BlenRig is an Auto-rigging and skinning system that provides the user of a Feature Film quality rig (including an advanced facial system). We are happy to share the first public release of BlenRig (version 5)!
Rig creation includes:
- BlenRig armature
- BlenRig Mesh Deform cage and Lattices
- Basic body mesh for creating low resolution proxy versions of the characters.
Get it now
BlenRig is available as GPL software in a public GIT repository and here on the cloud. On the public repo you will always be able to download the latest version of the add-on, follow and contribute to the development.
Training and Documentation
A very complete Introduction Guide is available here to Blender Cloud subscribers. The guide will get you started with BlenRig:
- Add-on installation
- Rig creation
- Panel description
- How to apply BlenRig to a character (in detail)
Much more training is coming in the next weeks and we are super excited to see what you come up with by using BlenRig!
29 comments
Is the quick introduction guide available for download.with subscription?
Hello Juan Pablo,
I am facing issues with the rig. Once I've selected the mdef_cage in the MeshDeform modifier, I try to select and move the hand Ik controller (hand_ik_ctrl_L) but it wont move at all. It only rotates in one axis, but nothing else .
I can see that it has a driver attached. And I have not problem to move this controller when I have just added the Armature, so I guess I'm screwing something in the process. Do you have any idea what could be causing this problem? (Besides from my lack of knowledge)
Thanks for everything! :)
ok, this is not happening to me anymore, I believe I was trying to move it while still in Reproportion Mode, which is wrong! (In case anyone is facing this issue too)
Thanks!
Hello! yhe addon is incredible, thanks a lot. But I want to know, why the mdef cage changes his form when i go out form edit mode to object mode? The chest and the breech inflates when i do that.
Hi @10rafa:
That may be because of a lattice that the body uses. Try to turn off the lattice modifier in the mdef cage. If that was the issue, you can enable it again, select the armature, and in the Rigging Panel, in the Rigging & Baking tab, there is a button called "Reset Deformers", that should automatically fix the lattice deformation.
@jpbouza: Yes, thats solves my problem. thanks
Hi JP, first of all, great job on the BlendRig. It sure will make character rigging a breeze. I'm using v5 official release and have been having a hard time baking the Proxy mesh and mdef cage as mentioned in the PDF guide pg 17. Granted there is some form of change but the two meshes don't "come back to normal" as you put it. They don't even fit the Rig. The bake to shape key is unchecked by default so that can't be the cause. Could you please help me understand what I could be doing wrong?
hi @shadrachmunene!
My guess is that you are not baking the armature. After you bake each mesh, you should then select the armature and press the Bake Armature button. Once you do that, all the model should go back to normal and should be fitting your character. Let me know if this is what you were missing.
Anyway, I'm currently editing the video tutorials, so you'll be able to watch me doing this soon :)
@Juan Pablo Bouza: Hey' thanks, You're right. I was clicking on bake armature without having it selected, so that's why it seemed to change but not as it should have. So nowadays I make sure to select the whole armature {A} then hit the Bake button It works !!
great work! it's amazing! i have question. how to using at 4 finger character ^^?
Hi! I usually just move the finger I don't use to an unused layer, or I delete the bones!! :D
Hehe, maybe when I develop a way to add modules to the rig, such as new arms and legs, I'll figure out a way to add or remove fingers too. But for now, just move them to another layer!
@Juan Pablo Bouza: Thank you^^ I I expect your tutorial blendrig5 is great work. I appreciate your achievement
Hi @ysjasdf: ! yep, but that's not a bug. Many of the automated movements of the facial rig are defined by 'Armature Actions" that are editable. So, the predefined actions are set for a chracter of the size of Victor from Cosmos Laundromat. If your character is bigger or smaller you will certainly need to adjust those actions in order to get the movement right. Thanks for mentioning it, cause right now I'm recording the tutorial on that same topic, hehe, so I'll reinforce the concept :)
@Juan Pablo Bouza: Thak you your solution!! and... one bug report when make big big head character eyebrow is good work but eyelid move very very little
First, Thank you, Juan Pablo, for making this available to us. I'm aligning the eyes, and have a question. I don't know if I am doing this right or not. I am taking a perfectly round sphere for each eye and mal-forming it into an egg shape with a lattice. Same thing with eyelids: half spheres for eyelids within a lattice. Here is what I am going to do, and I don't know if I am right:
- Disable the lattice
- Align the eye and lid controllers to the round, "un-latticed" eye and lids.
- Place the eye, lids, and also the BlenRig eye and lid controller bones under the influence of the lattice Is this a good way to do this, or am I heading down the wrong path? Thanks, Dale
Hi Dale! Yes, that's the right way, as long as you put the lattice modifier after the armature modifier (that is under in the list). I don't know how your character looks like, but I always try to only deform the eye object with the lattice, and put the eyelid geometry around it, but without a lattice modifier. I prefer doing this, because if you have lattice deformation in the eyelids, you will get a visual misalignment with the controllers, as the controllers can't be influenced by the lattice. This is only a visual issue, anyway.
But again, I don't know what the technical requirements for your character are. Anyway, yes, what you mention would be a correct procedure. Then, you might want to parent the lattice to the bones eye_mstr_str_L and R.
Gracias Juan por todo tu trabajo.
Saludos desde Berlin!
Hey man!, i've been playing around with a character, that i have, and i've been following the pdf guide, but when i get to Binding the Mesh deform cage to the character it just breaks, how should we troublshoot this?
Hey Luciano, send me some pictures or even the blend to the mail that's in the pdf. I'll check it out tomorrow. I'll also define how to do troubleshooting with the Cloud team.
From what you're saying I'm pretty sure you must have baked the mdef Cage with the option 'bake to shape' on. In that case, you should see that the cage has a couple of shapekeys in it. So, you just need to apply the shapekey to the basis shape. Mesh deform will be calculated from the Basis shapekey, so if the current look of the Cage isn't in the Basis, binding will fail. So, transfer any shapekey you have to the Basis. You do that by doing propagate shapekey from the ctrl+v menu. Or from the Basis shape you can fo ctrl+v - blend from shape, and then select the other shapekey. I'm turning the 'bake to shape' option off by default right now.
¡Y llegó el día! Muchas gracias, Juan Pablo :o)
Esperemos que por ahora el pdf ayude yawa! Ahora tengo que empezar con los video tutoriales, pero va a llevar un tiempo :)
But I things you must to add a facebook button for people like who want to share this article 😉
Very good idea this rig. It's very good to have things like that for animation. Thanks a lot to for the documentation ☺
From what you're saying I'm pretty sure you must have baked the mdef Cage with the option 'bake to shape' on. In that case, you should see that the cage has a couple of shapekeys in it. So, you just need to apply the shapekey to the basis shape. Mesh deform will be calculated from the Basis shapekey, so if the current look of the Cage isn't in the Basis, binding will fail. So, transfer any shapekey you have to the Basis. You do that by doing propagate shapekey from the ctrl+v menu. Or from the Basis shape you can fo ctrl+v - blend from shape, and then select the other shapekey. I'm turning the 'bake to shape' option off by default right now.
that was it!, and now it works!, beautiful man, really, great job! i need to keep on learning so i can now skin the face =)
Idea: would you consider for the next version instead of having all the stuff visible, be able to only see one side of the character to position the stuff and be mirrored by default, and only if your character isnt symetrical turn on the other side of the rig?, it'd be much easier to see and grab many controls mostly when working on side view.
Also i went through the entire quick introduction, and i'd like to know how to turn off certain things just to make it faster.
Perfect, thank you!
Thanks for the report Luciano! I'll ask some dev to help me with that local view thing :D
thank you for the quick answer, i'll try that, and then i'll let you know how it goes, if nothing works i'll send you the blend =).
Also i noticed that if you're in Local view and try to add a blenrig armature it will give you an error.
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