Rigify Not Generating Arms

I’ve been working on modelling a character for an animation project, and I had a complete, fully functional Rigify rig set up. I was satisfied, except for one small issue: The character’s arms were too long. Seeing no way around it, I deleted the Rigify rig, edited the base model to shorten the arms up a bit, then modified the original ‘simple rig’ to match. When I used Rigify Generate Rig again, everything generated properly except the arms. The arms are entirely missing. I went back in the original rig and checked, and the names of the arm bones are all correct. I deleted the rig and tried again, and the same thing happened. The arms are not even showing up in the Rigify layer controls. I’m stumped, if someone can give me an answer I would greatly appreciate it.


Your metarig armature is missing the shoulder bones. Internally Rigify works in a building block fashion and the block that builds the arms starts at the shoulder(collar bone). If it’s missing, the whole block fails. Don’t know how they got deleted, but you’re probably going to have to start again with a new metarig.

Use vertex snapping to quickly line up the new one with the broken version.

EDIT: Disregard. I just tested and the arms don’t depend on the shoulder bones. I don’t know why your arms aren’t generating. Post a blend file with just the metarig if you would. I’m curious about this.

Rigify generates a rig based on rig types and how the rig types are parented to each other in the metarig. Rig types are assigned to the root most bone in a chain of bones. Different rig types will require a different number of bones. Sometimes they will require special naming (pitchipoy super spine) as well. If you need a reference for what needs to be parented to what, add a new human metarig to the scene and check to see if there are differences to your metarig, and the new, unaltered one.

Check the upper arm bone on the metarig for the rig type biped.arm. You can do this by selecting the metarig in pose mode, select the upper arm bone. Rig types are displayed in bone properties.

The upper arm should be parented to the shoulder. (Shoulders are basic copy rig types)


Or… just add a new metarig and align the bones, then generate a new rig.

Good luck!

Here is the metarig in its own file: Nate_metarig.blend (538 KB) I hope you can find the problem, and more importantly, the solution. I really don’t know why this is happening, as all I did to modify the rig was to move the positions of the arm bones slightly.

If it can be helped, I want to avoid starting over with a brand new metarig, but I’m curious: SkpFX, you mentioned there’s a way to perfectly line up a new rig with an old one. Could you please elaborate on how to do this?

I took a look at your file. It is as I stated above, there is not a rig type assigned to the arm, palm, or any finger bones. Also, where are the shoulder bones?

I know you want to save this metarig, but there is little here to save. Just add a new metarig and adjust the bones. It will take you ten-fifteen minutes to reset a new metarig. Here is a tutorial to make it faster/easier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6fImKsfCmU

Good luck!

Hey, AV_ENTERTAINMENT. You need to use vertex snapping. And then set the bone rolls to match the existing. Actually though the bone rolls on the arm bones lined up really well. This should work for you…
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=44500

Keep in mind though. Your metarig is 7 meters(21ft) tall. If you are ever going to expect it to be the proper scale, scale it and your mesh now, and apply the scale before generating the rig.

Ok, thanks for your help. I’ll make a new metarig. SkpFX, how can I tell how tall the metarig is? I thought I had it. I had my character scaled to what Blender was reading as 5.9 (in the “feet” preset) so I assumed that meant the character was 5.9 feet tall. I did that before adding the metarig to begin with. Is there something I’m missing?


Ok, now what’s messing up? This rig definitely looks different than it should, and it made 2 bones for every 1 original bone. Why? That didn’t happen before, and I’m guessing it’s not supposed to. Also, the head controller used to look a LOT different. This new metarig is no different than the original. Why does it generate so much differently?

Those double bones are the deform bones that allow for the tweaks on the arms and legs. Usually that layer(#20, third from right, bottom row) is turned off. They are rig mechanism, and not bones that you can control directly. They do belong there.

EDIT: About the dimensions of the rig, are you looking at the dimensions in the transform pane of the N panel?

Okay, so then what about the head and neck controllers? On the original Rigify rig, there were two rings: one around the neck and one around the head. Now they are both around the head, and one of them has a line through it and the other one is tilted forward.

Okay, thanks for the info on the bones. In what layer can I find the bones that I can weight paint to directly? For some reason when I parented the rig to my character (with Automatic Weights) it gave an error that said “Bone Heating Failed” which is another thing that was not an issue before.

And yes, I am talking about the info in the N panel, specifically the “Dimensions” section (the Z axis data shows 5.91’)