Video Tutorials¶
A full course, in the order we recommend watching it. Each lesson is short and does one thing; each one also appears at the top of its matching guide.
Videos are in production — the frames below mark what's on the way.
Start here¶
Zero to a working install, and the mental model everything else builds on.
Trailer
Octo Rig Composer in 60 seconds.
What ORC Is
The big picture: why a Master Controller is worth building, and what ORC adds on top of Harmony's own.
Installation & Activation
From download to a licensed, launching tool inside Harmony.
Interface Tour
Navigator, Editor, Outliner, the top bar and the action bar — what each region is for.
Your first Master Controller¶
One control, one grid, a handful of poses, one Compose. The shortest complete round trip.
Concepts & Vocabulary
Control, pose layer, knob, target, snap, key domain — the words the whole tool is built out of.
Your First Control
Creating a control, setting its Front face, choosing a grid.
Adding Targets
Pulling nodes out of the Node View into a layer's target list, and what a target actually is.
Frames-First Pose Authoring
Posing in Harmony's Camera View and stamping the frame with F6 — why ORC stores a frame reference, not a delta.
Your First Compose
Naming the MC, the Compose Settings dialog, and what lands in your scene.
Testing the MC
Driving the composed rig in the Camera View, and what to check before you ship it.
Building a real head¶
Turnarounds, several pose layers, sides, and extra axes — the shape of an actual production rig.
Front + Back Turnaround
The Back face, Share Sides / Share Extremes, and how one control carries a whole turnaround.
Pose Layers Under a Control
Eyebrows, eyelids, mouth corners — layers that key across the control's grid.
Pages, Pairs & Sides
L/R pairs, solo grids, Both-N, flipping sides, mirroring, and copy/paste of sides.
Grids in Depth
Grid types, the Custom Grid dialog, Fill Grid, the rulers, and Excel-style autofill.
Knobs — Giving a Layer an Extra Axis
Turning a layer into a knob, a control's own knob vs an extra knob, and what a knob costs you.
Fill Dimensions
Copying a layer's frames across every position of its knob, with offsets.
The Navigator, Scope & Pins
How the left column follows your selection, and pinning a reference grid.
Visibility Groups
Grouping widgets and rig nodes, cascade vs override, and the Hidden sink.
Behaviours¶
Everything that moves the rig without being a pose: drivers, constraints, and the look-at system.
Drivers 1 — Sliders & Checkboxes
Your first driver: a target, an attribute, a widget, a value.
Drivers 2 — Combos, 2D Grids & Multi-Attribute
Drawing substitution, attribute mappings, and the 2D pad.
Drivers 3 — Scopes & Key Domains
Global, Control, Pose Layer, and the Control + Pose Layer product.
Drivers 4 — Influence & Driven Drivers
Release/hold influence, drivers driving drivers, and same-kind rules.
Constraints
Copy and Lock, channel selection, and gating a constraint with a checkbox driver.
Look-At 1 — Tracked Pegs
The joystick, iris pegs, ranges, squash and convergence.
Look-At 2 — Deform Follow
Making deforms follow the gaze: force, bulge, and per-curve weights.
Look-At 3 — Pairs, Keying & Overlay Sliders
Multiple pairs, keying look-at fields per snap, mirroring and exposing fields to animators.
Layout & delivery¶
Making the rig readable on the canvas, then getting it out of ORC.
Widget Editor 1 — Placing Widgets
Snapshots, the canvas, folders, and laying widgets over the character.
Widget Editor 2 — Labels, Colours & Handles
Handle types, colour, labels, guides and snapping.
Compose in Depth
Compose settings, what gets written, incremental compose, and the knob report.
Unroll — Baking Poses to the Timeline
Unroll scope, frame offsets, the poses table, and merging two MCs.
Re-opening & Re-editing a Composed MC
Importing an existing MC, what comes back, and re-composing safely.
Production workflow¶
Reusing work across shots and characters, and keeping a big rig fast.
Pose Presets
Every section you can save, and what each one actually captures.
Character & Config Presets
Building one configuration and reusing it across a whole cast.
Grid & Frame Presets
Saving grid shapes and frame layouts, and importing Harmony .gridPreset files.
Preferences, Shortcuts & Skip Nodes
Tuning ORC to your hands, and the Octo Skip Nodes integration.
Troubleshooting & Big Rigs
Reading the log, performance on heavy rigs, and the usual suspects.
Prefer to read?
Every lesson above has a written guide with screenshots. Start at Concepts & Vocabulary and follow the sidebar top to bottom — it is ordered the same way.