Duplicating Limbs in Malcolm Rig for Animation Effects
When it comes to duplicating limbs in the Malcolm Rig to create smear or motion burst effects in animation, we enter a terrain that, although delicate, can be very entertaining. Animators working with characters in Maya, Blender, or Cinema 4D know that this rig, being a reference in the industry and animation schools, is not the most friendly for duplicating body parts… but it's not impossible either.
Common Methods for Duplicating a Limb
The quick and effective solution largely depends on the software you're using. Let's assume you're working in Maya, the most common environment for this rig. First, you must understand that you can't simply duplicate the skeleton or the arm or leg control directly, as the rig comes protected and encapsulated in several nodes that block that type of operation. Here are some strategies that work:
- Export only the limb's geometry as an independent mesh using the Duplicate Special option without history.
- Create a copy of the arm or leg in the pose state you want and use a different shader or apply manual motion blur with deformers.
- In Maya, use Blend Shape to move the duplicated geometry independently from the rest of the rig.
If you're working in Blender or Cinema 4D and have imported the Malcolm, you can convert the mesh to an editable object, duplicate the part you're interested in, and manipulate it as you wish for the smear. After duplicating the geometry, you can animate it independently or even add a special material like ghosting or a flat color that contrasts, so the smear is more evident. And of course, remember to hide it in the frames where you don't need it, because otherwise, the final render will look like Malcolm had a poorly calculated teleportation attack 😵.
Some Extra Visual Tricks
If you want to go one step further and give it a more traditional 2D animation look within 3D, you can deform the duplicated mesh using a Lattice, or even an FFD deformer in Cinema 4D or the Mesh Deform Modifier in Blender. This will allow you to stretch, squash, and distort the limb's geometry in a more controlled way.
And as a final note, if in the middle of the process Malcolm starts to look like a psychedelic octopus, don't worry, it's the magic of smear… or maybe you just forgot to hide duplicates in the key frames 😂.