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I often download the .blend files with the rigged characters. There are some abbreviations like DEF, MCH, CTRL, WGT in front of the bone's names (like e.g. MCH-counter_spin). I guess what all of them stand for, but is there any rigging expert here, who'll explain exactly what do they mean? Also, are there any other abbreviations I haven't shown above? Thanks in advance.

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Every rigger uses their own bone naming conventions, prefixes or suffixes, usually in agreement with animators for which the rig is intended (in studio). There is no standard, but there are however some commonly used terms:

  • ROOT, MASTER - first bone in hierarchy or sub-hierarchy (tentacle_root)
  • DEF - bone contributing to deformation
  • MCH - mechanism/mechanical helper bone
  • ORG - original bones of metarigs from which the final rig is generated
  • CTRL, CON - control bones - various bones meant to be operated by animators
  • JNT - a joint
  • WGT, SHP, CS - widget, shape, custom shape, etc. - meshes to represent bones
  • IK, FK - bones belonging to inverse or forward kinematic bone chains
  • STR, NSTR, ASTR - stretch bones, non-stretch bones, anti-stretch bones (I've also seen SCA, NSCA, ASCA as scale, non-scale and anti-scale)
  • SPL - IK spline bones
  • MM, MUSC - muscle mass, muscle - bones to represent and bind muscles
  • POLE - IK pole bones, also usually just marked as CTRL
  • CW, CCW - clock-wise, counter-clock-wise, for marking rotation direction or bones for hinges
  • CEN, LFT, RGT, LF, RT, L, R - center, left, right
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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the detailed answer man! It'll be a real compendium for future wanna-be riggers :). $\endgroup$
    – Paul Gonet
    Commented Mar 19, 2016 at 14:56
  • $\begingroup$ I've found the VIZ abbreviation also (is it similiar to WGT?). Could you explain this one too? Thanks. $\endgroup$
    – Paul Gonet
    Commented Mar 29, 2016 at 12:37
  • $\begingroup$ @PaulGonet viz usually stands for visualization - like pre-viz, archviz,.. probably is a widget like you guess. It's hard to tell before inspecting the rig and function. Some riggers use abbreviations only they understand which are not clear and sometimes it can be in different language with an english bone name - hard to quess also. $\endgroup$
    – Jaroslav Jerryno Novotny
    Commented Mar 29, 2016 at 15:07
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  • DEF: Deform. A bone which deforms the mesh.
  • MCH: (Not sure)
  • CTRL: Control bone. The ones that typically control DEF, and get key-famed.
  • WGT: Widget. So likely a polygon used to make the widget for a rig.
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  • $\begingroup$ Please, edit away! $\endgroup$
    – Mike Belanger
    Commented Mar 18, 2016 at 19:08

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