Rigging is a pivotal step taken before you can even think to begin
animating. It is basically when after you have your 3D model all finished up,
you must then take it through the technical process to prepare if for
animating. It is essentially the skeleton needed to allow any movement. By
linking up certain points of the rig to certain parts of the model, such as
body parts on a character model, it allows you control over the movement of
that specific body part. Being able to control the way an entire arm moves,
then even to more specific parts like a single finger. The animator would then
be able to pose the character, and actually bring life to it.
While rigging may be an important step, it is however, not the only one.
Instead, it is part of a process used in within the production pipeline of
creating a game. Rigging is actually a step that comes to play much later in
the process. As before it, comes a lot of planning and writing, to figure out
and understand exactly what is going to happen with the game. Along with that
comes concept art, to understand the design and appeal of how the game will
look and feel. Once that is finalized, is when the 3D modeling comes into play.
Needing to actually create the models that will be used to animate. Taking that
straight to the animation process, without any rigging, would leave things a
lot more static and honestly it would be pretty useless. Once rigged, it can
finally be handed over to the animators to bring life into the models. Yet, animating
is not the last step to the pipeline. After, there is still more design to be
done, as well as programming, and finalizing everything into the game before
being able to launch it.
