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In this video, we'll be introducing basic ideas and concepts used in rigging.

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We will also, however, be going into detail about each step in separate videos.

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Rigging is a fundamental step for going from static models to animated characters.

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Without rigging, you would only be able to move and animate objects as a whole.

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But what is rigging exactly?

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Well, the broad definition of rigging in CG can be described as

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the act of assigning relationships between objects so that moving one thing will move another.

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This can be seen in the very basic example of parenting one cube to another.

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For example, by assigning a parent-child relationship between these two cubes,

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you can move the parent cube and the child cube will follow.

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But you can also create more complex relationships with the help of constraints and armature objects.

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Constraints are powerful and flexible relationships that can be assigned between two objects,

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beyond the basic parent-child relationship.

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With constraints, for example, you can add a copy location constraint to our cube

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to copy the location of our light object,

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while also adding another copy location constraint to copy the location of our camera object.

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This creates a stack of constraints, just like modifiers, so stack order matters.

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So then you ask, what are armatures?

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In CG, the word armature is just another word for skeleton.

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Skeletons, in real life, are made up of bones,

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which serve as the foundation of how our bodies move and bend.

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Skeletons in CG are also made up of bones and do the same thing.

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Allow me to demonstrate real quick.

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You can download this character from the description down below.

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So let's say we have a character that looks like this, and you want to start animating it.

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If you want to move, rotate, or scale the character, only the whole character will move,

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kind of like a statue.

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In order to move the character like a character,

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you would need to, at the very least, be able to bend its joints individually.

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So let's demonstrate that with the arm real quick.

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If we simply add an armature and go into edit mode,

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we will be able to extrude and place our bones within our mesh

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according to where we might expect bones in real life.

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This includes the upper arm, the forearm, and the hand, for example.

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Once we're happy with that, we can go back into object mode

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and parent our mesh to the armature object with automatic weights.

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Weights are how you assign certain vertices to certain bones.

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And, as we can see, selecting and transforming the armature

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will allow us to deform each arm bone individually.

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Except that it doesn't.

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That's where we introduce pose mode.

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Pose mode is the mode where you'll be able to select and transform

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each individual bone to deform your mesh.

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These bones can be animated individually

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and each have their own rotation and location values.

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Now, in case you feel like the vertices assigned to each bone

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aren't fully accurate, you might want to adjust the weights.

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To do this, simply select the mesh and go into weight paint mode.

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This will allow you to paint your weights,

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letting you better control how you want the mesh to be deformed.

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For extra control, you'll be able to add bone constraints to your bones,

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allowing you to form relationships between bones and objects

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to make animation easier.

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For example, having one bone point to another bone

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to form a simple controller.

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But what's a controller?

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Well, a controller is just a bone that doesn't deform the mesh directly,

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but rather is used to drive other bones in some way.

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Most of the time, they exist solely to make it easier and more intuitive

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for the animator to use the rig.

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We'll go over each of these concepts in separate videos.

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So I hope this introduces you to the basic concept of rigging,

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what it is and how it works.