Secondary Elements

A character with secondary elements (ears) rigged with Box Controllers .
(This is a custom version of the Cascy character; the regular version does not include rigged ears)

Secondary elements are objects that are attached to the character body, but don’t fully copy its movement. Common examples would be parts of the character (scarfs, shoulder pads or even hair clusters) or something attached to the character (bags, pouches, etc.).

Secondary elements should not be confused with Props. Props are separate objects that are linked to the rig, while secondary elements are parts of the rig, and have dedicated Joints that control their positions.

Animating secondary elements is a good way to emphasize the character’s pose/ motions.
Of course, to animate them, you need to rig them first.

How exactly an element should be rigged, depends on what kind of element it is.
For something with a significant mass, we recommend to create full rig elements, with Rigid Bodies, Points and such. An element rigged like this would have mass and influence the way the character moves.

We recommend to create full rig elements - with Rigid Bodies, Point and such - for:

(1) Elements that are supposed to have a significant mass. Being rigged like this, they would influence the way the character moves.

(2) Elements that you’d like to animate using physics: braids, scarfs, chains etc. They don’t have to be heavy, but still need to have some mass so tools like Ragdoll, Secondary Motion etc. could work on them.

For lightweight elements, a better way is to rig them with just Box Controllers - so you could still animate them without overcomplicating the rig.

Rigging elements is done the usual way:

1. Select the Joint associated with the element.
If there are multiple Joints, see the Rigging Multiple Joints page.

2. Click Add:

This will create a rig element linked to the Joint:

After the rig is finalized, we also recommend to set a custom mass for the Rigid Body:

3. Go to the Rigging view mode:

4. Select the Rigid Body in the Viewport.

5. Go to the Object Properties panel.

6. There, find the Rigid body section:

7. In this section, set the Mass value:

These masses should not be heavy, especially for stuff like hair.

For rigging with Box Controllers, the process would be slightly different:

1. Select the Joint.

2. Enable Only box controllers on the Rigging Tool panel:

3. Click Add.
This will create a Box for the Joint.

You might also want to change the size and position of the newly created box controller:

4. Select the Box in the Viewport.

5. Use Translate Manipulator to move the controller and Scale Manipulator to adjust its size.