Intro to Rigging

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Everything below represents notes for Sepha to finish the YouTube vid and article with.

Rigging is a sibling concept to Skinning and Skeletons, but is different.

Rigging is not the same process as creating a skeleton, or skinning. They are similar in concept, and thus frequently confused.

This is a Rig.

This is a skeleton. While the concepts are related, they are different.

A rig is a hierarchy of objects, bones, controls, constraints, etc, that facilitate the control of some other set of mesh deformers (bones - the skeleton).

The basic concept is therefore:

1. We create some sort of lowpoly

2. We create some sort of skeleton

3. We bind the lowpoly to the skeleton via skinning

4. We then create a dedicated "Rig" that will act as the driver of these skeletal bones

5. Animators will then animate the Rig.

6. At export time, only the skeleton will go to the engine, NOT the rig.

The Rig is not a game engine asset, in the same way that the Highpoly is not. It is a content creation tool only, and the content it facilitates creating is animation data.