Free Rigs and Sets for Animators at Anim-Matt

https://anim-matt.gumroad.com/

We're loving this new source of Free Rigs and Sets for Maya Animators at Animation-Matt https://anim-matt.gumroad.com/.  It's a great resource, packed with free (and low priced) rigs for character animation.  Anim-matt also has plenty of sets for animators to work in, including interior and exterior shots such as street, bars and living rooms, for characters to act and perform in.

How to Animate with "Heavy" in Maya 2024

We've recently updated the "Heavy" rig, one of the free rigs we recommend for learning animation. Heavy can be downloaded from highend3d.com, and you can read all about him here, as well as see how to use him to Animate a Walk Cycle here, and a Run Cycle with Heavy here. 

How to Fix The Pixo Jr Lamp Rig

Pixo Jr is a great rig for learning animation, which you can read all about here.  You can also see a series of short tutorials for animation beginners, showing how to make the lamp hop.  But Pixo is an old rig (2006) and works less well in Maya today.  This is because of Maya's implementation of Parallel Evaluation, designed to make rigs perform faster in the Viewport.  Part of the Pixo Jr's rig is not behaving correctly in this new evaluation mode.  The solution is to change Evaluation Mode to DG. To do this, go to Windows > Settings and Preferences and then in the Settings > Animation category, change the drop down menu for Evaluation Mode from "Parallel" to the older mode "DG".

Meet "Mr Buttons"

Mr Buttons

Meet Mr Buttons, the cartoon cat created by veteran animator and rigger Keith Osborn, who has made his cute orange cat available for free download.

Mr Buttons is a fun, quirky rig, suitable for broad cartoony character animation.  Mr Buttons is the star of Osborn's book "Cartoony Character Animation with Maya", which we recommend for all our students.

We also have a series of tutorials with Mr Buttons (see below) on how to plan cartoony animation.

"Knight Spider" Free Maya Rig from Rookies

We're liking this new "Knight Spider" Free Maya Rig just launched from "the Rookies". We haven't yet road-tested it, but it looks pretty cool, and suitable for some nice character animation.

You can download the rig here:

The Rookies has also organised a special character animation contest for the Knight Spider rig, which you can find here. 

Truong Rigs Optimised for Unreal Engine

Truong CG, who creates many of the best free (and nearly free) rigs for student use, has released the video above to optimise his rigs for Unreal Engine.  All of Truong's latest rigs are fully compatible with Unreal Engine since they are all joints-based for both body and face. However, for Truong's older rigs, this video will help optimise the rigs for use in Unreal Engine, giving all the advantages of real-time rendering. 

Always Test Your Rig in Close-Up

Low poly spider "Raa" animated by Alex Southcombe

There are many many free rigs and sets now available to students on an educational or freeware license for use in short films, creating a wide variety of creative choices for student film-makers.  

But not all rigs are created equal, and many problems only become evident when the film calls for a close-up, such as this image of the spider "Raa" shown on the left. 

Best Rigs for Animation in Maya

Morpheus - endlessly flexible

What are the best rigs to use when creating your own animation in Maya?

There are many excellent free rigs and sets provided by Maya enthusiasts for student use, and many others available for just a few dollars. 

So what are the very best freeware rigs, and how can you find them?  Below is a list of some of the best, and how to get the best out of them.

How Monty's Eyebrows Work

How do you animate Monty's eyebrows? One of the many rigs that we recommend for student use in the early stages of learning animation is the Monty Rig, created back in 2007 by Raveen Rajadorai, and free for download at CreativeCrash.com.  Monty's brow controllers are Nurbs surfaces. If you tick Nurbs Surfaces under the Show tab in your Viewport, the brow controls will pop up as five small spheres running across his forehead.  You can individually select and rotate them to get various brow expressions.  Watch the short video above to find out how Monty works. For more on how to use Monty, read this blog post. 

All About "Rig Wrecking"

Rig concepts from "Jerich0"

What is "Rig Wrecking"? Rig Wrecking, more commonly known as rig testing, is the process of testing your character rigs to make sure they can do everything you need them to do.

Sometimes known as stress testing, this process involves testing out all the controls to make sure everything works as it should, and all the geometry deforms correctly.

Rig testing is a necessary production step; it involves letting animators loose on the rig to do test animation. Skip this step and you will almost certainly find many problems cropping up during the animation stage of the production.

How to Use the Amy and Sam Maya Rigs

Amy and Sam

Amy and Sam are two new rigs for Maya made by Gabriel Salas, and released to the animation community. The rigs are not free but are priced competitively at $15. They are good rigs - though it can be hard to get the eye direction looking right (see below).

Sam and Amy are Asian-American characters through which Gabriel hopes to "balance the limited choice in terms of race that animators have when picking a character rig, so that they have the tools to generate more racially diverse content in their animation exercises".

The rigs include diffuse textures for the body and shoes, and you can find them on Gumroad.  Sam is available here and Amy can be purchased here. Both rigs are priced at $15, and are for educational use only. 

So, how do our students get the most out of Amy and Sam?

Meet Thep - New Free Mummy Maya Rig

Meet Thep!

We're liking this cartoon mummy rig named Thep; he's fun and cartoony and you can get a great performance out of him. You can find him here for free download at the Squiggly Rigs official site.

Thep is the first character made with the Squiggly rig system.  Built to allow plenty of flexibility and exaggeration, Thep comes "equipped with some cool features to allow him to act as cartoony as possible without losing appeal".

Thep is a good choice for students starting on acting and lipsync; he works well with a cartoony voice, such as one from the Sesame Street wav archive.

Consider Thep for acting and pantomime shots, or for short dialogue scenes; he has good facial expressions and a wide variety of mouth shapes.

Meet Dana and David - New Rigs from Artstation

Meet Dana and David

Meet Dana and David, two new character rigs created by Gabriel Salas and downloadable from Artstation.com.

Dana and David were created by Gabriel to help create more diverse content for animation exercises in Maya.

Both rigs are attractive designed and visually appealing, and present a full range of facial expressions as well as body mechanics. There are a few glitches but these are fairly minor (see below for details).

On the whole we're recommending both rigs as a welcome addition to the growing range of reasonably priced character rigs for student use.

Free Hare Rig for Maya

Hare by Arman Musovic

We're liking this free Hare Rig for Maya by Arman Musovic. It's a fun rig, available for free download from CGMeetUp, and can be used to create some entertaining cartoony animation.

Hare works best in a cartoony, Tex Avery world, and can be combined with other cartoony characters such as the free squirrely rig, or perhaps Keith Osbourne's excellent Mr Buttons rig.

You could also consider downloading a cartoony landscape, such as this one from Turbosquid, or one of the free landscapes created by Truong for cartoony animation.

To see what can be done with Hare, check out the animation by Animation Apprentice student Dave Novis below.

Download Paragon Assets Free

Paragon from Epic Games

Epic Games and Unreal Engine have released their "Paragon" online assets for free. Any student at Animation Apprentice who wants to use these photo-real characters in their projects can use "$12 million worth of assets" for no charge.

The online game Paragon was cancelled in March last year. Developer Epic Games (owners of Unreal Engine) announced that they would release all $12,000,000 worth of game assets for free use by anyone working with the Unreal Engine 4, via the Unreal Engine Marketplace.

The first wave of released content included 20 characters, with their respective skins, animations, VFX and dialogue, along with over 1,500 environment components.  To find the Paragon assets online, follow this link.

Meet AZRI by Matthew Bachnick

Azri

We're liking the look of the new free AZRI Rig, a new animation rig for Maya 2018 and above, created by Matthew Bachnick.

AZRI is aimed at game animation, allowing users to achieve a high frame rate even when working on older or lower-spec machines.

The license allows for educational and non-commercial use.

Free Maya Character Rigs at Nelson Hurst

We're liking this very useful edit of Maya character rigs, free for student use, hosted at Nelson Hurst.com.

Nelson's collection of Maya rigs is a very helpful edit because it breaks down the free character rigs into sections, such as simple, intermediate, complex and creatures.

Samson Horse Rig by Joel 3D

We're liking this Samson Horse Rig by Joel 3D, available for free download here.

The horse rig is based on the character "Samson" from Disney's 1950s classic Sleeping Beauty.

The rig is an elegant design, with few major weaknesses. We've tested it in the classroom and it works well.

"Indominus Rex" Dinosaur Rig by Truong

Indominus Rex by Truong

We're liking this "Indominus Rex" Maya Rig made by Truong, free to download and use for non-commercial animation.

The IRex is fan art, based on the character from Jurassic World, a genetically engineered monster hybrid between the T Rex and the raptors. Because of this, the copyright in the rig vests in the Jurassic World creators; hence the need to use a rig like this for learning purposes only.

Like all of Troung's rigs, the IRex is very well modelled and rigged, and for the most part sufficiently light to give you at least a close approximation of real-time playback in your viewport.

Cheetah Rig from HighEnd3D - Handle with Care

Cheetah rig for Maya by Vikram Verma

It's hard to find a good cheetah rig for animation in Maya, which is a shame, as these big cats are beautiful animals, and there is plenty of excellent live action reference available for animating a cheetah run cycle.

The best rig we have found is the free Cheetah rig by Vikram Verma, available for download at Highend3D.com.