What is Rigging and how does it fit within the production pipeline of a game?

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.