Although you can create custom rigs based on your specific character needs, you can also use the predefined ("prefab") guides and rigs in Softimage to get going quickly. These are available for biped, dog-leg biped, and quadruped characters. The resulting rigs created from the guides are skeletons that include control objects that you can position and orient to animate the various parts of the character's body.
You can customize these guides and rigs so that they contain only the elements you need. They can be used as a starting point for different rigging styles, and technical directors can write their own proportioning script to attach their own rig to a guide.
The guides have synoptic views to help you select and animate the rig controls: select any control and press F3. There are also preset character key sets and action sources to help you animate the rig.
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Create a proportioning guide by choosing Create See Setting Up the Biped Guides for more information. |
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When the guide is fitted to the envelope, create a rig based on it by choosing Create See Creating Biped Rigs for more information. |
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Apply the body geometry as an envelope to the rig using the envelope_group in the rig's model to apply it to the correct parts of the rig. See Animating and Enveloping the Rig for more information. |
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Position and rotate the rig controls and key them to animate the various parts of the skeleton. See Animating and Enveloping the Rig, Animating the Fingers and Hands for more information. |
The predefined biped rigs are based on the default settings of the proportioning guide, as described in Setting Up the Biped Guides for more details about the rig.
Choose Get 
Primitive Model Biped - Rig from any toolbar to load a basic rig.
Choose Get Primitive Model Biped - Box, Biped - SI|3D Skeleton, or Biped - Skeleton from any toolbar to load other variations on the basic rig.
These are the same as creating rigs using the Character Hierarchy from Guide commands (see Creating Character Hierarchy Setups from a Guide).
Loading a Predefined Quadruped Rig
The predefined quadruped rig is based on the default settings of the proportioning guide, as described in Setting Up the Quadruped Guide.
The rig is a skeleton that includes control objects that you can position and orient to animate the various parts of the character's body. See Creating a Quadruped Rig for details about the rig.
