Project Toby, is the sixth project of mine, but it has been a pet project of mine since day one. Back then, it had no name, because it’s just a rig really. But the more I use it, the more I iterate it, and the more and more I rely on it as a sparring buddy when it comes to rigging.
I found myself going back and forth to it when I created rigs for people. When a rig or its poses looked wrong, I looked back at this rig (which still has no name), and studied what things I did correctly here but I haven’t on the other rig.
Whenever I encounter a problem with other rigs, I’d come back to this rig and find a solution, because when other rigs fail to work, this one just works, and it has been to this day where I finally share it to the world.
I know that I’m the one who built this rig, but it seems to me as if it’s growing on its own. And It’s growing and growing until it’s become some sort of a gold standard for me.
So for that reason, one day some gods whisper the name ‘Toby’ to me. I liked the sound of it, and figured out that it fit as an acronym (much like Lisa of Apple). It stands for Try Out BuddY. And now the rig has a name, Toby.
I know it’s a rig, but it’s more than that. It’s also a friend, or at least it has been a friend of mine for as long as I have known rigging. I also know it’s a bit sentimental (or even pathetic really) to call a rig a friend. But it is a friend in a sense that it works, which is the most important bit. And in doing so, it has helped me a lot, and I hope it will help you as much as it has helped me.
If you are like me, who is daunted by the prospect of dealing with a generated rig with hundreds of controls, lots of buttons, and complex stuff going on, the Toby rig will offer a huge relief.
I offer the Toby rig for free. Get it here, or if you wish to participate in its development, and keep updated about its development, go here.
And to make it better, if you’re one of those people who need to move your character or 3D models around, for so many reasons (which include a lot of people) but you don’t really bother to spend or invest a lot of time to learn about posing, or more yet, animation, then this would turn into a very good news.
The Toby rig comes with a growing set of premade poses, which I also offer for free. I make them myself, and I’ll share them along with all the updates on Project Toby. So, if you already have Jason Pose Manager add-on, you can just browse the pose you have in mind, download it, pop it in and voila it’s set to pose. You don’t even have to move the rig yourself.
Here’s a few poses I have come up so far, and this is my favorite so far. Toby’s sending some love!
Have any questions or requests? Or probably you want to put the Toby rig inside your own character? Well, I have a server on Discord, so that we can communicate in a better place than the comments section. You can join us here.
Thanks.
