Introduction

Rigify helps automate the creation of character rigs. It is based around a building-block approach, where you build complete rigs out of smaller rig parts (e.g. arms, legs, spines, fingers…). The rig parts are currently few in number, but as more rig parts are added to Rigify it should become more and more capable of rigging a large variety of characters and creatures.

Rigify also operates on the principle that once a rig is created, that rig should no longer need Rigify. This means you can always distribute rigs created with Rigify to people who do not have it and the rigs will still function completely.

It is important to note that Rigify only automates the creation of the rig controls and bones. It does not attach the rig to a mesh, so you still have to do skinning etc. yourself.

Main Features

Modular rigging

Rigify build blocks can be mixed together to rig any character you want. If you need to build a character with five arms and one leg, Rigify can handle it for you creating all the required complex controls system (FK, IK, and all the relative snapping tools and the UI) in few seconds.

Nondisruptive re-rig

If the generated rig doesn’t fit all the features you need or, for example, you decide to add something more to your character (like a sixth arm or a tail), you can re-generate your rig without losing your previously generated features and your animation data.

Advanced and flexible feature set for character animation

The included rig samples (limbs, spines, tails, fingers, faces…) adds to all the stretchy FK/IK features a direct deformation secondary layer that lets you flex, bend and deform the character as you like through interactive Bendy Bones controls.

Shareable animation through all Rigify rigs

Since the control system is generated by Rigify, if you share a meta-rig through different characters you will be able to share data between them even if they have different proportions.

Extendable feature set

You can save and encode your meta-rigs to a button to have them available at any time without recreating it by hand or share your meta-rigs with other people. Through Python scripting you can also extend Rigify with new Rigify-types or new rig samples by implementing your own feature set package.

Ready to go

Once you generate your rig you won’t need Rigify or any other add-on to use it.

Enabling Add-on

1. Open Blender and go to Add-ons section of the Preferences.

2. Search “Rigify” and check the Enable Extension checkbox.