WHY SHOULD I LEARN RIGGING WHEN THERE ARE SO MANY AUTOMATIC RIGGING TOOLS?
Jeff Berkridge, Pudsey
Building a rig from scratch can be a time-consuming task. It can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on what you’re rigging and its intended platform, so it is no surprise that many companies opt to use automatic rigging tools. These can dramatically speed up the generation of all those joints, nodes and constraints, leaving more time to focus on other tasks. So, with this being the case, why do we still build rigs from scratch?
Well, I’ve been working in the industry for over two decades now and there have only been a handful of occasions when a client has asked me to use their in-house tools to rig their characters. I find that for the most part, clients want unique, custom-built rigs which suit their specific project and the way their animators work. I could spend weeks working closely with an animation team on one project to create the ultimate rig, but then find that the same setup isn’t suitable for another team who work in a different way.
It seems clients also prefer to have more streamlined rigs that are not bloated, ‘one size fits all’ configurations filled with unused systems. They also want rigs that suit the project and their pipeline and as the project evolves, a custom-built rig offers much more freedom to update and change it easily too.
Another thing to keep in mind is that a rig built with an automatic rigging tool is essentially someone else’s rig which combines their techniques and ideas. If something goes wrong or you need to modify it, you can find yourself getting lost in an ocean of nodes as you try to work out what each does, while being careful not to break things.
Automatic rigging tools certainly have their place in the industry, but as you can see, having knowledge of the rig building process will always make you an essential part of any team.