Hi guys ,I need some complex rigging exercises
What is hard to rig?
I want suggestions everything except human/quadrupple animal/car rigging
Try something with a lot of “flaccidity” (is that a word?)… like some obese sow whose whole body jiggles and wobbles as it moves. Maybe animate some groovy dance moves and get all that lard flying!
No I don’t want character rigging, this kind of rigging it’s predictable for me, I want other type of rigging
level 1 - A guitar with strings that respond automatically to a rigged arm’s fingers pressure
level 2 - A guitar with rigged hand that reponds automatically to determined keys to press
level 3 - A guitar and arms that animates automatically with MIDI import x)
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Wow nice one 
Thank you!!
Level 4? Or above ?
level 4 - level 3 with players full body and gesture automatically adapting to determined emotions and tones adjustable with sliders.
Haha xD… more seriously. the only one that I find personally interesting and plausible is level 2. with offset controllers that animators can adjust to make the acting they want. Super Duper next level would be to make a plugin that allows user to “as easily as possible” attach another character’s arms to the guitar rig’s arms
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Ok many thanks!!!
Oh and btw, if you want to really drastically improve your rigging skills, and I’m not specifically talking about deformation, but actual rigging, you may try to find an animator who’d like to test your rigs. They’ll tell you. “I’d like this controller to work this way because it’ll make my work easier” or “I need a controller for this”
but even for deformations it’s helpful, you’ll get “I tried to achieve this pose, the rig allows it but it deforms bad on this particular case”
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lol what bit you ? so what I personally feel is most difficult in rigging is soft tissue, and things that are fatter than they are long (please don’t). Automating things is not difficult (even when it’s history-dependent, provided you’ve got the tools… so no Blender), what is hard is complex deformation, I think. And all soft tissues cannot be approximated with hard bones. You usually need lots of them, and clever set-up so that they work together and create illusion of fat.
“The illusion of fat” shall be the name of my next rigging book.
So what are you going for ? the guitar with midi input ? I think it’s a nice challenge. Very musical. Just feed a music sheet into Blender and watch the magic happen…
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I totally agree! somehow I tried to find an exercise that matches drgci’s expectations
@drgci, actually I don’t know the reason whatsoever why you don’t want to make human rig this time, but yes, most of the rigger’s hard work is in character animation. In the first place I wanted to tell you to rig an octopus for acting animation purposes. which is one hell of a challenge regarding deformations in a first place, and regarding the way you want to animate it because in some place you have to make decisive choices on how you want your controller to behave for the animators to feel comfortable with it.
And regarding human characters, another issue is your anatomical knowledge. the best advice I can give you if you want to study advanced rigging right away, is to rig someone else’s models. And continue on your anatomy and facial expressions skills aside. So that in some point you can make good rigs with your own models with the knowledge you gained with professional models. If you want to make cartoony characters, you can also learn drawing, especially for facial expressions. expressions are so critical that in the studios, blendshapes are done by the modeler in the first place and arranged by the rigger. I hope you find your way through all of this
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Here is some example of my rigging characters
Ignore the knee issues 
Here some animal
I just want even more challenge In the mechanical rigging !
… when you get yr rig to read midi, you will have to some how deturmine whether you use the middle c on string b fret 1, string g fret 5, string d fret 10 or string a fret 15.
Or for a completely different chalange, try building a rig like this: https://youtu.be/SfExejqdr5w