Free Rigs

I always encourage the “rebel” approach for creating cool things. That’s why I was completely transparent with my Making an Animated Movie series and that’s also why I love great free resources.

Using free rigs is great for animation exercises or for adding shots to your reel.

I’ve listed the rigs in order of mastery. Starting with the classic bouncing ball all the way to humanoids.

In this section I’ve listed my favorite free Maya rigs that you can download and use right now.

Bloop’s Ultimate Ball Rig

To master their basics, animators can’t go wrong with some old fashioned bouncing ball exercises.

For that purpose we created the Ultimate Ball Rig.

Get the rig here.

Tailed

Stepping forward with animation exercises – the tailed ball is a classic.

With it you can learn the basics of overlapping action.

Get the rig here.

Simple Bot

After you’ve mastered the bouncing ball, animating a walk cycle with the Simple Bot is a great learning experience.

It allows you to focus on the pelvis and legs without being distracted with the rest of the body parts.

Since the pelvis is the main instrument that leads the entire body motion, it’s good to be able to figure it out separately.

Get the rig here.

Moom

Moom in my opinion is the first human rig you’d want to try out.

It’s simple, easy to figure out, and doesn’t have too many controls to confuse you with when you’re first starting out.

As a humanoid it has weird proportions, a bit cartoony, but it’s great for beginners.

Get the rig here.

Morpheus

Morpheus is my free rig of choice for serious body animation. It’s full of advanced controls, but doesn’t overwhelm you.

When you feel comfortable working with rigs you should try this one, and you’ll be surprised by the results you can get with it.

Get the rig here.

Norman

An alternative to the Morpheus rig, the Norman rig has great controls as well and is almost as complex.

Not a favorite of mine but I’ve seen it used many times by animators for their reels so I thought it should be included in this list.

Get the rig here.

Mery

If you’re animating a scene with a female character the Mery rig is another awesome detailed human rig, but in female form.

Get the rig here.

Fish Boy

Fish boy is kind of an awkward rig but I like it a lot. It’s great for facial animation exercises since half of its body is a huge head. It’s kind of a fun rig to play with since it is very expressive and cartoony.

Get the rig here.