LEARNING PATH

Character Rigging

Preparing a character or creature for animation has two primary objectives. First, the rig must be animator-friendly and able to execute the required performance. Second, the behavior of the skin, clothing, or accessories must deform, move and behave naturally.

The Character Rigging Path assembles 14 workshops by experienced riggers, technical directors (TDs), and creature effects (CFX) artists working in film, game, and animation, who share various tools and techniques to efficiently rig characters for production. The workshops include facial performance setup, skeletons, kinematics, muscle and skin dynamics, clothing, crowds, and automation via scripting.

Beginner to Advanced 87h 37min 14 Workshops

By 12 Instructors

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Creating a Quadruped Rig for Production

In this 6.5-hour workshop, Paween Sarachan shares his professional, animator-friendly quadruped rigging system developed for VFX production. The step-by-step process covers naming conventions, Python scripting for generic controls, creating a realistic Spline-IK Spine, FK/IK switch and IK stretch for limbs, Scapula auto aim, Toes setup, and the belly trick setup using cMuscleSmartConstraint. The final segment instructs on Skinning Weight Techniques...

by Paween Sarachan

Advanced

6h 33m

11 Lessons

Character Rigging Scripting

Maya

Introduction to Ziva VFX: Volume 1

Creature Supervisor Madhav Shyam provides nearly 8 hours of instruction on Ziva VFX fundamentals. The workshop focuses on modeling and rigging practices, building a production-ready arm simulation rig (muscle/fat), using Python scripting in Maya, and applying the Ziva Anatomy Transfer tool to new characters...

by Madhav Shyam

Beginner

7h 55m

13 Lessons

Character Animation Character Rigging Creature Animation Scripting Visual Effects

Ziva VFX

Maya

Introduction to Ziva VFX: Volume 2

Creature Supervisor Madhav Shyam returns for Volume 2 (8h 50m), completing the Sorceress character build. The advanced lessons cover retargeting the setup, Torso/Leg muscle simulation, Fat and Skin simulation, editing zBuilder Python scripts for workflow speed, and specialized topics like Ziva RT (Machine Learning) and Anatomy Wrap for reuse...

by Madhav Shyam

Intermediate

8h 50m

13 Lessons

Character Animation Character Rigging Creature Animation Scripting Visual Effects

Ziva VFX

Maya

Introduction to Massive Prime

Head of Crowd/FX TD Reza Ghobadinic presents an 11h 13m comprehensive introduction to Massive Prime crowd simulation. This detailed workshop covers agent creation from scratch, designing the Agent Brain, adapting agents to Terrain, and advanced features like Flow Fields, Cloth/Hair dynamics, Foot Locking IK, and Dynamic Ragdolls. The instruction provides fundamental knowledge for creating, testing, and rendering impressive crowd simulations...

by Reza Ghobadinic

Beginner

11h 13m

19 Lessons

Character Animation Effects Animation

Massive

Character Rigging in Maya for Game Production

Technical Animator Taylor Whitsett's 5-hour workshop reveals how to apply basic rigging principles to create complex, production-ready, animator-friendly character rigs for games. The workshop details the entire pipeline in Maya, from establishing the character pipeline and prepping geometry, to setting up the bind skeleton, creating FK/IK arms and a Spine, and building automated control systems for the final character rig cleanup...

by Taylor Whitsett

Intermediate

5h 00m

12 Lessons

Character Rigging

Maya

Automating Animation & Game-Ready Rigs

Creature Supervisor Nick Miller's 3-hour workshop is for riggers and aspiring coders, focused on modular rigging with Python to create a one-click solution for bipeds. It covers Object-Oriented Programming in Python, creating a control library, leveraging Maya's Human IK skeleton for motion-capture data, and organizing the rig for game engine-friendly export...

by Nick Miller

Advanced

3h 09m

18 Lessons

Character Rigging Motion Capture Scripting

Maya

Dynamic Cloth Simulation for Production

Senior FX/CFX Artist Salah Hussein’s 4-hour workshop teaches a professional, tried-and-tested character effects (CFX) workflow using the Houdini Vellum Solver to simulate realistic cloth. The tutorial guides artists on preparing proxy geometry for efficient simulation, building a constraints network for fine-tuning/debugging, and concluding with a clean export that preserves the original geometry and attributes...

by Salah Hussein

Advanced

4h 25m

10 Lessons

Character Animation Cloth Effects Animation

Houdini

nCloth for Production

Lead Creature FX TD Rohit Jain offers 5h 29m of essential training on a production-ready workflow for simulating costumes using Maya's nCloth. The workshop covers Mocap integration, sim mesh preparation, Mudbox retopology, using the Nucleus solver, simulating layers of clothing, and fixing common simulation issues, along with bonus production tips...

by Rohit Jain

Advanced

5h 29m

15 Lessons

Character Animation Character Rigging Cloth Effects Animation Visual Effects

Mixamo

Mudbox

Maya

Creating Facial Blendshapes Using Photogrammetry

Facial Modeler Adam Spring's 4-hour workshop covers the essential pipeline for creating realistic human facial rigs. The process starts with capturing and processing FACS photogrammetry scans using Lightroom and Agisoft Metashape, continues with cleanup and reprojection in Wrap and ZBrush, and concludes with creating the Blendshape Rig & Dynamic Shader in Maya to link dynamically driven skin textures...

by Adam Spring

Intermediate

4h 18m

13 Lessons

Character Animation Character Rigging Character Art Modeling Photogrammetry

Agisoft Metashape

Maya

ZBrush

Lightroom

Photoshop

Faceform Wrap

Creating Stylized Facial Rigs for Production in Maya

Character Rigger Hector Abraham Torres's 4-hour workshop shows how to create a stylized facial rig for production. It covers rigging basics, the importance of facial anatomy & topology, building the Main System, Eyes/Teeth/Tongue Setup, and a detailed Blendshape System (Nose, Cheeks, Lips, Brow, Eyelids), before finalizing the rig with Mirror & Combo Shapes, a custom Facial User Interface, and animation testing...

by Hector Abraham Torres

Advanced

4h 24m

12 Lessons

Character Animation Character Rigging

Maya

Introduction to Creating Facial Blendshapes in Maya

Facial Modeler Derrick Sesson's 5-hour beginner workshop covers the basics of Facial Blendshape Modeling. It provides a thorough explanation of FACS (Facial Action Coding System), preparing a ZBrush head for deformation, breaking down and blocking in essential facial shapes (Eyes, Eyebrow, Nose, Cheeks, Mouth, Jaw) with Maya deformers (Clusters, Shrinkwrap, Delta Mush, Wire), and refining shapes with Maya's sculpting tools before compiling them into a final blendshape node...

by Derrick Sesson

Beginner

5h 11m

11 Lessons

Character Animation Character Rigging Lighting & Rendering

Maya

ZBrush

Rigging The Jaw With Python in Maya

Rigger Arturo Coso's 4.5-hour workshop details a production-approved, rebuildable jaw rig using Python in Maya. The process is guided by Python code, which is written line-by-line to create the jaw rig and an independent lip seal (Zipper), dividing the rig creation into sections by methods for easy learning. The workshop also covers the Main Structure, Connections, Corner Pin setup, and final Jaw Skinning...

by Arturo Coso

Advanced

4h 46m

11 Lessons

Character Rigging Scripting

Maya

FACS Rigging for Facial Motion Capture

Creature Supervisor Madhav Shyam’s 10-hour intermediate workshop teaches the complete process of building a simplified FACS-based facial rig in Maya and constraining iPhone ARKit motion-capture data to it. The course covers the theory of believable performance, building the intuitive rig system from the FACS shapes, rendering a range of motion animation using Maya and Marmoset Toolbag, and transferring the rig and animation to different character types...

by Madhav Shyam

Intermediate

10h 24m

17 Lessons

Character Animation Character Rigging Lighting & Rendering Motion Capture

Maya

Marmoset Toolbag

Master Rigging & Python Scripting in Maya

Creature Supervisor Nick Miller's 5-hour workshop introduces the fundamentals of rigging and Python scripting in Maya for beginners. It covers core Maya concepts like nodes, deformers, constraints, and relationships, progressing to Python scripting for automation. The goal is to create helper scripts and a Python limb rig creation tool complete with a GUI, including features like IK/FK switching and stretchy bones...

by Nick Miller

Advanced

5h 20m

10 Lessons

Character Rigging Scripting

Maya

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about the Learning Path.

Learning Paths have been organized to help both aspiring and professional artists, who are looking for training based on the fundamental categories of creative work in the visual effects, animation and games industries. Each Learning Path has been curated to contain a collection of workshops that guide artists through a series of topics relevant to that path, but they are not necessarily sequential. When appropriate, however, we have organized the workshops in a path to be in a logical order. All workshops are tagged with their level (beginner, intermediate, advanced) so that you can browse the path and choose a title that matches both the subject matter and level that you are looking for.

All Gnomon Workshop instructors are professional artists from the entertainment industry, who have worked with us to structure their time, experience and knowledge into practical and inspiring training. We believe that it is important to learn from masters of the craft, who have honed those skills via years of experience working in production, collaboratively with their peers. Through time and experience, artists develop not just their creative and technical ability, but also their communication skills. These become critical aspects to being an effective lead artist, supervisor or, in our case, instructor.

Whether you choose an Annual or a Monthly Subscription, your plan will give you unlimited access to all 26 Learning Paths, allowing you to learn at your own pace. Your subscription also gives you access to the entire catalog of 350+ workshops, with new comprehensive workshops added every month.

While many workshops include Project Files, these are at the instructors’ discretion. You will find details of any project files provided on each workshop page, along with the software/tools required to tackle the workshop. If you have any questions, you can contact us via our Live Chat or email the team at support@thegnomonworkshop.com.

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Character Rigging

Creating a Quadruped Rig for Production

Introduction to Ziva VFX: Volume 1

Introduction to Ziva VFX: Volume 2

Introduction to Massive Prime

Character Rigging in Maya for Game Production

Automating Animation & Game-Ready Rigs

Dynamic Cloth Simulation for Production

nCloth for Production

Creating Facial Blendshapes Using Photogrammetry

Creating Stylized Facial Rigs for Production in Maya

Introduction to Creating Facial Blendshapes in Maya

Rigging The Jaw With Python in Maya

FACS Rigging for Facial Motion Capture

Master Rigging & Python Scripting in Maya

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