Rigging
Rigging, or skinning, refers to the act of weighting a polygon mesh to a skeleton for the purposes of animation.
The "mesh" is the skin, and it is stuck to the "bones" of the animation rig, which form a skeleton that can then be manipulated by an Animator to pose and animate the model.
Rigged models include characters, vehicles, weapons, cloth, anything which needs to animate or deform in a game.
The skeleton rig can be a complex structure and is usually recreated to fit the unique requirements of each job. It is usually created by a Technical Artist or an Animator.
Skinning
The term Skinning usually refers to assigning bone weights to the vertices of the model. In the past skinning also meant painting a color texture for a 3D mesh, but this hasn't really survived past the Quake 3 era.
Tutorials
- Creating Custom Characters for UT3 by Epic Games is an overview of how to setup characters for Unreal using 3ds Max. See also Creating Animations for the Unreal Engine: Character Setup and Rigging.
- Facial Rigging Tutorial by Alden Filion. Rigging up a control board with the help of a script.
- Facial Control Board Tutorial by Jesse Sandifer. A video tutorial that outlines the same method but walks you through it manually, good info to know.
- Wrinkle Map Wiring in 3dsMax by Mark "Vig" Dygert
- 3ds Max - Cloth Sim to Bones by Mark "Vig" Dygert
- PEN Productions - Tutorials for 3ds Max rigging etc., by Paul Neale
- Multi Layer Cloth Basics by Paul Hormis
- Creating Collision Meshes Using Conform Wrap by Paul Hormis
- Using Cloth to Simulate Chains by Paul Hormis
- Articulation by Brian Tindall, Character Technical Director at Pixar
- Rigging 101 by Javier Solsona Maya rigging tutorials and resources
- The Setup Machine Maya rigging made simple
- MEL Scripting for Animators from Insomniac Games
- Weight Painting By Kiel Figgins
Free Rigs
- Community Rigs from the Polycount Forums
- Animators: Free rigged characters online? from the Polycount Forums
