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Character rigs are definitely the most common type of rig.

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So in this video, we'll be going over how to rig this character mesh.

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You can download this base mesh in the description down below.

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So to start things off, if we want to create a humanoid skeleton for this character,

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we'll have to think about what bones we need to deform him.

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Let's see, we would need thighs, shins, feet, upper arms, forearms, heads, a head bone, several spine bones,

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maybe, maybe, maybe collarbones.

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This seems like a lot to keep track of if we're doing it from scratch.

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Luckily, Blender provides a basic humanoid skeleton for you already.

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Let's figure out how to access it.

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Normally, when you add an armature object from the Add menu,

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the only choice you have is the single bone that spawns when you click it.

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However, we can turn on a native add-on that lets us add an armature like usual,

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but gives us the option to have the armature come as a pre-made base human skeleton.

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To do this, all we have to do is go to Edit, Preferences, Add-ons.

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From here, we can go to the search bar and search Rigify.

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Rigify is one of Blender's auto-rigging systems and can be very powerful, but we'll get into that later.

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For now, we want to simply turn on Rigify.

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Feel free to read up on the documentation of any add-on by clicking its respective documentation button here.

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Let's close out of our Preferences window and try again to add an armature object.

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This time, you'll notice that we have an additional menu when selecting armature.

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Feel free to try all of these out because they're pretty cool.

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However, for our purposes, since our character is a human, we're going to be using the Human Meta Rig.

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Our next step is to simply match the joints with how we want the character mesh to bend.

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In other words, elbows should match with elbows and hands should match with hands, etc.

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For this, we'll need to go into Edit mode.

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Once in Edit mode, we're going to want to first match the size of our character.

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Right now, it's a bit big, so let's scale it down a bit.

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But when we do that, it's a bit disappointing to have the rig move up off the ground when it was already at perfect floor level.

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So we can simply change our pivot from Median to 3D Cursor.

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Hotkey users can press the period key and select it from the pie menu.

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Now, when we scale, we can have the feet stay in place while the rig gets shorter.

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Just what we wanted.

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If this isn't working for you, make sure your 3D cursor is in your world origin.

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You can change that by hitting Shift-S and selecting Cursor to World Origin in the pie menu.

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Let's just scale it down until our skeleton fits inside of our character.

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I typically use the collar bones as reference.

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We also have a bunch of facial bones that we won't really need for our basic character, so let's delete them.

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But which ones can we delete and which ones do we need?

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Truthfully, the only bone you'll need here is the head.

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So let's just select everything here with the Box Select tool and then deselect the head bone,

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which is actually labeled Spine.006.

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Then delete all the facial bones at once.

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From here, our arms are clearly not matching, so I'm going to select the bones and move them where they belong.

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But you might find this a bit tedious to do for the whole body.

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Luckily, however, we only need to do it for half the body.

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To mirror edits you make on the bones on one side of your character onto bones on the other side,

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simply open the right-hand side menu and go to Tool.

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Under here, you'll see options where you'll be able to enable X-axis mirror.

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Now, whenever you move a bone on the left side, the right side will follow.

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Let's continue matching our rig to our mesh.

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For this, it might be easier to turn your pivot point back from 3D cursor to median point.

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The most important thing about matching your rig to your mesh is that the elbows and other similar joints match.

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For the spine, we'll simply make sure that it follows the general location of where a real spine would be,

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and for the head we just need to make sure the pivot point is good and it fills the whole head.

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The collar bones should also not be too long or too short, so adjust accordingly.

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Now, our character has no fingers except for the thumb,

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so we can go ahead and get rid of all the fingers except for the thumb, the index finger, and the pinky.

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Oh, and technically if your character is male, you can delete the breast bones if you like.

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Or you can leave them in if you plan to use them in some way.

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Up to you.

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But if you do, make sure those have proper placement as well.

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Now that we've done all of that, let's parent our character mesh to our rig.

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We can do this by going back into Object Mode, selecting our mesh, then shift-selecting our armature.

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From here, we can right-click and go down to Parent.

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Hockey users can still press Ctrl P for the same menu.

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From this sub-menu, you'll notice a section labeled Armature Deform, under which we can select with automatic weights.

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From there, we can select our armature and go into Pose Mode.

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This will allow us to test the rig and see if the mesh is following the bones as intended.

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Now, if you're like me and you forgot to parent the eyes to the armature as well, just select it, shift-select the armature, and parent it in the same way.

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It looks pretty good!

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If there are any issues with the deformation, make sure to correct the weights by editing the vertex groups of the character mesh.

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You can learn more about how to do this in the separate vertex groups video.

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Now, some of you might be wondering why it's called a meta rig.

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This seems to imply that it's sort of an in-between step for something else.

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Well, while the Rigify add-on does provide these meta rigs for easy humanoid skeleton rigging, that's not all it does.

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In fact, its main purpose is to automatically generate all of the advanced rigging features an animator might need, including IK, FK, custom bone shapes, and more.

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So, while we can use the meta rig as an actual rig, just like we did earlier, if you wanted to use the meta rig for generating a new advanced rig instead, there's just one extra step we need to do.

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To go over the steps from the beginning again, simply add the human meta rig, or any Rigify meta rig, actually, to your scene.

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Then adjust the joints in edit mode to match your character, making sure not to delete any vital bones.

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If you were to, the Rigify generation would not work.

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You might be asking, how do I know if it's a vital bone?

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Well, if you're unsure, just reference the basic human meta rig.

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Any bones in this rig, save for the breast bones, are typically essential for generating a Rigify rig.

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Now, instead of parenting your mesh to the armature, simply go into the armature data tab, denoted by this green stick figure icon, in the properties editor.

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Here, if you scroll down, you should see a large Generate button.

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Click this, and wait until it's done.

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And there we go! You have just generated an advanced Rigify rig with constraints, custom bone shapes, and other advanced tools all customized to fit your character's shape and size.

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From here, you can just select your character mesh, and shift select your new Rigify armature, and parent your mesh to your rig as you did before.

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This rig is quite powerful.

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However, if you want to learn how to set up inverse kinematics or bone layers yourself, we will address these in separate videos.

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I hope this video gives you a good understanding of how character rigging works in Blender.