Henning Kaiju - Base Rig and Walk Cycle

Now that the model is prepped and I’ve done a once over to identify what elements I’ll be creating, the first step is almost always a base biped rig.  I’ve been developing my own auto rig for years, so most of this is push button at this point, but there are a few things worth pointing out.

Base Rig

I start with a placer template.  By default it’s too small, as it’s based off the scale for film not Unreal, so will need to scale it up. 

From there, I move around the placers to fit the mesh.  I spend a good deal of time on the fingers and spine.  Though, if I find I messed up, I can roll back to this file and recreate the base rig.  In the future, I’d like to make my rig a true modular template and build script instead of my current milestone approach, but that’s a story for another time.  Since toes are rarely part of a biped, they’re not included in the template, so I’ll make those joints as well to save time if I have to reload.  The same is true for the tail curve. 

I’ll also shape and size the controls and fit the props to the hands of the character.

Now that the Placer file is complete, I’ll save that and click to build the rig.

After a few moments, the base rig and initial skinning is created.

I also built the toes and added the tail setup.  These are both automated, so it looks more complex than it is.  These are all broad strokes to see if they’ll work.  I can quickly rip out setups and recreate them if I don’t like the joint placement or the like.

Apologies if you're reading this hoping for a literal step by step on how to build a rig, and this overview feeling too much like how to draw an owl...

If you want a more guided approach, you can see a previous post I've written about Learning to Rig as an Animator, https://kielfiggins.blogspot.com/2025/05/learning-to-rig-as-animator.html.  It's a constant work in progress where I collect my thoughts and try to structure such a response to a question I get asked rather often.

Initial Skinning

Skinning is a topic I’ll cover next time when we get into adding additional elements to the rig.  If you’d like to see a more complete breakdown of my skinning approach, you can read about it here: https://www.3dfiggins.com/writeups/paintingWeights/

But at this stage, nothing fancy, just broad weights on joints, not correctives or the like.

Walk Cycle

From here, I like to create a walk cycle from a mocap file to test the rig.  You could create your own animation or more technical ROM, but here’s my take on those.  The walk cycle from mocap lets you see how your character believes in an isolated manner and with realistic motion, so you’re judging setups and skinning in context.  You can also get this mapped to a rig very quickly.  If you’re keying your animation, it might be too exaggerated or take up too much time for this stage of the project.  Next, a more technical ROM, where you jiggle each control and channel, works fine for skinning and I create one for each character, but again, it’s missing context to see how the components work together.

So for a walk cycle, I’ll go to mixamo.com and grab one.  Then I’ll port it to my rig using a custom free tool you can find here: https://3dfiggins.com/Store/Support/Mixamo/

I find the ‘Sad walk’ fit the general vibe of this character, so I’ll use that as a base. The initial results are less than ideal.  And to be honest, this can be a hit to motivation and enthusiasm to a project when you see results like this.  It shows you have a long way to go before it looks good.  What if it doesn’t look good? What if this project isn’t a good idea? Or a waste of time? 

All these types of negative thoughts are common, the best way through them, I’ve found, is to work small, do broad strokes and keep chipping away at it.  That being said, I’ll typically spend an hour cleaning it up with a combination of anim layers and brute force.  Again, the walk cycle isn’t the point of this project, so I don’t expect to win any awards with it, it's just for internal tests as we develop the rig.

Since the rig is referenced into this scene, as we update the rig, we can see the results when we open it back up.

Walk Cycle Tips

Again, the cycle is not for presentation, but there’s a few bits I would like to mention (in no particular order):

1. I typically strip out my pole vectors to be on a single world axis (tx in this case) so I have more control over how they’re handled

2. When you have a walk cycle, test it walking in place and walking forward through space.  Walking forward can make it feels a world different and show better context for the motion

3. I’ll often constrain the motion of the head/chest/hips to global controls to better read the curves, as mocap can add jitters and pops from other places in the hierarchy that make clean up tedious

4. I almost always start walks/run from a mocap base, it’s simply too complicated and pieces are too connected to start from scratch.  I find it almost cruel we ask students to do walk cycles as a first exercise as they have a very steep learning curve.

5. If you pick up a cycle from mocap, do a once over to make sure that controls don’t have 360 values on it, as it can mess up renders/skinning/export joints.  Even in my own tools, I find them and same for clavicles being pushed too far in extremes.

6. Add in a ground plane to make sure feet aren’t going through the ground, especially when you have long toes

7. I have an Anim Cycle tool for free here: https://3dfiggins.com/Store/#Tools  You may find it useful, if nothing else, I like the ‘match out tangent’ when making curves looping

And now that we have a decent walk cycle and first pass on the rig.  We’ll jump back into the rig file and start adding the custom character elements, improve the skinning and start planning out the actual animation… next time!

Also, if you have any questions or thoughts, feel free to ask!