Rigging in animation is the technique of applying a skeletal framework of “bones” to the underpinnings of a 2D character or a 3D model. Each bone can be animated and affects connected pieces in a hierarchy of movement. This is achieved by using specialized rigging software.
Rigging software is necessary for skeletal animation. There are other types of animation, but 3D skeletal animation has become ubiquitous in every medium using animation, such as movies, TV, video games, and advertising.
So much of a character’s personality comes through in how they move and the way they stand. Rigging software makes it possible to finely tune movements and stance so your 2D and 3D characters convey the personality you want. With animation rigging software, you can adjust everything from the posture of a character’s shoulders and the gait of their walk to the articulation of their fingers. By adjusting each part of their skeletal structure during the animation process, you can create truly believable characters.
The steps for rigging a character in animation rigging software are similar to rigging a physical puppet in stop-motion animation, but done virtually:
Create your model using 2D or 3D modeling software.
Add a skeleton to your model using rigging software, whether human-like, animal-like, or fantastical.
Define the weight of each “bone” to determine how they influence the movement of the model.
Set forward and inverse kinematics—the rotation and movement of joints during animation.
A rigging artist adds a skeleton-like structure of connected bones to the inner workings of a 2D or 3D model using model rigging software. For a character, there may be arm and finger bones, a spine, and so on, but non-character models such as vehicles, trees, and other objects can be rigged, too.
Animators can use keyframing to move the rigged bones’ position, rotation, and more, animating the rigged model. The connected bones of a rig are in a hierarchal relationship to each other, which helps simplify the work of animation. For example, the rotation of a shoulder joint will affect the movement of the upper arm, elbow, and forearm.
Rigging artists may create hundreds of control points for a complex model based on how they want the character to move. However, taking additional steps in 2D or 3D character rigging software yields more realistic animations. The technique of weight painting interprets how vertices within the larger 3D mesh of a character model will respond to the movements of discrete bones in a rig.
Character rigs also often need inverse kinematics, a tool in animation rigging software that keeps jointed bone clusters like arms and legs pointed in the right direction when a character moves. Realistic movement also requires that the artist applies constraints or restrictions to some of a character rig’s bones so that, for instance, a certain bone can only move in one direction.
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With animation rigging software, VFX artists and animators can set up hierarchal control systems over the 3D model’s movements, making animation easier and offering several benefits, including:
Character rigging allows animation through the “bone” movements of a skeletal structure, rather than defining a polygonal mesh’s animation by movements of individual vertices.
When set up well in 3D rigging software, a character’s connected skeletal parts will move together, according to a programmed bone hierarchy.
Whether it’s a character, object, or another kind of 2D or 3D model, rigging software can set specific constraints for individual bones in a rig for more realistic movement.
3D character rigging software includes weight painting, which assigns weight information that determines how much influence a bone in a rig has on a vertex of a 3D mesh, contributing to more realistic character movement.
3D character rigging software sets up a 3D model to move according to a hierarchy of bone structure, freeing animators from detailing every tiny character movement so they can focus on the bigger picture.
With all the work required to set up a character model for animation, rigging software can save and copy entire riggings to be reused or modified for similar characters, the same way that animations can be reused or modified to save time.
Autodesk Maya is a popular choice of rigging software for professionals, in part because it also incorporates a full suite of character creation and animation tools. Maya even includes a Quick Rig option to instantly create a character rig based on your mesh with a single click.
Bifrost for Maya, the visual programming environment for procedural effects, now includes tools for modular and procedural rigging. These features let you create rigs, convert skeletons, and apply procedural frameworks to accelerate iterations and save time while rigging.
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Maya’s Machine Learning (ML) Deformer lets you approximate complex deformations to speed up character rig posing and playback. The ML Deformer learns from an animation sequence that displays the range of motion for the target geometry and applies that learning to approximate movement on your rig. It’s useful for creating portable characters, particularly for background and crowd scenes, or for working interactively with a fast representation of a complex character before returning to the original for polish and rendering.
Rigging in Maya lets you designate special nodes that can behave in different ways.
Bifrost’s rigging workflows can simplify the rigging process and accelerate iterations, saving you valuable time.
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Rigging sets up a skeletal structure for a 3D model, which creates a hierarchy of movement for the 3D model’s animation. Rigging makes up only a part of the animation workflow. With a character’s skeletal rig set up in model rigging software, animators then use keyframing to apply movements to the model’s “bones,” such as programming their position, rotation, and so on. The rigging software’s hierarchical structure helps determine how some bones react when other bones move.
Artists use the term “skeletal animation” interchangeably with the term “rigging.”
Skeletal animation is a 3D animation technique that endows the 3D model of a character or an object with a set of interconnected “bones,” which are then animated. Bones in the skeleton can have weight assigned to them to determine how much influence they have over a 3D model’s vertices. One bone’s movement will determine how other connected bones move as well, making animation more realistic and less laborious.
Artists may learn all or most 3D animation techniques, but whether one person works on both rigging and animation depends on the individual job.
Big-budget productions like feature-length 3D animated movies tend to use specialists in each area, such as rigging, animating, modeling, compositing, texturing, and more. For smaller or more generalist jobs, a single 3D artist might do more than one thing, such as both rigging and animating.
Some 2D and 3D rigging software also includes the option to perform automatic rigging. However, most professional productions would want to tweak the automated rigging for best results.
In 3D animation, rigging serves to make a 3D model easier to animate with realistic movement. Rigging refers to the creation of a skeleton-like series of “bones” within a 3D model using rigging software.
With the rig in place, the rigging artist can use inverse kinematics to tie the movement of one bone to the successive movements of connected bones. Weight painting is also used to ensure that when the rigging’s bones move, the outer mesh of a 3D model also moves and deforms in realistic ways.
These techniques have helped make rigging an essential part of most contemporary 3D animated productions.
