Blender Character Rigging

Character Rigging

The execution model is in blender-core. Faces and shape keys are in blender-facial-shapekeys, animation in blender-animation.

Pipeline (scripts chain; each returns JSON)

1. Prepare the mesh: scale applied, facing -Y, feet at Z=0, centered on X=0, symmetric, in T- or A-pose (A-pose 30–45° deforms shoulders better). Run blender-asset-qa first.
2. Metarig: scripts/rigify_build.py -- --add basic_human --fit Body (human adds a full face rig; for games use --no-face + shape keys).
3. Place the joints (the fit only scales). Edit bones in X-ray against the mesh: joints sit at the pivot of rotation (inside the volume, not on the surface). The elbow and knee need a slight bend toward their natural direction (elbow back, knee forward) so the IK solves the right way. Symmetrize: bpy.ops.armature.symmetrize(). Check with look (shading="xray").
4. Generate: --metarig META_Body --generate gives RIG_Body (control rig: FK/IK, IK/FK snapping, tweak bones, bone collections).
5. Skin: scripts/bind_mesh.py -- --armature RIG_Body --meshes Body. It uses heat weights, switches to the voxel-proxy transfer automatically when heat fails (non-manifold, kitbashed or AI meshes), then cleans to 4 influences and normalizes.
6. Stress test: scripts/stress_poses.py -- --armature RIG_Body, then look(mode="frames", frames=[1,10,20,30,40,50]). Fix collapsing elbows, candy-wrapped forearms, a sunken shoulder or a hip crease (below).
7. Engine skeleton: rigify_build.py -- --rig RIG_Body --game-skeleton gives GAME_RIG_Body = root + DEF bones in a clean hierarchy, with DEF- stripped, constrained to the control rig and with the meshes re-targeted. Animate with the control rig, then bake to the game skeleton and export it (blender-animation → blender-export-pipelines).
8. Validate: scripts/rig_check.py -- --armature GAME_RIG_Body --profile unity|unreal|roblox [--fix].

Bone rules

• Layers of a production rig: DEF (deforming, the only ones exported), ORG (original metarig copy), MCH (mechanism helpers), controls (what animators touch). Never weight to control/MCH bones.
• Naming: .L/.R suffixes (mirror tools, Rigify and rig_check depend on them). Unique, ASCII. Bone collections (arm.collections.new("FK"), bcoll.assign(bone)) replace the old bone layers.
• Roll: consistent local axes. Y points down the bone; recalc with armature.calculate_roll(type="GLOBAL_POS_Z") for limbs, or per chain. Mirrored bones must have mirrored roll (rig_check flags this).
• Chains: connected parent→child for limbs. Spine 3–5 bones, neck 1–2. Twist bones on the forearm and upper arm (Rigify's .001 segments) prevent candy-wrapping.
• The root bone sits at the origin, Y-forward, carries no weights, and is used for root motion.
• Scale: armature object scale 1, rotation 0. Apply before skinning. Non-uniform bone scale animation breaks engines.

Weight painting rules (what pros check)

• ≤ 4 influences per vertex (mobile/Roblox), ≤ 8 on PC if the engine supports it. Always normalized. Weights below 0.01 removed.
• Smooth falloff across joints: a 50/50 blend at the joint line, fading over ~1–2 edge loops. A hard 1/0 cut shows a crease; too wide gives rubbery limbs.
• Elbows/knees: weight the outer side to the upper bone longer so the joint keeps volume. Add a helper/corrective bone or corrective shape for sharp bends.
• Shoulders: blend the clavicle, upper arm and spine. Test arms raised above the head (stress frame 10).
• Hips: the thigh-pelvis blend in front stays tight (crease) and soft at the back (glutes).
• Head/neck: rigid head (100% head bone above the jawline), smooth neck blend. Props (helmets, armor plates) get 100% weight to a single bone, so they stay rigid with no stretching.
• Mirror: paint one side, then object.vertex_group_mirror(all_groups=True, flip_group_names=True, use_topology=False), or work with X-mirror on.
• Tools (live): Weight Paint mode with auto-normalize on, the gradient tool, Smooth (vertex_group_smooth), Levels, and object.data_transfer from a good mesh (clothing gets its weights from the body).

Correctives (beyond weights)

Corrective shape keys driven by bone rotation fix elbows, knees and shoulders in hero rigs. Sculpt the fix in the posed state (modifier_apply_as_shapekey or the Corrective Shape Keys add-on approach), then drive the key value from the bone's local rotation (driver TRANSFORMS var ROT_X in LOCAL_SPACE, mapped from 0 at rest to 1 at full bend). Games: correctives export as blendshapes. Drive them in the engine (UE Pose Driver / Unity script) or bake them into the animation.

Engine skeleton specifics

• Unity Humanoid: Hips → Spine → Chest → Neck → Head, plus limbs. The game skeleton maps automatically (rig_check --profile unity shows the mapping). T-pose bind pose recommended.
• Unreal: retarget to the UE5 Mannequin with IK Retargeter. Matching names (pelvis, spine_01, thigh_l...) speeds up chain mapping (--profile unreal lists the gaps). No leaf bones.
• Roblox R15: a fixed hierarchy and names (LowerTorso, UpperTorso, LeftUpperArm...), Root > HumanoidRootNode > LowerTorso, no weights on Root, ≤ 4 influences. Build it manually or from Roblox's Blender template rather than Rigify. Details are in blender-export-pipelines/references/roblox.md.

Gotchas

• rigify_generate needs the metarig selected and active (temp_override isn't enough). The scripts handle this.
• "Bone Heat Weighting: failed to find solution" comes from non-manifold, intersecting parts or tiny scale. bind_mesh.py falls back to proxy. Fix the scale first.
• Meshes parented with "Keep Transform" but with unapplied scale get a double transform. Apply the scale before parenting.
• Modifier order: Armature should come after shape-key-like deforms and before Subdivision/Corrective Smooth (Corrective Smooth after Armature reduces collapsing).
• 5.0: bone.select is gone. Use pose_bone.select or edit_bone.select. bone.hide affects edit bones too.