A studio service
Rigs an animator can actually pick up.
Hard-surface mechanical rigging in Blender — controls with defined limits, constraints doing the work, and a written scheme listing every one of them. Built so somebody who is not a rigger can animate it without breaking it.
$500 to test · $3,000 to rig · $6,000 to build from blueprints
N° 01What makes a rig usable
The handover is the job
Most freelance rigs arrive as a file and nothing else. Controls unlabelled, limits unknown, and the first thing the animator does is break something.
Every rig here ships with a written control scheme: each control, what it drives, what its range is. It is the least glamorous part of the work and it decides whether the rig gets used or rebuilt.
01
Controls with limits
Custom shapes, locked axes and defined ranges, so a wrong grab does not put a door through a wing mirror.
02
Constraints doing the work
Mechanisms driven by constraints rather than keyed by hand, so movement stays correct when the animation changes.
03
Written down
A short document listing every control and its range. The reason the rig survives contact with someone who did not build it.
N° 02Scope
Hard surface, said up front
Vehicles, machinery, mechanisms — things with rigid parts and defined movement.
Character rigging is a different discipline: deformation, weight painting, facial systems. We do not take that work.
N° 03Investment
What it costs
Rig test
$500
One assembly rigged on a model you supply — a suspension corner, a door, a mechanism — returned in your own file.
- One assembly of your choosing, rigged
- Controls, limits and constraints as in the full job
- A written assessment of whether the rest is riggable
- Your own file back, not a copy
- About a week
Rigging only
$3,000
You supply the model. We rig it: controls, constraints, working mechanism.
- Full mechanical rig
- Controls for wheels, steering, doors and panels
- Suspension and internal moving parts
- Control scheme documented
- About one month from a usable model
Modelled and rigged
$6,000
Built from manufacturer blueprints, then rigged. The internals are modelled as components — which is where both the accuracy and the timeline come from.
- Modelled from manufacturer blueprints
- Internal components built, not implied
- Full mechanical rig on top
- Control scheme documented
- Six to twelve months, depending on the subject
N° 04Questions
The answers we give most often.
- Do you do character rigging?
- No. Hard surface and mechanical work only.
- Can you fix a rig somebody else built?
- Yes — send it. You get one of three answers: it is repairable, a rebuild is cheaper, or the rig is fine and the problem is elsewhere. All three happen.
- What do you actually hand over?
- The .blend itself — the rig as it was built, not a converted copy — with the written control scheme alongside. If your pipeline needs something other than Blender, raise it at the briefing: some formats carry a mechanical rig across better than others, and that is worth settling before the work starts.
Start your book
Send the model and what it has to do.
You get back what the rig involves, what the handover includes, and a fixed price.
Both full figures are per vehicle. The gap between a month and a year is the difference between rigging something that exists and building it from drawings first. Send what you have and we will tell you which one you are asking for.
The vehicles shown are demonstration builds made in-house to show the craft — not client commissions. Each was modelled and rigged from manufacturer blueprints.