Justin Milgate

As a 3D animator finding rigs can be time consuming and may even seem expensive if you are wanting a high quality rig. When I started looking for rigs, I often came across the same list of possibilities. However, as I have continued looking and following different artists I have discovered that there are a TON of great rigs out there and many are free to use for personal work. In this post I wanted to share some tips for learning about new available rigs and also share some links that I have found helpful. While there is probably some overlap with other posts hopefully these links and tips help you in your own searches.

Animation Schools

There are a lot of online animation schools and a few have rigs that are available for free. These rigs tend to be easy to use, stable, and of a high quality. This is a great place to start when looking for rigs to try out, especially if you are just getting started yourself.

Agora.community – Rigs (updated often)
AnimSchool – Malcom 2.0 rig
Animation Mentor – Squirrels and Stewart rigs

PAID but worth mentioning
Lupin House – Lupin rig
Animawarriors – Toy rigs

Rigging Artists

One great resource that I’ve learned to tap into, is to follow and support rigging artists. This is a little harder to do “in the moment” but if you start to follow their work or connect on LinkedIn many will post what they are working on. Many use sites like Gumroad or AnimProps to deliver there rigs to others. Most of the time these rigs are free or under $5 to gain access to and are really nice to work with. One little note to keep in mind is that sites like Gumroad allow you to “pay what you feel”, if you are using someone’s rigs consider adding your own price to support another artist. To help get you started here are a few of the rigging artists I follow

Joe Daniels
Thomas Weigand
Forestier Marie
Tre Vital

Additional Links

Then there are additional links that get updated often but vary from free to paid rigs. While these can take a little more time to work through because you’re not quite sure what you will get, they are still good resources to have

Agora.community – Listed twice on this list because it’s that good 🙂
Animation Buffet – Great blog with links to rigs and rig reviews
Squiggly Rigs
Animato – A community for animators with a list of rigs that is continually being updated

I know there are many more but hopefully this small list is a helpful starting point and a foundation to make future searches easier and more organic. Thanks for reading and keep animating!