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Updated on October 19, 2026

Character Rig Validation

Estimated reading: 4 minutes 
				
					>>> [ERROR] Character rig check - FAIL.

There are multiple reasons that your character is failing at this step.
Listed bellow are all possible error messages that can be received:

				
					> No rig found.
> Make sure that the character is rigged and skinned to the rig.

There are two cases which will course this error message to appear:

  1. Rig is missing.

  2. Geometry is not Skinned to the Rig

Character must be properly rigged in order to pass the validation. If you have a properly created rig in the scene, but the rig validation is failing, it means that the geometry of your character isn’t skinned to the rig.

To make sure that the geometry is skinned simply check if any mesh of the character has a “skinCluster” input in the channel box window.

If the “skinCluster” is missing, the geometry isn’t properly skinned to the rig.

More information regarding rigging can be found on the following page: Supported Rigs

For more information regarding character skinning please visit Autodesk Maya Help.

				
					  > Rig and blendshapes need to be contained inside a group with the "_BODY" suffix.

For character to pass the validation the rig needs to be placed in side a group with the “_BODY” suffix.

Visit the following page for more information: Scene Organization

				
					  > Make sure that the rig is directly parented to the "character_BODY" group.

Rig must be directly parented to the group with the “_Body” suffix. It can’t be contained within any sub groups since that will fail the online validation.

Visit the following page for more information: Scene Organization

				
					  > Mesh: "{mesh_name}" is in the rig hierarchy.
  > All meshes must be placed inside the "GEO" group.
  > Either move the meshes to "GEO" group or remove them.

As stated in the error message. The script detected that there are meshes in the rig hierarchy.

All those meshes need to be either moved to the “GEO” group or just deleted from the scene.

When moving the meshes to “GEO” group make sure that they are skinned to the rig. If they are not the validation will fail again.

				
					  > Mesh "{mesh_name}" is not skinned.
  > All meshes must be skinned to the rig!
A skinned mesh has a skinCluster as input connection
A mesh without a skinCluster

All meshes inside the GEO group must be skinned to the rig otherwise the character will fail the validation.

All meshes that are not skinned will be listed in the error message above.

				
					  > Joint name "{joint_name}" is not unique.
  > All skinned joints must have unique name!
Two joins having the exact same name

All the joints deforming the character need to have an unique name, so if you get this message, just rename the joint indicated in the message to have a unique name

				
					  > There are some joint with names that are not USD compatible. This will mean that
  > if you want to replace a rig in the Autodesk Flow Studio Maya scene you might not be
  > getting the animation because of a name mismatch in the reference edits.

The current USD version does not support any character to be used in primitive names (objects), so if you have objects using non ascii characters, you will get this error. Valida characters are any ASCII letter, numbers and the underscore (_) character.

An automatic fix is available! By clicking on the icon all unsupported characters will be replaced with underscores (_).

This Message will only appear when the 'Enable USD support' checkbox is enabled

				
					   > There are some animation curves connected to the rig. Please remove them because
   > they may introduce differences between what you see now, and what will be exported
   > in the FBX file.
Animation curves connected to rotation is depicted by the red squares between attribute name and value

This message means that there are some animation curves connected to the joints. Even if the curves define a single value, they can be setting a value different than what the bind pose is and tricking you into believing that the current pose is the one that will be exported in the FBX. The solution to this problem is to remove the curves from any joint that affects the character’s geometry.

An automatic fix is available! By clicking on the icon all curves connected to joints will be disconnected.

				
					  > Make sure that there is a single root bone in the joint hierarchy,
  > and all joint are parented under joint "{}".'.format(character_rig))
  > Currently, we have {number of roots} roots: {root-name-1}, {root-name-2}.'
Multiple joints under he _BODY group

This message means that you have multiple root joints. This means that all the joints in the _BODY group don’t share a single parent join. To fix this issue, please parent all joints under a single joint.