Flex Rig is a versatile rig and character generator for learning animation in Blender
As promised, we are proud to present the CG Cookie Flex Rig, available for download under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported. You are welcome to download The Cookie Flex Rig below or on view it on http://blendswap.com.
Designed as a Community Character Animation Resource
The goal of the Flex Rig is to provide a single, consistent resource for artists to learn character animation in Blender.
The Cookie Flex Rig was created by Nathan Vegdahl, Beorn Leonard, and Jonathan Williamson, based on an initial design by David Revoy. The rig is designed for maximum flexibility, with numerous controls for body shape, facial features and a small library of clothing and hairstyles. It’s intended to provide a great resource for learning and testing character animation in Blender.
Animation Toolkit – Blender Training Series
The rig was developed as part of our Animation Toolkit Blender Training series by Beorn Leonard and Nathan Vegdahl. The rig is used to teach you the fundamentals of character animation, how to animate character shots, and how to animate multi-character scenes with lip syncing.
Animation Toolkit is available as a Digital download or DVD disc, starting at $48 USD. ORDER NOW
F.A.Q on the Rig
Q: May I use the rig on my commercial project?
A: Absolutely! Since it’s licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 you may use the rig for anything you wish, anyway you wish, so long as you attribut CG Cookie, Inc.
Q: How many characters may be created with this rig?
A: You can create an unlimited number of characters! Characters are created with a multitude of different sliders and variations, allowing you to create thousands of different characters.
Q: I have some technical questions regarding the rig…where can I send these?
A: Technical questions can be sent to [email protected] We will do our best to answer any questions that we can.
Change log:
- 1.2.1 – Updated eye targeting to work with current releases of Blender
- 1.2.2 – Fixed bug when animating the afro shader
It’s ok I figured it out you load the blend file Thanks enjoying the toolkit, thanks Tim
Good to hear Tim! Let us know if you need help with anything else.
Cheers,
Jonathan
1. Download link goes to error page.
2. Can they make free licensing any more complicated? a ‘Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported’ license sounds like a complicated order at Starbucks.
3. If I made one of these and released it to the public for free under a ‘you can just have it license’ would the world be a less greedy place?
Hi Bob, the download link should be fixed now. Sorry about that.
For the licensing, the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported is a very common license. It sounds complicated but it really isn’t. It’s also commonly abbreviated as CC-BY. It’s one of the simplest ways we can provide the work under a license that isn’t restrictive. You can read more about it here: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
For the “less greedy place” I don’t really see what you’re getting at? The CC-BY license is about as un-greedy as it comes aside from Public Domain.
Thanks so much for releasing this rig under Creative Commons. I’ve learned an incredible amount since I started using it.
I’ve created my own meshes with bones and armatures in Pose Mode before and was wondering how do you convert bones to the controllers used in the flex rig? Let me know if there are any tutorials and/or documentation on how to do this. Thanks!
Hi, thanks for sharing this great rig, one problem that i have is now i’m using blender 2.66 and somehow the control curve/ proxy for the eye target is missing, its working fine and flawlessly on blender 2.65, if someone can help me to fix this problem i would appreciate it, thanks in advance…
I love this toolkit! it’s great, but for some reason the eye armature doesn’t show up in 2.66. Or I might be there but I can’t find it, either way I’d love the help.
good point, I will let the team know. In the mean time select any joint, go into edit mode and select the bone for the control, then in the bone settings remove the custom curve object and it will show up as a regular bone
-Alex
fixed in latest version, make sure you enable the face layer in the rig properties.
-Alex
in 2.66 the eye tracker bone thingy doesnt show up! HELP
good point, I will let the team know. In the mean time select any joint, go into edit mode and select the bone for the control, then in the bone settings remove the custom curve object and it will show up as a regular bone
-Alex
Fixed in latest version
I came to a realization that I will have to create shape keys on every human model that I make. My question is this. Can the rig be applied on models that someone has made to save production time?
Not easily, you would have to use a mesh deform, not really good for production.
-Alex
Awwww!
Looks Like I’ll have to try an reproduce it some how.
Question: I am extremely interested in how ya’ll accomplished this. I am working on a graphic novel that will be done completely in Blender. There will be a large array of characters that all need to be stylistically the same. I would like to use my own topology and create my own flexible rig. I have extensive experience in Autodesk Maya doing both, so I figure it is simply transferring my knowledge from one program to the other. My question is: will there be any material on how you achieved the final product? I know that you used blend shapes/morph targets to change the appearance of the model and then somehow bonded the flexible rig to the morphing geometry, but that is an area I have little experience with. Any help you guys can give will be greatly appreciated!
Yeah, I’m interested in that, too – the dvd doesn’t cover how to make your own rig like this one, does it?
I also am interested in the ability to create rigs like this, but with a different artistic style. All of the cg-cookie rigs have the same style, which is completely at odds with what I’m creating. Since a large amount of animation is required an incredible tool like this would be a big help.
No, it doesn’t. The DVD is about animation.
The techniques used in making this rig all pretty standard.
Wherever we needed to change the proportions of the character, it was done with bones. Everything else was achieved with shape keys.
Rig download link updated: V1.2.2 Bug fixes for missing eye-target, and minor bug while animating the afro shader. If you are seeing these on your version , please update to the latest! Thanks guys for the support!
I have bought several months ago the DVD but did not know there were updates?
for some reason the hair doesn’t render or just renders as transparent. Am I missing a step? I have the dvd. Is there a section that covers rendering in more detail? Thanks.
Blender 2.66
sorry, simple error, my textures were in the wrong folder. Thanks.