What I did:

Getting the mesh ready:

Following my tutor’s advice, I’ve done a good deal of cleanup and preparation work to get John ready for rigging:

Deleted the body under the clothes: All the geometry hidden beneath the clothing (torso, arms, legs) has now been removed. I’d kept it there as long as possible so I could go back to it when doing the next age models (if needed) in order to change clothing. But now, there’s no point having all those extra vertices and faces that will never be seen – it wastes resources and can cause z-fighting issues where the body and clothes occupy the same space.

Joined the meshes: I’ve combined the head, clothing, hands, and hair into one single mesh object to make rigging simpler. Now I only need to weight paint one object to the armature, rather than dealing with multiple separate pieces.

Kept the eyes separate: The eyes (each containing the eyeball and cornea) are staying as separate objects. They’ll be parented to eye bones later so they can rotate independently for eye movement. I initially joined them by mistake to the inner mouth, so had to separate them out again (press P in Edit Mode, choose “Selection”), then reassign the materials to the cornea and eyeball faces. For some reason joining the cornea mesh to the eyeball mesh threw out the UV unwrapping of the eyeball, so it was a bit fiddly but sorted now.

Subdivision Surface modifier: I applied any modifiers to parts before I joined them, but I’m keeping the Subdivision Surface modifier active – that’s staying on throughout rigging and animation. The key is making sure the Armature modifier (which I’ll add when rigging) sits ABOVE the Subdivision Surface in the modifier stack. That way, the rig deforms the base mesh first, then the subdivision smooths the result.

Current state:

I now have:

  • One character mesh (head, body, clothes, hands, hair)
  • Two separate eyes
  • Clean topology with proper edge loops for animation
  • Subdivision Surface ready to go

What I learned:

Preparation is everything! Getting the mesh structure right before rigging saves a load of hassle later. It’s tempting to rush into rigging, but taking time to properly join meshes, delete unnecessary geometry, and organise everything correctly should make the actual rigging process much smoother.

Also learned about modifier stack order – the armature needs to be above the subdivision surface, otherwise the deformation won’t work properly. It’s these little technical details that make the difference between a rig that works and one that’s a nightmare to use.

Understanding when to join geometry and when to keep it separate is crucial. Eyes need independence, but the body should be unified. It’s about thinking ahead to how things will actually move and deform during animation.

Next:

Time to actually rig John! The course I was following (until I got distracted by a massive amount of modelling) uses Rigify, which is Blender’s auto-rigging addon. This should give me a solid foundation for both body and facial rigging. I’ll be adapting the rig to work with my character’s specific topology.

This is the bit I’ve been most nervous about – facial rigging is completely new territory for me. But with the proper topology in place and a structured course to follow, I’m feeling more confident about tackling it.

Here we go!