Introduction to Rigging!

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A complete beginner’s introduction to rigging, presented by Lee Salvemini.

Length:
90 minutes
Software:
Blender 2.5
Difficulty:
Beginner
Rate:
VN:F [1.9.17_1161]
Rating: 4.9/5 (391 votes cast)

The video is in three parts. Part 1 is above and Part 2 and 3 are below.

In this Part 1 you will discover how to:

  • Create a skeleton
  • Make it deform a character
  • Add/modify vertex weight groups

It is with great pleasure that I present to you this special guest tutorial from Lee Salvemini!

"Ladies please, there's enough Lee to go around!"

If you’re new to Blender, welcome! Lee Salvemini is kind of a big deal. He worked on Sintel, Elephants dream and spent two years on Star Wars video game titles for LucasArts.

Today he has transcended his magical cloud of fame to present us with a complete introductory rigging tutorial for free.

This mammoth of a tutorial has been split up into three parts (because I know you guys don’t like long videos).

Part 1 is at the top of the page, and you will find Part 2 and 3 below.

Part 2

In Part 2 you will discover how to:

  • Make the head and neck animation ready
  • Make the shoulders and arms animation ready
  • Create a hand and fingers rig
  • Mirroring a rig from one side of the body to the other

Part 3

In Part 3 you will discover how to:

  • Create an IK leg rig
  • Create a heel/toe roll foot rig
  • Make the hips and torso animation ready
  • Apply custom bone shapes
  • Manage bone layers

Download the starting .blend Download the finished .blend

“Thank” Lee

I very rarely promote stuff on this site (especially other people’s stuff), so I’m hoping you won’t reach for your pitchforks when I mention that Lee’s actually selling some training DVDs.

His training DVDs are appropriately titled ‘Character Creation’, and it teaches (you guessed it) how to make a character. A lot of people have been looking for tutorials on this stuff, and if you ask me there’s no more of an experienced person than Lee when it comes characters. With experience on Sintel, Elephants Dream and Lucas Arts, he’s certainly knows his stuff.

Volume 1 walks you through the modelling process and Volume 2 shows you an in-depth rigging walkthrough.

The usual price of Volume I & II is $120, but Lee has been nice enough to offer Blender Guru readers a 25% discount. Bringing the total price for both volumes down to $90.

 

>>Click here to access the discount<<

NOTE: The discount is only available on the above link.

He’s also created an impressive trailer that’s worth watching:

Woooo yeah.

If you have a minute, please leave a comment thanking Lee for presenting these free tutorials :) He’s done the community a great service by making these available to everyone.

Introduction to Rigging!, 4.9 out of 5 based on 391 ratings

About Andrew Price

User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)
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  • http://www.facebook.com/ZhongBii 黄中柏

    …..
    it din show that skirt in the edit mode….(Blender 2.67)

    • 黄中柏

      LOL Alt+H

  • Antisthenes

    Thank you so much for this fantastic tutorial !!!

  • http://www.facebook.com/andreia.silva2712 Andreia Silva

    Amazing tutorial.

    I’ve been struggling with my first rig…
    I must say it is a very simple character.. But stil, all my past work was a complete mess. I simply couldn’t understand the weight paint mode… as a result, everything was breaking apart with one single movement of rotation.

    Thank you very very very much… it helped me a lot!

  • http://www.facebook.com/bjarnesgitar Bjarne Skåland

    Thank you very much! This helped a lot.

  • Burak Y.

    Liked the tutorial!!! But I have a question. I can’t import the vertex groups on the scene. What did you mean by saying it is in Layer 10?

  • JezuzStardust

    Thank you for this great tutorial! It took me quite some time to understand how the foot rig works (meaning, to understand the reason for putting each bone as is done).

    I have done a few other rigging tutorials, e.g. “Introduction to Character Rigging” on Blender cookie where they use a less advanced rigg.

    However, to be able to effectively animate the riggs need a root bone. In the CG Cookie tutorial they add a root bone, but because a part of the spine has “inherent rotation” turned off, rotating the root bone (to make the character face the other way) causes problems, since part of the spine will not rotate.

    In the “Lee”-rigg, I am sure there is a good way to add a root bone, but I have not figured this out. It seems like similar problems occur when I try to make the characther face in another direction (due to the unchecked inherent rotation in some of the bones).

    Is there a simple way to add a properly working root bone?

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Lee-Salvemini/514797586 Lee Salvemini

      Hi Jezuz!

      Great to hear you liked the tut! I totally get what you are saying about the roob bone problems. Inherit rotation off will cause the problem you’re speaking of no matter what.

      So actually I tackled this problem in the ‘Character Creation Volume 2′ training DVD. The technique I found to not only fix it but make a better root setup, is rather than using the inherit rotation checkbox which makes it impossible to have a root bone and can only be a switch on/off. Using a mix of parenting to one bone, but copy-location constraining to another, you can create the effect of inherit rotation BUT still choose a bone that will act as a global root bone. The amazing upside is you can then set, animate or even attach to a driver/python slider, influence of this ‘inherit rotation’ form 0-100% and anything inbetween =)

      It’s a bit tricky to explain in one paragraph, but it’s not really that complex in action, so if you’re interested in something like this just let me know!

  • tadakatsu.honda@hotmail.com

    no assign or remove vert appears!

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Lee-Salvemini/514797586 Lee Salvemini

      you’ll need to be in edit mode to be able to start assigning or removing vertex groups, hit ‘TAB’ key on the character mesh (not the armature) and see if it works! Good luck =)
      Lee

  • francis santana

    The DVD is also in Spanish?

    and if I can get through this as

  • http://twitter.com/bramantyakusuma Frans Aditya

    thanks dude :)

  • http://www.facebook.com/beeflowerpower David Soto

    The best tutorial on rigging I have ever seen. Simple. Clearly explained.

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Lee-Salvemini/514797586 Lee Salvemini

      Thanks so much David! =D

  • Burak Yücel

    This tutorial is so useful, thank you so much Lee!

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Lee-Salvemini/514797586 Lee Salvemini

      Really happy you found it helpful, thanks a bunch!

  • Alefefernando

    oi, não pode deixar de notar o vídeo acima que e muito interessante mas uma coisa que me chamou a tenção foi que durante o vídeo o personagem tinha um faixa no corpo que se movia conforme com o vento, e eu queria lhe pedir se existe um tutorial para aprender a fazer essa simulação de vento na roupa.. desde já te agradeço

  • Papi Chimere

    He LEE i have one queston after say i big thanks for it but i can’t buy it my question is can you put the models finish rig for free ? That gonna be my best day to have it :D

  • Wolter Hellmund

    Today I sat down one more day hoping to find good learning material for character rigging and make animation a bearable task. As I watched each video, time flew by, I felt knowledge directly soaking in, and went ahead to the next video when due. Now that I’ve watched all three, I feel I have never experienced such a high learning rate as just have, nor seen video tutorials as complete. Thank you Lee, for you have taught me to rigg like the Gods!

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Lee-Salvemini/514797586 Lee Salvemini

      I’m honoured Wolter, thanks so much for the kind words and it really means a lot to me that the tutorial helped you get past some of the frustrations that I also faced when I was learning =D Thanks for taking the time to comment!

  • http://www.facebook.com/valentino.rentz Valentino Rentz

    Great!!!! Really good explained! Thank you and Blenderguru!

  • Half blind productions

    why didn’t you give the rig an ik chain for the arms?

    • Wwza7

      Think by yourself, Imagine your character hands as foots and repeat IK in them

      • Wolter Hellmund

        Actually I have the same question, and its not about how -its about why. However, upon the need of using IK for the arms, the knowledge given to us by Lee is more than enough for the execution of the task.

        • Wwza7

          I agree with you, it is great knowledge that Lee gave us by this videos, and that’s why I want to buy his DVD, to thank him somehow for his great work, to support him.

          And about that IK to arms – It is incredibly useful, when you want to create some fights (sword stuck in enemy), some nice evolutions (landing (see lee tutorial about animating character landing), walking on hands, climbing) and actually everywhere, when you need to put hands on some static objects. And also it is much easier to control then any move.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Lee-Salvemini/514797586 Lee Salvemini

            Hi guys!

            Very good question actually. Well for a full production character rig it’s nice to have the choice of either depending on the situation (which is what I’ve done in the DVD). I actually used to use FK for the arms more often when I first started, switching to IK if character put arm on table or something. It was actually especially nice for those subtle standing around shots, arms dangling to sides, where I dont want to keep adjusting the IKs. Slowly I begin to use IK arms more, but they are a little more ‘advanced’ when it comes to getting smooth animation arcs.

            So simply my reasons for an FK arm IK leg setup in this tut was A) Since it’s a more beginner fundamentals tutorial FK arms can allow users to jump into animations a bit quicker for testing and B) To give a look at both setups, and so hopefully the user can see them both in action and make whichever they’d like =)

            You’re absolutely right though IK arms can get you some really nice animations after getting past adjustment of the initial snaps and tucks they can cause compared to the body =)

            Cheers guys!
            Lee

  • Kristis

    Great tutorial,but I have one problem – when I duplicate the left leg to the other side, the messes up and does not follow the armature. How can this be fixed?

    • Kristis

      Nevermind, figured out that vertex groups got mixed up after duplicating. Don’t know why though

  • Danial

    One of the best blender tutorial i have seen! Very detailed.

  • Gary Taverner

    Great tutorial.  One question – could you explain how the copy rotation on the toe makes the toe stay flat when the bone it is copying rotates.

    • Lee Salvemini

      Hi Gary! Glad you liked the tutorial.

      Yes this seems a bit counter intuitive since copy rotation would not usually make something stay still while others move. The reason behind this effect is a mixture of the way I’ve parented and detached the bones in some places, opting for a copy location to tip of a target bone), and parenting the toe further up the chain. Past that using local space for the copy rotation means that the bone will not rotate unless the direct target bone rotates.

      It’s tough to explain the exact parenting, but the best thing to do is have a look at the final .blend, mess around and pull bones out and see where they are parented, and what bones they are constrained to. Just to note, almost all complex rigging is a mix of where you parent a bone + what bone it is loc/rot constrained to (sometimes making extra bones to make this work).

      Hope this helps and let me know if you have any more questions!

      Cheers,
      Lee

  • Gary Taverner

    Uh, the comments have disappeared.  

  • gazzatav

    Very nice tutorial but I can’t get my head round how or why the toes stay flat by following the rotation of the roll.front bone. Could you please explain what’s going on there. Is it adding a parent’s rotation to a negative copied rotation?

  • RandomUsername

    Amazing.

  • blessedbe1984

    Lord have mercy, this series of tuts was just sick. Thanks Lee and Andrew

  • jay27flow

    wow..it is amazing!! thank you for everything! (and now i think i have to sleep a week to get this XD)

  • Andre

    Very nice tutorial but I get stuck
    I don’t know what u mean with the full start button
    by the way I’m using a mac
    but again awesome tutorial

    • Nick

      I believe he says “full stop button”, which is also called the period in some countries. It’s the dot that you put at the end of your sentences.
      You can also use the mouse to change to the pivot point by selecting the desired behavior from the drop-down menu at the bottom of your 3D viewport.

  • purrpearls

    Thank you very much for this clear and amazing tutorial.

  • DXD

    what program do you use

  • Vivitar

    In edit mode the skurt doesn’t appear!! How can i show it?!!!

    • Ian

      Alt + H

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