I’ve been practicing character rigging to be able to create a good rig later on for my practical project. Here it is, Edmond, my updated 2nd year character. Currently he has a sretchy fk/ik arm with switch and soft IK; complete facial rig; non twisting, snapping shoulders; stretchy IK legs with footroll and multiple rotation pivots (one for the toes, one for the heel). There is no point working on him anymore – I think this is as good as it will get – for a first rig I think I should be satisfied Now time for finish my character animation blocking!

FACIAL RIG SETUP in XSI

I’ve been getting questions about the facial setup: I am using a joystick controls to modulate the facial shape keys. I used Jason Osipa’s Stop Staring for reference.

For the controls’ setup you might want to take a look for the tutorial on Mattmos.com (Creating blend shapes and controllers in XSI).

Bear in mind that some of the functions changed in XSI since the tutorial was written. I could not get the image to weightmap script working so I had to hand paint the weight maps. Also, the function you will use instead of Deform\Shape\Connect with weightmap is Deform\Shape\Modulate Shape Key with Weight Map.