Rigging can be a very excruciatingly technical step in creating animatable characters. This class aims to present a step-by-step guide to creating a functional character rig that will allow the animator to deliver a believable performance. Being able to rig characters from scratch empowers the animator to be able to create characters of their own free from the constraints of automatic rigging solutions. Make no mistake, such solutions are great timesavers, but they can tend to limit the animator.

We will create this rig using Manlo, the character we modeled, UV mapped and surfaced in Model a Low-Polygon Character in Maya 2018, so if you are new to Maya, you should at least have that course under your belt. Also, please note that this is an intermediate class. The author assumes you have a functional understanding of basic Maya tools as the move, rotate, and scale tools, shelf and tool locations and using Maya's hotbox to access them; concepts like X, Y, and Z movement and axes, object vs. world space movement and rotations and hierarchies. The author will address these ideas in terms of rigging characters, however, they may be unfamiliar to beginners.

That said, at the end of this course, you will have both a rigged character that you can use in your own animations AND the skill set to create animated characters of your very own!