Chapter Three. Rigging Characters

Three Rigging Characters

Once your character is modeled, you'll need to get it ready for animation. This process is called rigging. The goal of rigging is to add a skeleton and controls to your model so that an animator can manipulate and animate the character. A properly built skeleton can be quickly and easily manipulated to attain any pose. Once the skeleton is built, it can deform the character in a way that will, ideally, make the rendered character look alive to the audience.

A good character rigger is part animator, part programmer, and part interface designer. The rigger needs to understand how animators work and translate that into an efficient setup. The perfect setup allows animators to have as much control over the character as they need while automatically managing the parts of a character that animators don't have to think about.