Essential Skills in Character Rigging

Character rigging is a technique in computer animation in which a character is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character and a hierarchical set of interconnected bones or rig used to animate the character. This book is a beginner’s guide to learning and understanding the essential aspects to character setup, rigging, deformation, and animation. It covers the basic elements of taking a completed character model and setting up a skeleton with kinematics and soft-skin deformation.

Nicholas B. Zeman started his career in 3D graphics at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, where during graduate school he began working at 3D Studio Max. He left Kentucky for San Diego, where he was offered a job at Red Zone Interactive, a then-small company making the NFL Gameday series for Sony Computer Entertainment. He continued working for them as an expert in character rigging, facial rigging, and facial animation after they were purchased by Sony Computer Entertainment America, until the team was disbanded and the NFL Gameday series was canceled. He was later hired by Take Two Interactive in San Rafael, where he continued to develop and manage character rigs for the NBA 2K series, All-Pro Football 2K8, MLB 2K9-10, and NHL 2K9. After almost 12 years in character rigging for sports games, he left employment as a game developer to focus on the academic pursuit of interactive development. He became a professor at Northern Kentucky University in the Media Informatics Department and began his own digital media technology company, RHZ Development LLC, where he consults and produces functional games through gamification, mobile apps, and mobile games under the studio brand Little Fish Games and RHZ Development.