Buying Rig/hiring Rigger

[gregs]

Hello there.

I have a question regarding acquiring the services of a professional rigger or the purchase of pro level rigs.

I don't even know where to really start. Does anyone know where an impoverished sort of guy like me would go to get some geometry rigged? Or if there are freelance TD's out there who would provide pre-rigged geometry?

And further, what should someone expect to pay for a one-off job such as this?

Thanks for your advice.

Greg

[fortner_mike]

I dont know how much should you pay for a rigger, but you can find some things like that (especially for games) in sites like turbosquid.com.

[gregs]

Thanks, but this would be more for film. Anything I've seen at TurboSquid, I could pretty much handle myself, and would not be to the level of sophistication I'll need. I'm after someone who can rig one male and one female human -- not photo real, but a sort of realistic cartoon. It's the skin weighting, influence objects and blendshapes that I need help with.

Buying a pre-made rig would be Plan B. I already have geometry that I like for the characters, and the best option would be to work in partnership with someone to get them rigged to a level where they can be posed and animated satisfactorily.

I wonder if I should put up a posting in the jobs section here, or at CGTalk.

Thanks for replying, thirt33n, and for your suggestions. And thanks to anyone else who has any others.

Greg

[joojaa]

Contact a a Indian animation shop ill bet tehy'll do one for you for a few thousand bucks. but as a rule of thumb id say a really good rig+ model+ textures + pipe costs about 5,000-20,000$ per character.

[gregs]

5,000-20,000$ per character.

YIPE!! That's far too rich for my taste. And I hope it's too rich for my needs, too. If that is the amount I'm looking at for what's essentially going to be a work-a-day rig.... well, I guess it's back to school for ol' Greg.

Thanks for your opinion though, Joojaa. I certainly hope I can find something less expensive than that. We're a small outfit with only our own money to invest in this.

Greg

[joojaa]

Well normaly we charge people 1000-2000 euros per 8h/day/person (anything below that and we outsource it ourseleves) of work. But again contact some person outside of the western world with the skills they can essentialy work a moth for my days salary.

Did you chek out the free rigs on highend.

Life aint cheap to make money you need to have money. And if it takes you month to get into rigging the 2000$ is pretty close to what you have spent. But this said proces fall all the time, and soon there will be no markets for simple rigs. So soon we shall strat pushing monolithic characters instead, that can be referenced into yur secen as any feemale just by sliding soem sliders.

PS this also brings teh cost of maya to a whole new perspective suddenly having all the ells and whistles in yoru computer and maya limitted dont csot all that much anymore.

[mike-milo]

You might try Anzovin's The Setup Machine which auto rigs and auto weights stuff for you.

[gregs]

Thanks, milowerx. I did try TSM, but it's possible I didn't give it a fair shot, as the model I was working with was not typical anatomically. It was an extremely over muscled figure, and the shoulder essentially behaved just as the default Maya weights would after a normal smooth skin operation. You know the one -- where the whole chest collapses when you rotate the shoulder down. Maybe I'll dig it out again.

Especially if I'm looking at the prices Joojaa has mentioned.

Thanks again.

Greg