Minghao Zhou.
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Character Rigs

A selection of biped rigs — stylised and realistic, for game and film pipelines — built with full FK/IK switching, space switching and animator-facing control layouts.

Role
Rigging
Year
2022 — 2025
Tools
Maya, Unreal Engine

Overview

These rigs share one priority: the animator should never have to think about the rig. Controls sit where the hand goes, FK/IK switching is seamless, and naming is consistent enough that tools can be written against it.

Below are four characters from that body of work: an assassin, a stylised girl with a separate facial rig, an alien, and a swordsman. Each is shown in motion so the rig can be judged by how it behaves, not by how it looks in a screenshot.

Assassin

A complete character rig, finished in one month using the mGear framework. I built a dynamic cloth system driven by RBF and corrective blendshapes, and came away with a working command of mGear and of a complex rigging pipeline. To test the rig I modified a motion-capture animation and applied it to the character. The clips show the finished rig and a closer look at its details.

Stylised girl

A stylised biped, shown with a body rig demo and, separately, the face rig, so the facial controls can be judged on their own rather than lost inside a full-body shot.

Alien

A practice rig built by following AntCGI's tutorial. Working through it taught me how to set up IK stretch and shrink and a complex space-swap system, and made me much more comfortable with Maya's Node Editor and attribute setup.

Swordman

For this character I implemented weapon attachment, facial controls, and low-cost cloth and hair controls suited to mobile platforms.