Auto Rigger
Tool

The Problem

Rigging is slow. It shouldn't be.

Rigging characters for Agronova was a manual, repetitive process — joint placement, naming conventions, control curve creation, skinning. Done correctly it takes hours per character. With multiple characters in the pipeline, the bottleneck was the rigger, not the art. The tool automates the repeatable parts so animators can focus on what actually needs creative judgment.

What I Built

Technical breakdown

• Custom UI panel — Maya-native interface built with Python and Qt; fields for joint naming prefix, rig type (biped / quadruped), and control curve style — no scripting knowledge needed to use it
• Node-based architecture — rig components built as independent nodes connected via defined interfaces, making individual parts swappable without rebuilding the whole rig
• Auto joint placement — artist drops guides in scene; tool reads guide transforms and generates the joint chain with correct orientation automatically
• IK/FK setup — inverse and forward kinematics controls created procedurally for limbs; deformers including skinning and blend shapes set up in the same pass
• Control curve generation — NURBS control curves auto-generated and colour-coded by side (left / right / centre) to match standard convention

View on GitHub ↗

Reflection

What this taught me

I iterated the UI three times based on feedback from artists who weren't riggers — the final version required no rigging knowledge to operate. That taught me that the best pipeline tool is the one your teammates actually use, and that accessibility is a design problem as much as a technical one.