# Auto-Rig a Character

**Track:** 3D — beginner → intermediate — Generative AI 3D — proposed
**Framework / surface:** ij8 Studio (UniRig + morphology classifier)
**Level:** Intermediate
**Prerequisites:** From Flat Art to 3D, The Perfect Input Image for 3D

**In one line:** One-click rigging — including non-biped creatures.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Rigging inserts an invisible skeleton into a static mesh and binds each vertex to nearby bones with weights, so that moving a joint deforms the skin smoothly — skeletal animation, or linear blend skinning. It is the armature inside the clay: hidden structure that makes a figure capable of motion. Automatic systems like Adobe's Mixamo place a standard humanoid skeleton in seconds, and learned approaches such as RigNet (Xu et al., 2020) predict joints and skin weights directly from geometry. The harder problem is non-biped creatures, where no fixed template fits; a morphology classifier first reads the body plan — how many limbs, what symmetry — and chooses an appropriate skeleton before binding.