Rigging is the process of creating the internal digital skeleton and control system for a 3D character or object that allows animators to pose and animate it. Just as a physical puppet requires an armature of wires and joints to be manipulated, a 3D digital character requires a rig - a hierarchical system of bones, joints, and controls - before it can be moved, posed, or animated in a believable way.

A character rig typically consists of a skeletal hierarchy that mimics the structure of the subject's anatomy, with joints at key articulation points - shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles - that drive the deformation of the surrounding mesh as they rotate and translate. On top of this skeleton, riggers build control systems that make the animator's job practical: inverse kinematics that allow an animator to position a hand and have the arm calculate its own pose, facial blend shapes that drive emotional expressions, and helper joints that correct mesh deformation at complex joints like shoulders and knees. The quality of a rig directly determines how natural and expressive the resulting animation can be - a well-built rig makes good animation possible; a poor rig creates limitations that no amount of animator skill can fully overcome.

Understanding rigging provides context for why AI video generation's approach to human motion differs from traditional character animation. Rather than animating a rigged skeleton, video generation models synthesize motion directly from learned patterns of how people move, bypassing the rigging stage entirely. This enables rapid generation but also explains certain limitations in how AI-generated human motion handles extreme poses, physical interactions, and precise body placement.