Maya Rigs - Introduction
Below, is a collection of Maya Rigs I have used successfully with teaching. This means they all work well and do not break easily. Not all of the rigs are free, but all are a reasonable priced at under 15$ per rig. ~ Enjoy!
If you are new to animating in CG, you will need to download the free educational license of Maya to get started.
NOTE: If you have a rig you would like to appear on this list, send it my way to be tested. I only post rigs here I know have the least amount of technical issues and are easy to use with my students. I also lean towards rigs that are 20$ and under since students are not creating commercial work. If your rig costs more than 20$ and you think it should be on the list, I will test it, but it had better be a solid rig.
I have provided videos for each rig, so you may see how it moves. If you have animated a clip with one of these rigs and would like it to be considered as an example video, just email me.
Rigging Criteria: In my opinion, the variable criteria for a rig that “Doesn’t Suck” is one that meets the basic list below, at the minimum.
Basic Requirements:
- Robust (or at least minimal) body and facial controls.
- Controls for individual fingers.
- Controls directly on the face, NO GUIS!
- Switches for IK and FK on neck, limbs, and spine each controller.
- Dynamic parenting switches for local, hip, chest and global spaces on all limbs IK and FK.
- FK/IK Spine. At the minimum, FK spine.
- Neck and head switch to FK space. No chicken heads.
- Twist for pole vectors and you can turn pole vectors off.
- Pins for elbows and the knees.
- The smooth version can be “proxied down,” control on the top node.
- Control visibility switches.
- Global scale.
- Sub controls on limbs to handle constraining objects.
Extras that mean a lot to an animator:
- Costume and gender changes.
- Appealing design. Why does everyone cross their eyes!!!
- Stretchy IK and S & S on the head.
- Foot roll break value.
- Deformations on basic controls don’t go off-model like additional deformers. newbie animators will break a design fast if the controllers and too advanced. It’s good to have these levels of detail controls, but they should have visibility tracks to turn them off.
- Lots of deformers on the rig you can turn on to get shapes. I know this sounds counter to the request above, but these are needed, just turn them off until they are needed.
- Soft eye resolver you can turn off, on.
- Control visibility switches
- Teeth and tongue control that on the outside of the head, easy to select.
- Limb visibility switches for animating in layers!
- Gimbal Lock Controllers.
- It comes with a picker GUI. You can make your own these days with many plugins, but this is a nice gesture on the part of the rigger. The anim school picker is not my favorite, but whatever works.
- Rotational order switches.
Spread Sheet Download
The “take-home” from this spreadsheet is bad deformations and poor character design can kill the rig. Basic controls that work will also make a rig more attractive over too many controls that cannot be turned off and confuse. Finally, appealing characters with clean deformations that meet the entire criteria (example: Kayla/Kyle, Mathilda, and Mery) are winning.