What Makes a Bad Rig?

Instead of trying to list all the important, fundamental, cool or useful things a good rig could have I'll try to summarize what it definitely shouldn't have. 

First of let's get the obvious out of the way. If there is some problem opening the file containing the rig you've made wrongo number one. The rig should just work the moment you open the file. This brings me in to user friendliness. The animator is an animator, not a TD. Well obviously but what does it entail? Well it means that most likely the animator has replaced the space I use for technical howto with Disney's twelve animation principles. It also means that if they wanted to spend hours upon hours figuring out how to get a file to work they wouldn't have become animators in the first place.

So make sure every plugin and texture or any other external file the end user (in this context the animator) needs is automatically  added for them.That way the animator just get's going and the TD can focus on his/her next task and you'll save everyone a ton of time.

Once the file is open there are other problems to tackle. How will the user know how to use the rig? The most important thing is to try and place the controls on the character in logical places and make sure it’s visually clear what that control does. In addition all the controllers of the rig should be of the same type. If they are not then it’s hard to filter for them and the Animator might overlook the one point helper that does something useful if all the other controls are spline shapes. 

Another thing that helps with understanding how to operate the rig is to release an instruction video on how to use the rig. If none of these things are present the user will not be able to jump in and animate straight away and might choose to use another rig.

Going into more details of what makes a bad rig I need to mention not being bled to turn of automated systems to get full control, only having one way of controlling something or having to many. A lot of rigs have fancy controls that technically do impressive and cool stuff but in the end they end up being useless for the animator. In most cases you are actually better of not spending time trying to implement that particularly cool way of controlling something if you can do it in a simple fashion. If you really have to add it make sure it’s possible to turn it off or work with simpler and less fancy controls as well.

Lastly I’ll talk about skinning. Be really thorough when you test your skinning solution. It doesn’t matter at all that the rig is good if the skinning is bad. Not only should you test every extreme pose you can think of but you should let an animator do some quick animation tests to see if he/she can push it over it’s limits.

So to sum it all up here’s a quick list of what the should have.

1. The file must work

2. All assets should be added by the TD not the animator

3. User friendly interface

4. Video explaining the interface

5. Simple instead of complex solutions is often the best

6. Good and thoroughly tested skinning