BlenRig 5 Quick Introduction Guide

Author: Juan Pablo Bouza

Email: jpbouza@gmail.com
BlenRig is an Auto-rigging and skinning system that provides the user of a Feature Film quality rig
(including an advanced facial system).
The current version only supports Biped characters, but more presets will be added in the near future.
System Requirements for animation:
Minimum Processor spec: Intel i3 or AMD equivalent.
In this type of computer a high resolution character will roughly reach 24 fps.
Recommended Processor spec: Intel i7 or AMD equivalent.
In this type of computer most rigged high resolution characters will run at 35+ fps. Low resolution proxy
versions may run at 50+ fps.

1 - Installation
After downloading BlenRig.zip, you can install the Add-on by going to File >> User Preferences >> Addons >> Install from file.

From there just browse the zip file and enable the Add-on.

2 - Adding the Rig

After doing this, you can add the BlenRig Biped to the scene from the Add-Object Menu.

Initially, you will see that the BlenRig Armature has been added to the scene.

If you check the rest of the layers on the scene you will find that other objects have also been added.

Layer 11 and 12: Mesh Deform cage Layer 19: Bone Shape objects
and Lattices

Layer 1: Proxy model for creating

low resolution versions of
characters

3 - Panels
Apart from the rig itself, you will also find some new panels with tools.

At the left, in the View3d Tools Panel, you will find a BlenRig 5 tab which contains all the animation
related controls and tools.
At the right, in the Armature data tab, you will find a panel with all the rigging related tools.

4 - Rigging a Character (Quick Intro)

Note: this section will cover the basics of rigging a character with BlenRig, but by no means does it replace
the video tutorial reference. Also, this guide will require the user to have basic knowledge on modeling,
animation and rigging, whereas the video tutorials, where I will explain and go through the procedure step
by step. The whole purpose of BlenRig is that even beginners can use it and obtain high quality results.

4.1 - RETARGETING
Once BlenRig has been added to your character's scene, the first thing to do is to put the rig in Reproportion mode. This will enable all the different controllers that will let you fit the armature into your
character.

The Re-proportion button is located under the Rigging & Baking tab in the rigging panel.

When Re-proportion mode is enabled, the layer with the re-proportion controllers is automatically displayed

Note: In case you want to display all the

armature layers with their corresponding
names, you can increase the number of
layer to display in the layers settings
tab. The default number of layers is 10,
which represents the control layers that
BlenRig uses by default. By increasing
this number, more layers will be
displayed in the BlenRig Controls
Panel

The first thing to adjust is the height of the rig. If the dimension of the character differs too much from the
size of the rig, you might want to scale the rig as a whole with the 'master' bone. After that you can adjust
the height of the rig by moving 'master_torso'.

Ater matching 'master_torso' with the waist of the character, you can adjust the spine and neck controllers in
the side view.

Then, you can adjust arms and legs.

Remember that you can scale any of the main controllers in order to make a first approach to the size of your
character. In the case of the feet, you can scale 'sole_ctrl_L' and 'R'.

After you have finished with one side of the rig, you can select all the controllers from that side with the
select pattern tool, and then you can copy the pose and paste it into the bones from the opposite side.

That's all for the body, so next step is to adjust the facial controllers. First, I will scale 'neck_ctrl_4_str' to
match the scale of the head with the character. Then, by transforming 'face_mstr_str' I will fit the facial rig
a bit better into the face.

For adjusting the face, as well as other parts of the body, it is a good practice to show the wireframe of the
model. That way, you know you are aligning correctly the deformation bones to the edge loops of the
mesh.
I know that seeing all these bones and controllers together might be a bit intimidating, that's why each part
of the face has its own color group. The good thing about this is that you can select the group from the
Armature Groups tab, and then with Ctrl+I you can invert the selection and hide ('H') the rest of the
bones. With Alt+H you can unhide everything again.

By doing this you can place the controllers without so many visual annoyances.

So, I will start from top to bottom.

First the eyebrows. Notice that there is a big controller called 'brow_mstr_str_L' and 'R' that will let you
transform the eyebrow structure as a whole.
After placing that controller, I go placing the rest of the cube controllers, aligning them to the corresponding
edge loops.
As the facial rig is based on B-Bones, I usually set the Armature display type to B-Bone, in order to see the
actual curvature of the deformation bones.

As you can see, I also moved the vertical bones so that they are aligned to the vertical loops of the model.
The reason for also using vertical deformation bones, is because this grid like configuration prevents the
mesh from collapsing when the joints are articulated. If I only used horizontal deformation bones, you would
see lots of intersections in faces that are further away from the actual deformation bones.
So, the idea is that all these facial B-Bbones resemble as much as possible the surface of the model.
Secondly I will align the eye rig to the model. To do this, I will first look for the center of the eye object and
snap the cursor to that location (Shift+S).

Once I have that location, I will snap 'eye_mstr_str_L' and 'R' to the center of the corresponding eye.

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After doing that, I will align the eye controllers to the eyelids, just as I did with the eyebrows.

Next, I will adjust the inner mouth controls, that is teeth and tongue. Again you have one big cube controller
for each part that will move things as a whole. In this case they are 'teeth_up_str', 'teeth_low_str' and
'tongue_str'

Finally, we get to adjust the actual face controllers.

The first things we should put in place are some violet controllers. You can isolate those controllers by
selecting the 'STR_FACE_MECH' group and hiding the rest of the bones.
First I'll put in place the jaw controllers (the ones named maxi, from maxillar)
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This will determine the point of articulation of the jaw. Then I go and adjust the 'mouth_str' controllers, that
will serve to all the mechanisms related to opening the mouth and to stretching the lower part of the face.
So, this goes from the back of the nose, it goes through the mouth corners and reaches the chin.

Then I move 'mouth_mstr_str' to the tip of the lips, and 'mouth_str_ik' to the middle of the face. The
location of this last controller will determine the pivoting point of the mouth, that is, when you move the
mouth around the face as a whole.
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After that, I just move 'mouth_ctrl_str', 'lip_up_loc' and 'lip_loc_low' into position. This bones determine
the position of the general mouth and lips animation controllers.

So, once this is all set, we can start placing the facial controls.
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First, I'll place the lip controllers, those are 'mouth_corner_str_L', 'lip_up_ctrl_3_mstr_L',
'lip_up_ctrl_2_mstr_L', 'lip_up_ctrl_2_mstr_L', 'lip_up_ctrl_mstr_mid', 'lip_low_ctrl_3_mstr_L',
'lip_low_ctrl_2_mstr_L', 'lip_low_ctrl_2_mstr_L', 'lip_low_ctrl_mstr_mid'.

Then I'll place the outer controllers (cheeks)

When you do this, you will notice that the controllers that are between the lip controllers and the cheek
controllers, will move along with the new placement.
So, after doing this, I'll just put the all the mid controllers aligned to the edge loops of the model. Note that
some times it's not possible to perfectly align the controllers to the loops, but that is not so critical, just do as
best as you can.

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As you can see, after moving the rest of the controllers all the B-Bones are wrapped around the shape of the
face. Always try not to make abrupt changes in the flow of the curvature of the B-Bones.
And don't forget about adjusting the nose and ears too! And copying the pose to the opposite side!
4.2 - BAKING
Next step is to bake BlenRig into this new proportions.
The correct order for doing this is to always bake the mesh objects first, then the armature at the end. So, I
will select the BlenRig Mesh Deform Cage from layer 11. As you can see, the Cage has adopted the same
proportions from the armature and it is now overlapped to the model.

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From down under the Object Data panel, at the BlenRig Mesh Baking Panel, I will press the Bake Mesh
button.
As this mesh does not have any shapekeys in it, I will just uncheck the Bake to Shape Key option.
Note: further information on this topic will be covered in the video tutorials (creating new characters from
a rigged mesh).
After baking the mesh, you will notice it will get deformed badly, that is totally OK. It will come back to
normal after I bake the Armature.

Optionally, you can also bake the proxy model mesh from layer 1. I use that mesh to create low resolution
versions of the characters for fast animation previews, but that topic will be covered in the video tutorials
too

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So, now it's time to bake the BlenRig Armature. I will select it, and press the Bake armature button.

Notice how the Mesh Deform Cage has come back to normal after baking the armature.
Now, the last steps. I will press TAB to go into Armature Edit mode, and then I'll press the Fix Joints
button, then the Calc Rolls button.

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These two operations might take a minute or so to process, so you will have to be patient. The Fix Joints
button makes sure all the joints of the armature stick together, as some positions get messed up after baking
it. Likewise, the Calc Rolls button will set all the bones to their correct roll angles. Afterwards you can
customize roll angles, but again, I won't cover that in this tutorial.
After doing this, I go back to Pose Mode and press the Reset Constraint button, that will ensure all
constraints behave correctly with the new proportions.

Then, I just click the Reproportion Mode button again to go out of re-proportion mode.
When I move the controllers of the rig, you can see that everything is working well (including the Mesh
Deform Cage), but with these new proportions. Also, the lattices are already parented and working with the
rig.

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4.3 - ADJUSTING THE MESH DEFORM CAGE

Here is the last step before we can see our character in motion!
The Mesh Deform cage is now the same size of the
model, but for making it work with the character I
will need to wrap it around the model. In other words,
every part of the model should be inside of the Mesh
Deform Cage.
In the picture to the right you can see that many parts
of the character remain outside of the Cage, specially
the torso, waist and shoes.
The next step is to adjust the Mesh Deform Cage in
Edit mode, moving all the vertices so that they
surround the model of the character.
Note that I always do this manually, as the Mesh
Deform Cage is strategically weighted with the
BlenRig armature, so it is important that you preserve
the relation between the Edge loops of the Cage and
the deformation bones.
In other words, it's not a good idea to try to automatically adjust the Cage to the model with a shrinkwrap
modifier or any similar method, as you would spoil all the deformation strategies that are present in the
topology of the cage.
After moving around the vertices for a couple of minutes, here is the resulting Cage. Notice how the
character has been totally surrounded by it.

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Now, in order to make the character work with the Mesh Deform Cage, I will add a mesh deform modifier to
the model of the character.
In the Object field, I selected the Mesh Deform Cage object, and initially I will bind the modifier with a
Precision level of 5. Next, I press the Bind button.

After a couple of seconds the binding process should be finished. When I move the armature, I notice some
spikes coming out from the model.

Those are simply vertices that were left outside of the Mesh Deform Cage. Therefore, I will select the model
again and press the unbind button in the mesh deform modifier. Once I do that, I will edit the Cage again
and try to surround those missing vertices.
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Here you can clearly see the troubling vertices.

After adjusting the Cage to cover those, I go back to the model and press the bind button again.
As everything went correctly and no vertices were left outside of the Cage, I will now bind the character
again but in Precision level 7

Level 7 is the correct level for binding the character and obtaining the best deformation possible. The
binding process in level 7 may take up to 30 minutes, depending on the complexity of the model. However,
in most cases the process won't take longer than 5 minutes.
You can check my articles on mesh deform deformation at the BlenRig section of the Blender Cloud.

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Ater the binding process is finished, the character is already deforming pretty well!

Note: from here on, you will need and intermediate knowledge of rigging and skinning in order to fully
understand each process. Therefore, the following tasks are not fully described as some previous knowledge
is needed.
Nevertheless, I expect that with BlenRig 5 video tutorials, beginner users will also understand what to do, as
everything will be covered step by step.

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4.4 - REFINING CAGE DEFORMATION

The Mesh Deform Cage from BlenRig was strategically modeled to produce the best deformation possible
out of the box. Nevertheless, as characters can vary their size and proportions, some times you may have to
tweak the way in how the Cage deforms.
Basically, there are two ways in which you can do this:
1) Using shapekeys in the Cage to obtain the desired deformation. Here is a list of the bones that you need to
use in order to drive your shapekeys:
Legs: thigh_drv_L(R), shin_fk_L(R), foot_drv_L(R)
Arms: arm_drv_L(R), forearm_fk_L(R), hand_drv_L(R), hand_twist_drv_L(R)
Torso: pelvis_def, spine_1_def, spine_2_def spine_3_def
Head: neck_1_def, neck_2_def, neck_3_def, head_def_mstr

2) Refining weights on the cage. For this you can activate the layer called deformation (which is armature
layer 15), in which you will find all the deformation bones to weight paint with.
In the BlenRig 5 video tutorials this will be covered step by step.

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4.5 - HEAD, HANDS AND FEET

As you may already have noticed, mesh deform is a great, organic way of deforming the characters. The
only aspect in which this technique wont help is in deforming rigid parts of the mesh, or small parts. So, the
head and hands of the character have to be deformed with the armature modifier. Feet should also be
deformed with the armature modifier in the case that the character has toes.
In this case we'll just do head and hands.
The first thing I'll do is to create and paint a group called no_mdef, in order to separate the areas that
should be deformed with the armature from the ones that will remain deformed by the mdef (mesh deform)
modifier.

The red parts are the ones that will have Armature modifier influence, and the the blue parts will be
deformed by the mdef modifier.
Also notice that there is a gradient between red and blue, this will allow a smooth transition between both
types of deformation.

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After the no_mdef vertex group is painted, you should setup the armature and mesh deform modifiers in
the model as follows:

Notice that the Armature modifier goes first and that both modifiers have the no_mdef vertex groups
assigned to them. The difference is that the mdef modifier has the invert button pressed. This is the most
typical configuration that you will use, although other configurations exist, but explaining that would require
a whole other tutorial!
4.6 - WEIGHT PAINTING THE HANDS
So, painting the hands basically requires you to paint 'hand_def_L'(R), which is the base bone of the hand,
and then all the remaining phalanges.
In BlenRig, there are bones that have the suffix _fix, which are basically deformation bones that help you
in volume preservation. They basically move out when the joint bends, and by painting this _fix bones,
you prevent the skin of the character from collapsing.
I know many people like doing things as fast as possible, and that's valid, so you are totally free to try to
apply automatic weights on the characters.
However, I prefer to do things manually and have total control over how things deform. My technique
consists in articulating each joint and paint the bones in the most critical position, until it deforms
adequately.
Here are some basic examples of how I paint the hands.

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You can see 'hand_def_L' and the little finger phalanges. Between each phalanx you see the _fix bone
weight.
Again, this will be covered step by step in the video tutorials. You can also look into Victor's blend file
from Cosmos Laundromat if you want to see a finished example of how it is all weight painted.
4.7 WEIGHT PAINTING THE FACE
As I said before, it is valid that you try to do automatic weights with the face also. I even did that when
rigging the penguins from Caminandes 3, as they were secondary characters ( you can see the article at the
BlenRig section on the Cloud)
.
However, the truth is that if you want to be in total control of the deformation, you will have to weight paint
manually.
Here is how I do it...
1) I paint the 'head_def_mstr' bone

2) With atuo-normalize enabled, I paint

the jaw bone, maxi. After doing that I
turn off atuo-normalize. The main
objective here is to get his mouth opened.

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3) I then paint all the rings of the face

4) I also paint all the columns of the face

grid

All this deformation bones should be painted in a way that they more or less overlapping with each other.
Again, check the Victor character for a good reference, or watch the video tutorials!
Last but not least, after painting all the weights, I remove the unnecessary influence from 'head_def_mstr'
and 'maxi', so that they don't interfere with the actual deformation bones of the face.

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Optionally, you can even replace 'head_def_mstr' dividing its influence along 'head_def_1', 'head_def_2'
and 'head_def_3' to be able to use the full 3 joint articulation BlenRig offers in the head.

Don't forget to also paint the inner mouth with the rings and columns deformation bones. Also
remember to weight paint the teeth, tongue and ears!
After doing all these, the facial rig should already be looking quite well. The following expression was
achieved right after weight painting, with no other deformation techniques involved.

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4.8 - SETTING UP THE FACE

If by the time you are reading this, BlenRig 5 tutorials are not yet published, I recommend you to watch the
video called A tour of victor's new rig on Youtube or on the Blender Cloud. There, you will get the basic
knowledge on how the face controllers work.
Again, it's very difficult to do a step by step guide about this topic within this short guide, so I will try to
explain certain basic things and then you should watch BlenRig 5 videos (or wait for them to be ready).
Basically, these are the controllers that will drive all the facial expressions:
'mouth_ctrl', 'mouth_corner_ctrl_L(R)', 'cheek_ctrl_L(R)', 'eyelid_up_ctrl_L(R)',
'eyelid_low_ctrl_L(R) and 'brow_ctrl_L(R)'.

The whole dynamics of the face deformation is based on constraints and bone hierarchies organized in a way
that makes everything move organically. In other words, the user don't have to care or even know about how
the face rig dynamics work!
However, in order for the user to be able to customize how the different facial movements should look like, I
set up a system based on editable actions. BlenRig already comes with default movements for each of the
actions, so, if the head of your character is more or less the same size of the head of the unaltered BlenRig
armature, you may not even need to edit those actions, as th default movements could work well with your
character.
Before we go into editing the actions, there are some parameters that you should be aware of. In the
BlenRig Rigging Panel you will find a Facial Settings tab, and within that tab you will find the
Facial Movement Ranges menu.
Within that menu you can define the amount of movement you want the afore mentioned controllers to have.
Therefore, if you think that when the characters does a U vowel, the mouth corner controller should move
0.015 Blender Units inwards, then you put that value in the IN field of both 'mouth_ctrl_L' and 'R'.
The same goes for the other listed controllers. For example, If you want the Cheeks to be raised 0.03
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Blender units at the maximum position, you then put that value in the UP field of the 'cheek_ctr_L' and
'R' controllers.
So, the idea is that you move these main controllers around and determine if the default values work well
with your character, or if you need to increase or decrease those movement ranges.

Basically, there are three important actions that you may have to edit:

zrig_mouth_corner_in: you can set how the lips move when the mouth narrows into a U or an
O vowel. Frame 0 of the action is rest pose, frame 1 is maximum movement. In this action you
should basically move the lips controllers.

zrig_eyelids_lower and upper: here you set how the eyelids behave when the character blinks.
Frame 0 is rest pose, frame -1 is eyelids opened to max position (like when the character is
surprised), frame 1 is eyelid middle way to blink, frame 2 is eyelid in full blink position.

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In most of the cases, the controllers that belong to actions are not the main controllers of the rig, but some
dedicated controllers that are only used for editing those actions. You can see all these controllers by
enabling the Actions layer.
Here you can see the 'zrig_mouth_corner_in' action on frame 0 (rest position).

Note that for editing the action, you should enable auto-keying (or you can also modify they key and insert
it manually). Also note that all of the needed controllers are already inside the action, you don't need to add
extra controllers to it. In order to display all the controllers that belong to the action, you can press the
Ghost icon that is in the Action Editor.

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Anyway, in most cases you will only need to move a couple of controllers. In the image below you can see
that for the 'zrig_mouth_corner_in' action in frame 1, I only moved the controllers of the lips, although there
are many more controllers available.

Some times you might want to edit the action with the face
doing a certain expression. In that case, if you open the
action in the Action Editor, you would get a doubled
movement of the controllers. That is why in the Facial
Settings panel, I added a menu called Action Toggles
from which you can temporarily turn off the effect of the
actions, so that you don't get those double transforms.
Anyway, this might seem like too much information, but
don't get scared, you might not even need to do all this
tweaking. I'm just giving you the necessary knowledge in
case you need to.
Moreover, regarding all the panels, each property will show
you a description if you put your mouse over them. That will
help you understand things even better.
To sum up, all you have to do is start moving the main
controllers around and deciding whether or not you need to
adjust some of these actions. You can think of them as
Armature shapekeys!
All these topics will be covered in depth in the video
tutorials.
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4.9 - FINISHING THE FACE

After you are satisfied with how the face is behaving, you may want to polish the way in which some
expressions are deforming the mesh. Here is when corrective shapekeys come into place.
The idea is that you drive your corrective shapekeys with the movement of the main controllers of the face,
such as the 'mouth_corner_L' and 'R' controllers. Again, you might want to check on Victor how I set up
those drivers, or watch me doing that in real time in the video tutorials!
Another way of overcoming unwanted deformations is to use the 'Corrective Smooth modifier as I did with
the penguins of Caminandes 3. This is a good solution for secondary characters. (read the article on the
Cloud)

5 Panels Overview
This is just a quick overview of the UI options that haven't been mentioned in the tutorial.
5.1 BLENRIG 5 CONTROLS

You can use the BlenRig Body Picker panel to select the rig controllers without the need of having them
displayed in the 3d view.
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From here you can also switch between IK and FK for every part of the body, you can also toggle Hinge
(isolate rotation) and Stretchy IK. At the bottom you will also find the buttons for performing IK-FK
Snapping.
The BlenRig Face Picker has the same functionality but for the face controllers. Note that if you press
Ctrl or SHIFT when selecting controllers from the pickers, the controller will be added to the existing
selection.

In the Extra Properties Tab you will find animatable properties that are of less common use.
You can make the arms and legs curve when they bend, you can toggle IK and Hinge for each finger
separately, and you can control the behavior of the hat, glasses and hand accessory bones. More on this will
be covered in the video tutorials.
In the Custom Properties Tab, you can easily see the animatable properties that the selected controller
may have.
Finally, the Muscle System Tab is just a placeholder for properties I use when I setup a Shrinkwrap based
muscle system. I also use the Deformation Extras properties to toggle the influence of some modifiers in
order to speed up viewport display.

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5.1 BLENRIG 5 RIGGING PANEL

Here I'll do a brief description of the tabs that were not used during this tutorial. Again, if you put your
mouse over each property, you will see a proper description.

In Body Setting you will find:

IK: This properties let you override the initial rotation or bending of the arms and legs. This is useful in
cases where the model of the character has its legs and arms in a rest position that is too straight. So, when
you place the bones into that body, as the joints of the elbow or knees won't have a proper bending, the IK
won't know which way to bend to (in many cases you will see that the IK doesn't bend at all). So, with these
properties you can fix that issue.
Automated Movement: here you can tweak or even turn off some automatic mechanisms that BlenRig
offers. For instance you can turn off or tweak the automatic shoulder movement that occurs when you move
the arms of the rig in IK.
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Realistic Joints: In most cases you will leave these at their default values, but basically BlenRig emulates
how real world joints behave. That is, when you bend your leg, the shin bone (or bones) not only rotates,
but it also moves along the volume of the thigh bone. So, bones don't rotate in place, but they are also
displaced. This is what this values represent, and among other things, this technique helps in volume
preservation too. I will explain this further in the video tutorials
Toggles: here you can simply turn on and off fingers and toes to fit the needs of your character.
Under Facial Setting you will also find the Lips Shaping tab. This values will basically let you tweak
how the mouth controllers react to the movement of the corners of the mouth. In most cases you will leave
these at their default values.

The Dynamic Shaping tab lets you modify your rigged character in a similar way Flex Rig does. You can
scale body parts, assign a new height to the character, make it skinnier or fatter, etc.
It's worth mentioning that you can also do all these things with the rig controllers, but by doing it from
within this panel, those changes are stored and kept when you link the character. In other words, you can use
the Dynamic Shaping tab as fast (but limited) way for generating secondary characters.
Finally, the Rig Optimizations tab has some check-boxes that let you turn off certain parameters that
might speed up the rig. These are only to be turned off after the character is rigged. I personally
recommend only turning off 'Enable Face Drivers' as they won't have visible effect on the rig once the face
has been set up.
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Final Thoughts
I hope that this quick intro guide has been useful, at least to start getting your characters in motion!
Expect a more detailed and comprehensive explanation in the BlenRig 5 video tutorials!
Cheers!
Juan Pablo

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