Hiroyuki Akasaki Breaks Down Rig Building With Maya's Bifrost

One of the most famous Bifrost artists, Hiroyuki Akasaki, who impressed us on more than one occasion with their neat rigs, joined Autodesk for a series of written guides, introducing examples of rigging, animation, and physical simulation using Maya's plug-in Bifrost.

Some of the features explored are experimental, and you need to have basic knowledge of Maya and Bifrost, as well as an understanding of rigging and mathematics (vectors and matrices), so this series of tutorials is tailored for advanced-level artists.

In the first part, Hiroyuki Akasaki explores building a belt rig that can be fixed at both ends to maintain length. Unfortunately, the article is only available in Japanese, but auto-translation should be able to help you get through the process. Of course, it would be great if this breakdown and future ones were translated into English, expanding the reach of valuable Bifrost knowledge to a wider audience.

There's a free Maya file available to download at the end of the article, so you can explore and experiment with it on your own. Check it out by clicking this link and have a look at some recent Hiroyuki Akasaki's tools, including an interface-less script that creates a Shadow Threshold Map by interpolating SDF:

Stay tuned for the next part and don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.