Teach Yourself Basic Rigging in Maya for Free!

Nowadays, every animator should know a little bit about rigging.  Here at Animation Apprentice we encourage our students to spend a little time mastering the basics, so as to be better acquainted with the problems and challenges of creating a great character rig.  It's harder than it looks, and a little time spent on this will give you a new respect for what riggers have to deal with.  The video above by James Thompson is a clear and straightforward basic introduction to the art of rigging. If you'd like to give it a go - this is the video we recommend for absolute beginners.

In this ten minute video, James teaches the following basic skills

• creating a joint chain (i.e. a skeleton)
• binding the joints to the mesh
• creating control curves, and connecting the joints to them
• creating an IK handle

The video does come with one minor health warning. At 7:43, James discovers a mistake he made earlier in the video. To avoid having to re-do your work, make sure that at 1:53, when you first select the IK Handle tool, double click on it so you pull up the IK Handle settings.  Under Current Solver, make sure you set the drop-down menu to Rotate Plane Solver, not Single Chain Solver (which it is set to by default).

Anyway, this is a minor error in what is otherwise an excellent introduction to the art of rigging.

Many thanks to James Thompson for a great free tutorial!

----Alex