Blender Cloud releases BlenRig 5
Blender Cloud, the web platform developed by the Blender Institute for sharing the data from its open movies, has published BlenRig 5, an auto-rigging and skinning system for Blender.
Although BlenRig has been around for several years, this is the first ‘official’ build.
A “feature film quality” biped rig for Blender
Developed by Juan Pablo Bouza, BlenRig is described as being a “feature film quality rig”, including an “advanced facial system”.
The toolset includes the underlying armature, a mesh deform cage and lattices, and a “basic body mesh” for creating low-resolution proxy versions of characters.
The current release only supports biped characters, but more presets will be added “in the near future”.
Availability
BlenRig itself is available for current builds of Blender under an open-source GPL licence. You’ll need an Intel Core i3 processor or equivalent to display a high-res character at 24fps.
The download itself doesn’t include any supporting documentation, although Blender Cloud subscribers can download a detailed introductory PDF. Blender Cloud subscriptions start at €9.90/month.
However, you can get a feel for the kind of rigs BlenRig can create in this article on the character rig Bouza created for Victor in Cosmos Laundromat, the Blender Institute’s recent CG short.