Various rigify errors in wolf rig spine

Question

This is my first time using Blender. I've tried to add a wolf rig, which worked out fine but the spine was twisted. I selected the spine bones and pressed ⇧ Shift + N and recalculated roll to active bone.

That solved the problem, however, now I get errors when recalculating the rig. I've already looked up ways to fix those errors but whenever I try to fix one error I just end up with a new error. The errors I've had are:

RIGIFY ERROR: Bone 'spine.005': Input to rig type must be a chain of at most 3 bones. Incorrect armature for type 'limb_rigs'

RIGIFY ERROR: Bone 'spine.003': Cannot connect to non-chain parent rig. Incorrect armature for type 'chain_rigs'

RIGIFY ERROR: Bone 'spine.003': Cannot connect chain - bone position is disjoint. Incorrect armature for type 'chain_rigs'

And currently I'm at this error:

RIGIFY ERROR: Bone 'spine.004': Input to rig type must be a chain of 3 or more bones. Incorrect armature for type 'chain_rigs'

I really don't know how to fix it.

FOX.blend

Answer 1

If you have that many errors I would start over with a fresh meta rig. You can use the script from this question (Rigify->Generate Rig doesn't create all rig layers in the properties ui) to copy the layout of the bones so that your work is not lost.

Besides the mentioned errors there are a few issues that you should solve first.

• the FOX mesh has 25 duplicated vertices. Merge them in Edit mode with M > Merge by Distance
• the meta-rig is a child of the generated rig. This is not necessary. Select it and clear its parent (Alt+P)
• everything is rotated by 90° around the Z-axis. This is bad because when you select menu View > Viewpoint > Front (Numpad_1) you'll get the view of the model's right side. And Viewpoint > Left (Numpad_3) is actually the front view. That's confusing.
  • the mesh has a Mirror modifier. Set the Mirror Axis to X
  • choose Global for the Transform Orientation (drop-down menu at the top center of the viewport).
  • select the objects (mesh and meta rig), and rotate them by -90° (RZ-90) or just enter the number in the sidepanel for Transformation > Rotation > Z).
  • the fox and the meta rig should stand now in the direction of the Y-axis as shown in the screenshot.
  • finally, apply the Rotation with Ctrl+A for both objects.
• the origin (the little orange dot) of the objects is not at the world origin (=at the bottom) but in the center. This will create the Root control of the rig (the circle with the 4 arrows) in the center. This is bad when you want to place the wolf right next to a human because they will be not on the ground but sunken half in the ground.
  • move everything up so the fox stands on the XY-axis and the origin is at (0,0,0). You can set the origin to (0,0,0) by applying the Location (Ctrl+A)
• the left leg of the meta rig is not aligned properly and this results in a bad deformation of the leg and pawn. The right leg is on the left side of the screen ;-) To fix this just select the fox's right leg (meta-rig in Edit mode) and use the menu Armature > Symmetrize to copy the layout from right to left.

Now, you can recreate the meta rig:

• rename your metarig to metarig.old
• add a new wolf meta rig
• copy the script, double-check the names and run it as described in the linked question
• generate the rig. There should be no errors now. Check the N-panel if all bone layers have been created correctly (buttons Arm.L (FK) and Arm.R (FK), etc.)

Set up the rig

• clear the parent of the meshes (fox amd eyes) and make sure the Armature modifier is removed
• select the fox mesh, the eyes, and the generated rig (selected last=parent). Parent them Ctrl+P with Automatic Weights. This will make the meshes children of the armature. In the outliner, they will be listed under the rig. This operation also adds an Armature modifier to the mesh objects.
• select the FOX mesh and check the modifier order. The Mirror modifier must be at the top. Next should be the Armature modifier, followed by the Subdivision Surface modifier at the bottom.
• select the rig and test it in Pose mode. Don't forget to set the Transform Orientation to Global or Local and Transform Pivot Point to Individual Origins to rotate the bones properly.