Setup PichiPoy Rig

Hi All,

Hopefully a useful tutorial to get you started setting up the excellent PichiPoy Rig build on Rigify that now comes with blender many thanks to all the folks at PichiPoy it’s a really nice piece of work. I’ve included the origional tutorial from PichiPoy at the end here for further reference, it is full of excellent information but unfortunately the audio slips about half way through so it’s hard to follow and I’ve tried to really take care structuring mine so it’s a handy reference and I’d done a few bits a little differently.

I’ve done it as one long tutorial but have split it into chapters as below, there is no getting away from the fact there are a lot of bones to set :slight_smile: but hopefully you can just jump in to the bits you are interested in.

Not saying it’s perfect, every time I use it I learn something new or slightly adjust where I put the bones but at the end of this tutorial you will have a mesh you can pose including basic face controls then you can take it further and refine as you like. If you have any tips and tricks you have you would like to share please comment here and I’ll most likely do a short follow up with any extra hints.

This just scratches the surface and if focused in setting up the rig not using the rig, I’ll do a follow up on some of the more advanced options at some point like adding custom bone groups and weight transfer with proxy meshes for more complex geometry.

PichiPoy Rigging Blender

1) Make Human
Brief mention of Make human if you don’t have a source mesh of your own, you need a mesh with Body, separate eyes, upper and lower mouth, tongue and a mouth cavity to use this rig nicely.

2) Setting Up The Workspace
Brief introduction enable Python, Enable Addon

3) Scaling the Meta Rig, Positioning the Feet and Legs
Initial positioning of rig, hint on how to position leg to IK calculations get made correctly, where to position bones for break points for heal and toe roll. How to position additional hip bones to aid auto weight allocation. Set up X mirror for the bones.

4) Setting up the Spine
Where to position the spine for optimal deformation, set up the solders, set up additional breast bone to aid in auto weight allocation

5) Setting up the arm and fingers
Positioning the bones, understanding bone roll and how it affects the rig when generated

6) Setting up the Face, Chin, Nose and Ear
Positioning the bones general overview of the thinking behind the face rig

7) Setting up the Face, Mouth, Cheeks and Jaw
Positioning the bones, hint about where to place the jaw bone for best pivot point.

8) Setting up the Face, Forehead and Eyes
Positioning the eye lids and forehead

9) Setting up the face, Eyeballs, Tongue and Teeth
Slightly different approach for setting up the bones for these items, need to make sure the eye bones align properly.

10) Generating the Rig
The exciting bit! hit the button, see what we have

11) Parent the Mesh and auto Weight
Slightly different approach for auto weigh allocation with more control, make sure tongue does not affect face mesh, allocate weights from weight paint mode.

12) Fixing The Mouth, regenerating the Rig
Deliberate error, honest :slight_smile: anyway good chance to show how to regenerate the rig and fix the face bones in the meta rig which you will have to do unless you are very lucky (or very good!)

13) Parent the Mesh, Eyes, Teeth and Tongue
Almost there how to correctly parent the final pieces, test it all works together, all done!

Original PichiPoy video for reference if needed (audio slips about half way)