Introduction

Our first chapter was about some general and basic rigging practices that you can apply to most situations, regardless of their purpose: they can be used for characters and props, for example. From now on, the rigging chapters will talk about how to build our character by focusing on its body parts. This chapter is about our character's torso: we're going to see how to create hips, a spine, and a neck.

There are various ways of approaching this subject, and we're going to see a mix of solutions ranging from unique to adapted ideas by reverse-engineering some well known rigs available online, such as the ManCandy rig, Ludwig, or the Blender Foundation's open movie characters. While these solutions are not the only way to go, you can achieve quite satisfactory results and its building processes are far from being rocket science.

Aside from what you'll learn from here, it's important for you to take a look at how some of those rigs were built. You'll see some similarities, but also some new ideas to apply to your own characters. In this book you will learn enough to build your own characters, but it's always refreshing to see some new approaches. It's pretty rare to see two rigs built the exact same way.