In this tutorial, I go over a basic-to-intermediate rig for the alien character. The rig covers only the body; I went over the facial rig in a previous tutorial. I show how to do the full setup on the left half (creating and placing bones, and also applying constraints), and copy it over to the right side for a perfectly symmetrical rig. Most of the features in 2.5 are the same, however, the keyboard shortcuts and a few menu items have been moved around, but I show you where they are.

This tutorials covers how to create a more advanced type of facial rig, showing you how to use the “stretch to” constraint to give the face a more fluid way of animating. The “stretch to” is great for things like lips and eyelids (which is shown in this tutorial); in addition, I show you how to make the eyelids “stick” to the eyeball surface, so there’s no unwanted gap between the two while animating.

Rigging the face can be as difficult and as time-consuming as rigging an entire body. In this demonstration, Paul Caggegi takes two techniques – bone and lattice deformations – to produce a very flexible and versatile rig for a character’s face.

Here’s a good videotutorial by the Process Diary that’ll explain many rigging concepts. If you’re an absolute rigging beginner, I recommend you read up on a few tutorials first.

I outline some of the methods I use when setting up a character rig, some handy shortcuts, and how to split up your armature into neat sets on separate bone layers. After that, I give you a quick overview of putting those methods into practice, and then show you the completed body rig with some demo renders.