This provides a set of experimental Rigify rig types, some of which may be included in Rigify in the future.
For the latest version that often requires the nightly master build of Blender,
use Code > Download ZIP to obtain a ZIP archive of the code, and install it
as a Feature Set through the Rigify Add-On settings.
Older versions are listed as Tags with matching .zip download links.
Experimental rigs with a basic function.
Generates a bone that shows the approximate center of mass of the character, computed based on bone positions. The set of bones and their own weights and centers of mass are computed from a helper cage mesh.
- Maximum Error specifies the maximum deviation of the center from the ideal position that is acceptable if it allows reducing the number of bones. The error is caused by snapping centers of mass of bone components to the axis of the bone.
- Volume Cage Mesh specifies a mesh object to be used for computing masses of individual bones. The mesh must contain a separate manifold component for each bone, assigned to its vertex group. Each component must be assigned to exactly one bone: weight blending is not supported. It is possible to use any bone generated by the rig, without being limited to only DEF or ORG bones.
- Add Sample Cage creates a new valid cage mesh based on selected bones beside the active one. The vertex groups are mapped to ORG bones.
This MakeHuman For Blender 2 asset pack file defines a 'clothing' item that implements a center of mass helper cage for the standard MPFB2 Rigify rig. You should load this asset without weight interpolation, or delete all non-ORG vertex groups after loading; otherwise generation will fail with a 'vertex assigned to multiple groups' error: xcage_center_of_mass.zip
Used as a child of a leg rig, this allows adding an alternative rest pose for the foot and toe, with an appropriate foot roll mechanism. This can be useful e.g. for providing a switch between low and high heel shoes in the same character. The bone structure exactly matches that of leg, without anything above the foot.
The switch is controlled by a mandatory 'enabled' custom property that must be placed on the base metarig bone of this component and rigged with a driver (e.g. from a property placed on a custom 'root' bone). If multiple instances of this rig are used for the same leg, it is up to the user to ensure that only one of them can be 'enabled' at the same time.
The rig generates deform bones for convenience of skinning of objects based on the alternative rest pose. These bones exactly overlap the positions of the original leg deform bones during animation.
Example file: demo-extra-heel.blend demonstrates using this rig to implement a switch between low and high heel shoes via a property on the root bone.
This implements an IK spine rig with controls behaving similar to BlenRig.
- Custom Pivot Control generates a movable pivot control for the torso.
- Custom Hips Pivot generates a movable pivot for the hip control.
Runtime Options:
- FK Hips allows the main hip control to fully control rotation of the hip bone.
- FK Chest releases the FK controls of the top of the spine from the IK mechanism.
In some rare cases, like crawling, it may be desirable to have IK controls that lock the location of elbows/knees by adjusting the spine and shoulders. This group of rigs contains extended versions of spine, shoulder, arm and leg rigs that provide this functionality. Legs must be used in pair with a spine, and arms with shoulders.
Example file: https://blendswap.com/blend/29534 demonstrates Body IK and a number of other features via two fully usable sample characters.
The feature set provides body_ik.basic_spine and body_ik.blenrig_spine, which
are extended versions of the standard spine and the BlenRig-like spine from this
feature set. They behave the same as the originals, except that they work with
the Body IK leg rig.
Runtime Options:
- Snap To Hip IK applies the adjustment from the Knee IK to the controls.
Runtime Options (body_ik.blenrig_spine):
Due to the way BlenRig spine works, it is possible to apply the effect of IK by either offsetting the whole spine, or just the hip control.
- Body IK Hips switches to offsetting just the hip control.
- Snap Hips To Hip IK applies the hip control adjustment.
The body_ik.shoulder rig implements a simple IK-compatible shoulder.
The body_ik.arm and body_ik.leg rigs extend the standard limbs to implement
the elbow/knee IK functionality. The rigs provide a second set of IK controls
mapped to the elbow/knee, and options for switching and IK-FK snapping.
The special IK is intended for poses that are very different from the default rest pose, so it doesn't work that well if switched on immediately from rest. For best result, the character should be pre-posed into a kneeling/crawling pose using FK, and then switched to the IK controls using snapping. Knee IK is also not stable for mathematical reasons when both legs are enabled and the shins are parallel (basically there are infinitely many solutions and it becomes confused).
Runtime Options:
- IK Force Straight enables the mechanism in the spine/shoulder to keep the limb fully extended with ordinary IK. This is obviously mutually exclusive with using the actual knee/elbow IK.
These are rigs to provide jiggle behavior.
Creates two grab controls with the deform bone automatically stretching between them.
The chain should consist of one or two bones. If present, constraints on the ORG bones are transplanted to helper parent bones for the controls.
- Master Control generates a parent master control for the jiggle setup.
- Follow Front adds a constraint to apply part of the motion of the front control to the back.
A version of basic jiggle with support for a cloth simulation cage that is used to deform a part of the final mesh via Surface Deform.
The intended setup is that the jiggle rig is used to deform the cage, which permanently controls part of the final mesh, and has a simulation that can be enabled and adjusted using the custom properties. To allow attaching additional directly animated objects to the affected area, the rig supports a feedback mechanism from the cage to the front control.
Custom properties on the cage object and mesh that have names starting with 'option_' are automatically copied to the rig bone and linked with drivers. Anchor empties parented to the cage are used to feed the result of cloth simulation and/or cage shape keys to the rig.
Resetting all custom properties on the cage object and mesh to defaults, and disabling the Armature modifier must always reconfigure it and the anchors into the rest shape that the rig should bind to.
The cage can only depend on the first deform bone of this rig, while the second deform is driven by cage feedback and should be used to help transition between the cage affected area and pure bone rigging on the main mesh.
- Cloth Cage Mesh (required) specifies the cage mesh object.
- Front Anchor specifies the empty parented to the cage and used for feeding motion of its front area back to the rig.
- Shape Anchor specifies an optional empty used to adjust the rig to the effect of shape keys pre-configuring the shape of the cage, using a linked duplicate based setup.
- Only Use Shape Anchor Location tells the rig to only use the translation of the shape anchor object for a simpler mechanism.
Example file: demo-breast-jiggle.blend with included detailed text instructions demonstrates applying this in a breast rig for a character with a clothing switch option (uses only a torso to reduce file size).
These rigs implement a flexible system for rigging skin using multiple interacting B-Bone chains. This is developed as a replacement for the Rigify face rig.
The core part of the skin system has been moved to Rigify and is documented in the Blender Manual for users, and on the Blender Wiki for scripters.
This rig applies the math behind the Elastic Deform sculpt brush to its child chain control positions when its own control is scaled.
This places no restriction on child chains, and should produce somewhat realistic stretching, but at high scale factors scaling becomes uneven and eventually forms folds as some inner controls overtake outer ones.
Example file: demo-elastic-stretch.blend demonstrates multiple concentric loops controlled via this rig.
- Generate Control specifies whether to generate a visible control, or use the transformation of the ORG bone as a part of more complex ad-hoc rig setup.
- Exact Scale Radius specifies the radius of the brush via the distance from center at which control bone scale is applied exactly.
As opposed to the elastic transformation, this rig operates specifically on concentric loops, scaling them in such a way that stretching and compression is evenly fading out from center, and inner loops don't overtake outer ones.
The loops must be formed by L/R symmetry chains, and are expected to be (nearly) elliptical and centered on the control bone. It is acceptable to use spliced ellipses with different extents in the local Z direction, but the X direction must be symmetrical.
Example file: demo-concentric-stretch.blend demonstrates multiple concentric loops controlled via this rig.
- Generate Control specifies whether to generate a visible control, or use the transformation of the ORG bone as a part of more complex ad-hoc rig setup.
- Squash Limit specifies how small each gap between loops can be squashed in the X and Z direction correspondingly.
- Layer Fade specifies the per loop falloff of the influence of translating the control.
- Circularize Inner Shape specifies that instead of simply controlling the innermost loop directly, the rig should delay the onset of upscale on its larger dimension until it becomes a circle.
- Rhombus Correction applies correction to widen loops that have rhombic rather than elliptical shape into ellipses, as their inner loops are scaled up and fill more space.
