Rigging & Skinning 101 - Neck and Grouping

3 new joints, representing the top of the neck and the head. The rig is a total of 22 units high. New joints are the parented to the first neck joint, which was created during the spine process. The head is now connected to the rest of the rig.

Two additional joints with a smaller radius represent the jaw.

One eye is parented to the first head joint, then mirrored to create both eyes.

Controls can now be created for the new head joints. These need to labelled and their pivot points moved to the relating joints.

Arrows are ‘point and oriented’ to the corresponding joints. ‘Maintain offset’ should be ticked in both option menus.

Connections are made, and the attributes are given a minimum and maximum movement radius, cleaning up these new head controls. This process is the same as the arm controls.

This rig is easy to modify and very versatile. The legs can be copied over, the eye can be changed to a singular one etc. This rig can be used to match a character being worked-on, so it’ll be useful to keep this completed rig stored and safe, ready to be adapted.

To finalise, a main control is added and linked through the connection editor. Then, all aspects of the rig are grouped accordingly so that the outliner is clean and tidy.