Character Rigging for Beginners: 01 Skeleton

[@bidibuzz7696]

this serie is goldmine thank you ! thank you thank you !

[@SomsaiArts]

I've been needed to reteach myself rigging. This is going to help a lot! Thanks!

[@sarkamari]

Hope you find the series useful. I also have an intermediate playlist on the channel in case you're not new to the topic. Best of luck

[@railenamir]

Best rigging tutorial! thank you so much. thanks to your very calm voice, all rigging is less stressing 😅

[@sarkamari]

Iam glad to hear this ❤️

[@i20010]

Very helpful tutorial, (full beginner here) Thank you!

[@sarkamari]

Great to hear 😊

[@-lb-9455]

very informative and very kind step we learn rigging from here very easy and industry standard....

[@Doc2rjae07]

Amazing lesson Sarkamari💯🙏

[@ReiRoldan]

Thank you for a great tutorial series

[@Cyborg_AZ1]

It's just 2 days in Maya I started rigging and my brain feels like i am trying to achieve 10D in universe.

[@sarkamari]

Hope that is a good thing

[@Cyborg_AZ1]

@@sarkamari man I am literally crying 😪it's soo tough.

[@sarkamari]

Hang in there. Practice will make it easier

[@SanjayKumar-fe4ih]

Ll​@@sarkamari

[@ErinNij]

I'm lost at the finger joints and orientation of the rotation. I press D to fix the orientation, so that the Z axis of the knuckles is along the bends, but then it seems to affect all the other gizmos of the other joints. I fix one finger, and the other finger's no longer bend at Z, and the Z axis is off to the side or something. Are you able to do another tutorial on the fingers that clarifies this clean up?

[@ErinNij]

I also came to another problem; when I select my hair geometry (hair cards) and try to skin it to the head joint via "selected joints", i can see the process run in the bottom corner of the screen, but the hair doesn't end up successfully binding to the skeleton and doesn't end up moving with the head joint. However, if I try with a "Joint Heirarchy" skin bind, it does work, but it's not ideal since my character's long hair is now affected by her shoulders and other bones.

[@hglankshear]

Hi Reza! I was just wondering why its important to create two joints at the ankle instead of connecting the shin bone directly to the ankle with one joint? I think perhaps there is something I didn't understand there.

[@sarkamari]

Good question. Since this series of videos target the junior artists this method allows for easier tweaks during the control setup and 'reverse foot lock'. In my intermediate course mu approach is different of course

[@hglankshear]

@@sarkamari Thank you so much! That definitely answered my question :)

[@Tenchinu]

would love to follow the tutorials, as they seem really good, but without an explanation on joint orientation, I am completely lost after getting to the legs. Everything is very detailed and comprehensive, but the joint orientation affects a lot of the IK and skinning parts. Had to basically start from zero a couple of times after noticing that, without understanding that, the rest cannot work properly. Do you have a tutorial on that?

[@sarkamari]

Hi Nekoni; I may put together a brief tutorial on how to use constraints as they play a massive role in rigging. Thank you for your warm feedback

[@Tenchinu]

@@sarkamari the tutorial is amazing tho. no complaint there :) Is that, after skinning and putting the weights, I noticed there had been no explination on how to fix the orientation.

[@sarkamari]

Fir the skeleton part the only area that requires attention is the ankle joint (at the beginners level of course). As long as you don't rotate the joint (and use orient joint instead) you should be fine.

[@DamienDesign]

I like this tuto thank you, but just to say that you will need the wrist named: ''wrist'' without the ''end'' name in the naming, because you will need it in your binding selection. When come the time to weight paint.

[@sarkamari]

good catch !

[@sqwert654]

Usually see the same bones chain down the leg etc, instead of overlapping joints. Would there not be a performance hit in games?

[@hglankshear]

Another question which I sadly was not able to find an answer to ~ it seems I am unable to create IK joint handles by clicking through the outliner? When following your instructions I just had to go through the viewport.

[@sarkamari]

Use the viewport to select the joints if you run into any glitches.

[@hglankshear]

@@sarkamari Thank you!

[@lisasairy251]

Thank you so much for sharing such great tutorials with us Sarkamari! I just wanted to ask, in order to get the file to follow along we have to sign up to your Patreon? Thank you for time! Just subscribed! ☺🙏

[@sarkamari]

Hi You really don’t need the scene to follow along as the focus is mainly on the workflow but if you ever want to support the channel then yes you will have access to almost ALL the scene files on the channel :) Glad you found the rigging tutorials useful

[@Damian_DH]

this is an strange behavior but ill write it just in case someone is having the same problem. When i generated the ik handle in perspective view the values of the pole/mechanism were a bit off it got fixed when i generate it(IK handle) locked in the front view.

[@ayoubchbab5602]

Hello, Hope that you're doing well. For the rigging, which option is better : quick rigg, rigg manually, using advanced skeleton or are there more practical methodes ? Thank you for the feed back.

[@yorickvlt1021]

Depends what your model is for. Quick rig and advanced skeletons typically will only be used as backups when you can't/don't want to do a proper rig, but will still require skinning in most cases

[@ayoubchbab5602]

@@yorickvlt1021 Thank you for you feed back, Have a nice day.

[@sammytheentertainer62]

We appreciate..........but can you please make an Intermediate to advance facial rig system for animation, like sticky lips, fleshy eyes, squash and stretchy head, so on and also rigging with the teeth and tongue thanks

[@sarkamari]

sure. it's already on my list :)

[@NaveenShriRam]

my request is too same

[@edwardoowew]

@5:33 How did you select the joint while the "Create Joint" is active? I can't do that on mine. The moment I select the joint while the "Create Joint" is active, it just create another joint that is not connected.

[@edwardoowew]

I'm using Maya 2025. I want to do that but it's not working ;-; ... I'm stuck and it's very frustrating.

[@sarkamari]

So, you hold the LMB while creating a new joint? Yes, it should create a new joint that is not connected to anything. Make sure to do this in an orthographic view, and once the joint is created, snap it to the center of the ankle joint.

[@edwardoowew]

@@sarkamari Hi. Thank you for the reply. How can I snap it? Clicking on "Create Joints" then clicking on an existing joint that is in the hierarchy in the viewport in orthographic mode doesn't work on me. It instead create another joint and it's not connected to the joint I clicked (In the place where the supposedly existing joint) . I'm feeling lost.

[@sarkamari]

Enable the local rotation axis for the original ankle joint. Hold down the V key on your keyboard to activate snapping, then snap the new joint to the center of the ankle. This ensures both joints share the same pivot point. Once aligned, select the newly created joint, then shift-select the ankle joint, and press P on your keyboard to parent them. I’ve also demonstrated this process in the videos for further clarity.

[@edwardoowew]

@@sarkamari Thanks!

[@JOSEMARTINEZ-nh7fw]

I have a question and it is about why you don't do the FK on the legs??🤔🤔

[@sarkamari]

I do. But not in this series. For beginners it’s a lot easier to start with IK setup. Check out my intermediate playlist for IK/FK right

[@kuanhonglim9804]

Dear Sarkamari san i have a question why you make "Jnt_end_L_ankle01" and "Jnt_l_ankle01". is there any special purpose to make two skeleton and parent it? as usual people will use only one skeleton complete this portion. thank you very much 🙏🙏🙏

[@sarkamari]

For beginners, it’s simpler not to worry too much about joint orientation. In fact, I skip it entirely in my intermediate playlist!

[@Hoshi-Anim]

Im new to this but are you not supposed to freeze transforms before skinning? again im quite new please tell me if im wrong

[@sarkamari]

Hi, thank you for your comment! In reality, there’s no strict rule as long as you understand what you’re doing, especially in a technical process like rigging. If you’re referring to end bones in this example, there are times when we simply orient them. However, in this case, you’ll notice that we’re not going to skin them, so it’s fine.

[@alifhossain9705]

thanks for your information🥰

[@drishtiarora6568]

kindly clear one thing: are we involving clothes also in rigging?

[@sarkamari]

Yes . The cloth is the one that gets skinned to the bones. There’s no body Geo underneath

[@drishtiarora6568]

you have selected the whole body in starting including his clothes & hair as well.. so are we rigging them altogether?? Plus if I take a different character of my own & if its clothes and hairs are separate from the body, do I need to add the whole character on the display layer or the only body part?

[@Luiz_Mesmo]

His model have only four meshes. Two for the eyes, the hair and the other one is the whole body. The model doesn't have clothes. When the skinning is finished it would be pretty much the hair and eyes following the "head" (part of the whole body mesh). About the second question, I'm not a specialist, but I'm pretty sure it DEPENDS. If your character won't change clothes at all, should be wise to rig body and clothes altogether. If the clothes and the body are separate, I don't know how it's done.

[@plautus-jc8be]

I tried learning rigging following a blender tutorial,. and I just failed,. I blame the software, everything is unintuitive and overcomplicated and too many steps to do a simple task, and control garbage. Is maya better to use?

[@sarkamari]

Each app has their own merits. I work at Disney and Maya is the main software for rigging hence this tutorial. Hope you find this useful

[@plautus-jc8be]

@@sarkamari but is there platforms ion case I need help wtih this:?

[@adrishroy1396]

Is it important to know drawing for rigging?

[@sarkamari]

Drawing ❌ Anatomy and shapes ✅

[@ArtisticOm.]

THANKYOU!!🥰

[@NuhUHey]

when i try to mirror the arm i get an error message "too many arguments. expected 1, found: 0"; mirroring the legs worked just fine

[@NuhUHey]

nvm it works now

[@aditimandal9062]

Thanks a lot sir😊

[@sarkamari]

Glad you found the videos useful, Aditi

[@kitteyduck]

hey there! i've ran into an issue when binding the skin to the eyes, i've followed what you've done and chosen the same settings, but when i bind my joint to one of the eyes, when i go to rotate that joint, it moves both of the eyes, even though i've only binded one, any suggestions? thanks!

[@yusefvonshekelstein3185]

Double check that indeed one eye is parented and check skin weights.

[@mandaarun246]

Tq very much sir

[@sarkamari]

Glad you found the video useful Manda

[@september.designer]

thanks

[@sumit-um6jq]

How do download this model

[@kuanhonglim9804]

good tutorial video 👍x 1155

[@drishtiarora6568]

your source file is locked even after sign up

[@sarkamari]

Please make sure you choose GOLD tier. I am happy to double check for you. What is your Patreon username?