In this Blender 2.53 video tutorial, I show you how to add the Human Meta-Rig, and set it up with constraints and such for easier and faster rig creation.
I also will walk you through how to recover your project files from a crash. My project crashes halfway into the video, so you will get to see this first hand. 
Thanks David!!!
David, you are my hero!
The knuckles should not rotate when the fingers curl.
Thank you for a very nice tutorial!
One thing tho. You can use full influence with copy rotation and still control
individual bones if you check “offset” checker box.
awesome, i must’ve overlooked that one, thanks
where can I get a copy of blender that has the human meta rig for mac?
thanks for your help.
Thanks David!!![2]
in 2.53 i can’t copy and paste into opposite side unless i click one by one in the armature,why is that?? did they change it or is it a bug??
Thanks a lot for this tutorial, I really needed this
Nice work as usual Dave, Just one question, why don’t you generate the rig under “Meta-Rig Templates” in the object data tab before editing it? It’ll automatically setup all the knee and arm targets, the finger curls and most of the constraints, then its just a case of resizeing the rig to match the mesh.
Mike.
i played with that, but i couldn’t quite figure out how to get it to work the way you’re describing
The guy who build the rigging system explains it here. I’ve played with it a bit but not to your level of expertise. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksk4zkxdqhw
Great tutorial david, one question: Can you in future explain how to set up auto IK on the hands? I’ve seen it elsewhere and want to know how it works…
This was great!
How about a follow up video in which you conform it to a mesh and assign weights (or generate them), essentially make a mesh of a different size deformable with this rig?
Hey Dave, next tim you need to recover a file just organize the files by time, there’s an icon up there to do that.
Very interesting intro to the human rig, thanks David.
A lot easier than I thought
Exactly the same as for Jonathan Williamson…AMAZING tutorial!…Thank you!…
nice! what about fk system and ik-fk swiching with drivers and… finally widgets?
thanks, will help for sure, but generally, i had in mind that complete rig should be here>> why would i need to rig all these constraints. umm, strange. confused a bit. it should be all automatic..
@Lala it does it you generate the rig, see this clip from the guy who designed the system. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksk4zkxdqhw
Much thanks Dave, You alone have taught me more about blender than all other tutorials combined. I’ve been following your youtube tutorials for a while now and credit 99% of my blender knowledge to you
Keep making tutorials, your impact on the blender community is epic!
-MMODad
Thanks dave,
hey, would i be presumptuous in asking if u could do a basic animation tut or 2?
I have found just doing a walk cycle to be really hard, and it’s obviously not something 2 master in 5 minutes,
and i have done like a squash and stretch bouncing ball, but it would be awesome if u could even give a study/research recommendation, as you obviosly have the skills(“alcoholic frog” etc on youtube).
maybe that’s what u r doing next? I dunno, but it will be good anyway.
thanks for all your tuts so far!
Excelent tutorial, crash inclusive. Tanks a lot Dave and congratulations for your excelent work and all the stuff of Blender Cookie.
For me that was so much fun. First time I realy did some kind of rigging and this realy helped. Hope to see some continuation in this kind of topic. The (MetaRig-)guy realy looks like he wants to run.
Thanks!
thank u 4 ever
ur frend in blender hohopoot
rotation bone
I can not make this part of the video
31:43 / 31:57
how can I do this part?
Is there a py script to select objects in the 3d view and “scan” them into the texteditor, how they can be constructed. so you could actually save the modified Human Rig as a new script to invoke in the future.
or do I have to save it an separate file and load it form there.
Uhh thanks 4 the tutorial, I’ll test it on my new character: http://niuarts.squarespace.com/blog-design/2010/8/9/robots-render.html
I Need Help in The game engine tutorial eddie Tutorial Can u Tell ME how to add dynamics in blender 2.53 beta cant find it.
AMAZING. thank you
This is an amazing tutorial
Can I ask a quick question the mesh i created was not in T-Pose. Instead it was in A-Pose and the fingers are slightly bent. I tried to convert the mesh however it didn’t seem to work out. I then tried to conform the armature in edit mode however i am having issues. I deleted my rig and used the one provided along with the download and altered it again afterwards i copied the roll of each bone from the upper arm down; however when i rotate the finger bones as shown to perform the hand curl the fingers rotate incorrectly. For what i’m doing the hand rotation is very important so can you deliver any advice.
I copied the roll of the bones from the original armature in the download…
Hello, David Ward!
Excellent video tutorial. I’m learning and surprising me with the development of Blender.
Congratulations for the excellent tutorial.
At around 15:40 you say to duplicate the hand bone and then resize but when i try that it resizes a along the y axis so it grows longer instead of wider, I tried to do do it anyway without making it into a large cube like you did but for some reason it didnt work do you have any idea what i could be doing wrong if so please reply.
Thanks.
thanks for this David Ward – nice tutorial
@ Joedangod
you have to alt +s in editmode if u havent
regards
Thanks david! great tutorial. The dragon series it’s wonderfoul.
Spain.
Hi David,
thnks for this tutorial. really helpful. Im just getting a little problem, i can’t reset the parenting of a bone, the default one remains. For instance when i extrude the Ik_knee i cant parent it to foot because i cant delete what is written in the parent box. so i would be gratefull i u could help me.
regards
Nathan
Hi its Nathan again, just to tell u that i solved the problem, actually, it wasn’t a real one, i missed the part u said press enter after deleting the bone parenting, i just left click as in previous blender version. Thnx again, and hope to watch your futur tuts.
Nathan
hey i really like that tutorial, i will definitely use it for a video im making. but i want to ask you what recording software you are using. it seems really fast and smooth and im wondering if you are using fraps or something? that would be really helpful, i need it for the same video, and maybe you could tell me how to get it (if its not fraps or hypercam).
Hi David,
it’s a quite nice tutorial, but is there a reason why didn’t you use Rigify? The main point of the Human metarig is for use with Rigify, where it just generates all the constraints for you. You don’t have to set those up manually. The Meta-rig can be adjusted to fit your characters proportions, and then turned into a full production rig using the Metarog Templates panel in Armature properties. This feature is way too hidden – it’s quite amazing really.
I like the way you do the Dimitri hands and wish I could figure out how to put that setup into the meta-rigg templates…
Which I will some day… but for now they are easy enough to build… Anyway.. great tutorial thanks for the effort hope I can get proficient with blender enough to do some tutorials in return some time… or do something to help everyone else out…
Put my four dollars to good use, thank you sir!
finally got around to this one. Having a complete rig at the click of a button in blender 2.5 is great. customizing it with tips and tricks learned from a blendercookie tutorial is even better. thanks a bunch!
thanks for this nice tutorial ! But I have a problem when I duplicate the hand bone and apply a copy rotation, after that we see that the hand follows this bone ; the hand I’ve done doesn’t follows it at all…
thanks for this nice tutorial ! But I have a problem when I duplicate the hand bone and apply a copy rotation, after that we see that the hand follows this bone ; the hand I’ve done doesn’t follow it at all…
hey umm every time i click alt ctrl s it wants to save
Hmm I’m having a problem when setting up the fingers. I’m using 2.54. There is no ‘local space’ option when I add the constraints on the roll outs, just ‘world space’ and ‘local space (without parent)’. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?
What happended with the human meta rig in Blender 2.55? It’s not there anymore.
just curious as I am trying to do this tut on 2.54 and you said to scale the B-Bones with CTRL+ALT and F or S? I tried both with S leading to save and F doing nothing
It is CTRL + ALT + S while in Edit mode for the bones.
-Jonathan
Thanks for the help. I am new to Blender but this was an extremely helpful and well done tut. I am looking for to seeing more
In version 2.55 there is no metarig. Is there an addon that must be installed?
Ta
It is now a part of Nathan Vegdahl’s Rigify addon which you can find in this thread: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=200371
-Jonathan
when i duplicate and flip(scale x-1) the arm part of the rig, the armatures in the hand get messed up, all the constraint dont work, so when i rotate the pinki, all the fingers go in different directions, anyone know whats up?
My rig just does not like the IK hand setup, this is what it does:
http://s3.photobucket.com/albums/y58/round3/Various%20videos/?action=view¤t=Movie-3.mp4
Any ideas?
My mistake, the wrist bone was not parented to the forearm
The new meta rig is so different now, this tutorial is hard to replicate
Wahhh!! I could make it and learn a lot.
Thanks you very much!
Great tutorial!!!
I don’t know how to add the human & Meta rig menu. I only can open single bone menu in armature.
Hi Charles,
In recent versions of Blender 2.5 the meta rig is available as part of the “Rigify” addon that you can enable from the Add-Ons section of the User Preferences.
-Jonathan
Thanks Jonathan! That definitely helped my dilemma!
How do you scale the rig in 2.56?
Hi cyndee, in edit mode, with the rig select, press ctrl+alt+s. Blend for life.
Could i have this to specific model to download?
because my blender is an updated version and the mesh is different so it doesnt work when i try to rig it like you did.
i think mine is 2.59 or something =/
i just need a rigged body to animate with
I ran into somewhat of similar problem, I’m running 2.6 and the default rig seemed very different from the tut, some parts were easier to follow like the hands, but the feet, hip/spine were so different I end up stuck there.
how you clicked on to change from side to side in minute 4:42 to 4:45? buttons you pressed?
David, I was okay until you got to the hips -and I’m using 2.6 so even the rig is quite a bit different. I like what you did with the hip to make it swing – but got utterly lost once you started moving the extra bone into place.
Under 2.6 I have one bone called spine at the end of spinal chain. Can I duplicate that to achieve the same effect. And ultimately, how do i get it to pivot from the opposite end (was the Flip Direction command used earlier.
Great Tut, just confused
Mark
very helpful!
but i have a problem. when i attach it by armature deform, multiple parts start to rip off. like, when i move the fingers, his nose comes off!
what should i do?
You’ll have to wait paint your model. Go to pose mode, then right click the model itself and go to weight paint mode. There you can ‘paint’ which vertices are affected by which vertices.
Another option is to remove all vertices, save the ones you want to, from the vertex group that is created for each bone when you apply it to the model.
Have fun with that ^_^
This metarig Mod by David Ward I used to rig my model. It’s a great starting point and I had to adjust just a few things to line it up with my model. I took great care in my model to conform to anatomic proportions, which means that metarig also conforms to these. One exception: the fingers are way too long. Still there are some issues with this mod by David. To name one: the mod of 1 bone to multisegmented bones may look great in the bare rig. But after binding it to a model may give problems. See my uploaded image. I restored the single segmented bones. There are other issues, but I leave those for another time. Constructive comments appreciated.
Well I have blender 2.59! Your out of date david!
: P
Thanks a lot for the hard work. Even the older info helps with the new Blender versions and educating newbs like me. You are a good teacher and explainer. I like that you actually find the mistakes and finer points and make them clear as to how to correct. Thanks again and keep up the great work.
Hi, I got a big problem. I have a rigged character without cloth and now I want to add cloth but when I do add the cloth with automatic weights it dosn’t work so good because when I rotate the arms or spine etc the skin and the cloth goes through each other how do I prevent this from happining? Is there any good whay to fix this or do I have to apply the cloth to th mesh and re-rigg everything? or do I need to delete the skin underneth?