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The rapid rig is a tool designed to bridge the gap between character modeling and character animation. Using the user interface, the script enables the user to set up a bi-pedal character skeleton and rig in minutes, a process which can take up to several days. The advanced version of the rig comes with enhanced features including: * customizable number of fingers and toes * stretchy and "toony" arms, legs, neck and spine * elbow and knee locking and following in inverse kinematics * orientation control for hips, shoulders, head and eyes * optional geometry created based on the user's rig set-up, as well as other animator-friendly controls. * animation interface for speeding up animation pipeline

thanks for the link, Jakub! :)

"character skinning made easy" ngSkinTools is a skinning plugin for Autodesk Maya, introducing new concepts to character skinning such as layers, any-pose-mirroring, enhanced paint brushes, true smoothing, and more. LAYERS Skinning layers are a central feature of ngSkinTools. With them, you break your rig down into easier manageable parts and edit them separately, then blend everything together through layer transparency. They're not just a simple way to make your work more organized - they also physically isolate groups of influences from the rest of the rig, so paint and edit operations won't mix-in influences you were not expecting. This also allows you do things that were impossible before: per-layer mirroring, adjusting influence weight up/down through layer transparency, blend transfered weights with previous weights, to name a few. MIRRORING You won't be needing to go to T-pose again when going through paint+mirror cycle, you can mirror in any pose now. There's also a much greater control over what influences mirror onto which one: associating left-right influences by name without prefix, manual association overrides, etc. Mirroring is also layer-friendly, so you can mirror just the parts of your model you're currently working on - very helpful, when you want to keep other parts of your rig intact. PAINTING ngSkinTools has it's own set of paint tools, which are capable of working on a per-layer basis. Each tool maintains it's own intensity, which is handy when toggling between smooth and replace through shift-modifier. Smooth is completely redesigned and you're going to just love it:) smoothing The new smooth brush gives much better results, as it operates on all influences of a vertex at once. For even greater control, the more precise "relax weights" tool is there, which also can smooth across mesh boundaries and thin meshes. COMPATIBILITY ngSkinTools operate on standard maya's skinCluster (also known as "smooth skin"), so no custom nodes will be req

"Welcome to our website. We, a couple of Tech-Artists (and geeks) decided to come up with our vision about having a platform where we can put out our ideas and discuss with everyone as well. We are fans of open-source, learning so much from the community and we would like to give something back. The reason creaturerigs.com was created. We are CharacterTDs mainly working with Autodesk Maya among other softwares. Check out our Tools and Rigs available in the Download section of our website. Go Ahead, check it out, have interesting fun with it and we would love to have your feedback on anything and everything. In the Coming weeks, we will continue to share more ideas, break down Animation Rigs with traditional setups, showcase our own setups and develop/maintain Auto-Rigging tools as well."

Interesting modular rigging approach with Flash based UI (Softimage XSI). The connection points between different modules can be chosen on-the-fly. "Unlike usual auto rig scripts, Alive lets you build your own character, limb by limb, just like a Lego system. Because all the characters don't necessarily need the same features (stretch, arm curve, roll division...), Alive lets you specify the features to apply on each limb separately."

free rigs, scripts and character setup / rigging tutorials for maya and xsi.

hi guys, this is tec-wizard Jan Berger describing his custom full IK body system he made as plugin for Maya. Streamed from live broadcast archive of Rigging Dojo, a Texas based group of rigging mentors (btw. they were originally named "Rigging Mentor", but guess who insisted with legal issues... ;)

Facial animation rigs created for the "Delgo" movie. Tutorial by Warren Grubb.

An interesting read from Phil Taylor, one of the key guys behind CAT, ICE and now Fabric. He's gone from building an entire rigging system within a program, then building an entire node network system within a program to building an entire program to support a whole new rigging system. He doesn't lack for ambition.

large collection of free maya rigs

blog about rigging spines

A plugin version of a corrective blend shape solution for rigging in maya.

- thanks for the link, Shorty! :)

We had Christian (b-ling) write a tangent space blendshape when he was still new at Framestore, and he made the comment that he made was that it was much easier, faster and more effective than the corrective blendshape.

also check out... http://cgclay.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&updated-max=2012-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-08%3A00&max-results=1

A character TD from Image Metrics talks about various philosophies of facial rigging. He details the common mistakes seen in facial rigs, how they implement their solution while also working within the constraints of game engines and answers various questions posted by people watching online at the time of recording.

pretty cool Brad! I`m going to watch this later. I was actually wondering what and how guys in Image Metrics work. Looking forward to see all the parts.

some rigging reference... ;-)

Hey I was just about to post that and beaten by you!

early this year guys from Texas` Reel FX started online school for riggers. this has also facebook site here: http://www.facebook.com/RiggingMentorLLC

sweet, didn't know about the fb group...

Real world rigging.

Pretty old now but some nice cartoony rigging demos.