Is there any tutorial for beginner?
I started learning to be an 3d artist two years ago, although English is not my first language I am able to keep up and follow most of the tutorial, on Udemy or Pluralsight.
So recently I move on to rigging, I watch some of the great youtubers like Antcgi or Academic Phoenix, I manage to build my first rig in a month. But it took way too long, and even if I get better, let’s say build a rig in two weeks, it’s still too long, so I start looking for auto rig, and I find mGear.
But to be honest, I find that mGear is even harder to learn than Maya rigging system. I mean most people use auto rig because they are suppose to be easier and quicker than the actual system right? The mgear youtube tutorial is like over 30 hours with many many steps, lots of different things involve like sublime text, scripting, Json, brave rabbit, ngskin,
I watch almost all the tutorial on youtube especially the Data-Centric series, and after many hours spend I am still not able to build rigs using mGear. I find that mGear is so complicated to beginners, I also find some comments online say the same as well by other beginners.
So do you think you can make a tutorial just for the beginners? Or is there a easier way to use it’s just that noone mention yet?
I am truly looking for help here, and if mGear is not for beginners, can anyone suggest other better auto rig system? I don’t mind paying for it
any help would be great cheers
if you want, Miguel did this tutorial series which is more “beginner friendly”, it doesn’t cost much and that’s how I started out with mGear:
this should get you going with the basics of mGear and you will be able to produce some nice rigs and when you’ll be ready you can come back to the data centric series which is a little bit more advanced…
good luck 
@Eliran_Magen just for context, what level of experience with rigging or scripting did you have when you started with mGear and that tutorial? if you were a total beginner, you might disagree with everything I’m about to write.
@HardToUse In my personal opinion, mGear is not well-suited for total beginners. I think a good level of rigging (and preferably scripting) is necessary before trying to use an advanced system. Otherwise, when things go wrong, you don’t just have one problem. You have many interconnected, confusing problems that are difficult to comprehend.
I mean most people use auto rig because they are suppose to be easier and quicker than the actual system right?
Quicker, yes. Easier, no. Any time you try to use an “easier” solution, you will give up some amount of control and customization and flexibility. Learning to use an axe is pretty easy. Using a chainsaw is quicker, but it is more difficult and expensive to get started with. It requires a higher upfront cost, fuel, oil and safety equipment. You still have to understand how to control which direction the tree falls.
I think mGear is more suited to intermediate to advanced TDs to build a rigging pipeline. It isn’t just an auto-rigging system to make a rig. It has many components to learn to be able to use it well. mGear Shifter still requires quite a bit of customization to suit your own rigging needs. The customization is what makes it powerful. But it means it is not a simple out-of-the-box solution.
As for alternative auto-riggers, these are not “better”. They are different. They are easier, but much less flexible and powerful than mGear. These are a few that I have tried. I’m sure there are many more:
- The Setup Machine 3 (I still use this on some projects.)
- Rapid Rig Advanced or Rapid Rig Modular.
- Advanced Skeleton
- abAutoRig (discontinued. I don’t know if you can even download it anymore. It was only really good for bipeds. It wasn’t modular.)
And I still think you should learn the basics before relying on any of these tools. Because each of them requires a certain amount of customization as well. TSM3 has a pretty bad foot roll by default, for example.
On the other hand, don’t be afraid of a steep learning curve. If you have the time and energy, keep learning mGear! I’m not trying to scare you away. When you are a beginner, taking a month to do a rig sounds perfectly reasonable. Rigging is hard. You will speed up as you learn. But don’t stop studying the fundamentals.
@Eliran_Magen thanks I just brought the 15$ course, hope that’s gonna help
@chrislesage thank you for your advise, I will try to invest more time
well to be perfectly honest it was when I was rather new to rigging and it did
help me produce some working (not great) rigs which I… didn’t customize much.
with that said, I do completely agree that mGear isn’t the best tool for animators or modelers that just want to make a really quick rig without thinking about it too much, mGear is curated much more for actual riggers who… preferebally, already at least kinda know what they’re doing.
even though I did make some fine working rigs a a total beginner, it was a lot harder to do than with, say, rapid rig or advanced skeleton, at the time I only insisted on mGear because I knew that it’s the industry standart here in Israel and it definitely was only after I started working professionally that I understood why and understood the real power of mGear as a much better tool for entire rigging pipelines.
to conclude;
I wouldn’t recommend it to animators and modelers looking for a quick fix, but I would recommend it even for beginner riggers to start looking into it early on (while, obviously, continuing to learn how to do things manually)
this came out a bit longer than I expected haha
@Eliran_Magen You speak for my mind, that’s exactly how I feel right now. When I have some of my models finished I decided to work on a small project, that’s when rigging came across. At first I was hoping to find something quick and just wanted to finish my little project. I have learned maya, zbrush, substance, marmoset, uvs, retopo. These are all ok to me, but rigging seems like at a different level. But since I started it, I might as well continue and see how far I can get. If one day I think it’s too much then I will find a alternative. Thanks a lot for you advise
I’m not best placed to speak for Mgear, but I have recently picked it up as a rigging solution. There are a lot of videos to go through for sure, & a straight forward series would be beneficial as it’s easy to miss some of the many cool features it has.
That said, I looked at other auto rig builders & it came down to Advanced skeleton & Mgear. Other’s were even more complicated from the get-go with very little documentation/ help videos. Both Mgear & AS have LOADS of tools to learn, so it’s a time investment either way. When you click that build button you’ll get a rig, but the prep required beforehand to understand how your auto-rigger works, it’s tools & capabilities will mean you can get everything you need out of that rig & more importantly solve any issues that arise (they will).
Every model is different, every animators requirements are different. I would add that Mgear’s default biped template (and AS’s too) certainly gives you a very good start if you simply want to build a rig quickly & get animating. Remember that what you do learn is never wasted, & whatever auto-rigger you choose will mean down the line when you need to rig characters, there wont be much you CANT do. I chose Mgear in the end because of the wealth of tutorials ( even if you have to dig around) the active developers, & the community that’s very quick to help & answer questions.
tldr - I’m not aware of ANY auto rigger available that wont involve learning it’s toolset & methods. It’s still WAY quicker than making a rig with all the features they contain. The more rigs you end up needing, the more time you end up saving.