Hi,
I'm wondering if someone can point me to a step by step tutorial on using the autorig tool to create a rig and skin a character. The help system is somewhat useful in describing what the tools do but they don't really explain how to use them. I've seen the quadruped video and it answers some questions but what I'm really looking for is clear step by step idiot's guide to rigging a biped.
Thanks,
Jeff

on the houdini website there is one rigging a Helldog model (a dog)
but apply the same to the character biped,
also you can check buzz.com they sell a kit for creating a rig from scratch

I've seen that and it definitely helps but I still have more questions.
For example the helldog is a single mesh. What if my character is comprised of several meshes? This workflow seems much different than Maya or XSI so I'm having a little trouble getting my head around it.

treat each mesh the same…
build bones > capture Mesh1 > paint capture weights
build bones > capture Mesh2 > paint capture weights
build bones > capture Mesh3 > paint capture weights
each object will have it's own deform sop

or in a new object use the object merge sop to merge all your meshes together…

or do you mean that your mesh is one object but with a number of unconnected meshes?

it seems like the merge option will work great. all different objects (head, arms, shirt, pants etc)
thanks,
Jeff

the merge will put everything into a node and manage as a single object or geometry, dont know if thats the best thing to do.

we work with modo and XSI, and we do everything apart,
if a character have a tshirt or a belt, we model it as diferent geo metry,
and envelope, skin, (or any other name that a diferent 3d app has to say the geometry deform something like bones) each one, (XSI has Gator, so we only need to envelope one character very good and the rest will go along, since it copy the properties and past it into the rest of the geometry.