time left to make tutorials?

  • greatowl replied

    Hm... guess that's not relevant topic at all. At least i can pretend that we live in 1998 era of internet, btw do your hear about that Fallout 2 game, looks neat huh? He he... yeah.