Today I am going to delve into rigging, a scary jump considering the fail I experienced when first trying to rig the butterfly. I have a long way to go considering I only just found out exactly what an IK rig is and have no idea how any of this works in Blender.
Classic advanced rigging model “Ludwig”
• Armature
• Hook
• Empty
• Lattice
A series of connected bones (Chain):
• IK Effector
• Non-Root Bone
• Root Bone
Elements in a chian:
• Object hierarchies
• Axis locks
• Degrees of freedom
• Object constraints
• IPO drivers
• pydrivers
• python scripts
Axis lock versus degrees of freedom
Axis locks limit the options for manipulating an object where degrees of freedom limits the actual motion e.g. you could make an object only rotate along the x-axis by locking off the others and then using a DoF make it only rotate 90 degrees.
Constraint allows for relationships that hierarchies can’t provide.
You can either parent the mesh to the armature or use a modifier.
Edit Mode you define the armature’s rest position and then Pose Mode is where animation, posing is done. When you clear transformations in Pose Mode the armature goes back to it’s resting position.
Vertex Groups versus Bone Envelopes
The “centre” of a bone seems to be the root point not a point between the root and tip points. This is important to keep in mind with such constraints as the “Track To” as this will point the tracking bone to the root point of the tracked bone.
The 3 Bones everything has (apparently)
COG – Centre of Gravity
Top most bone in the hierarchy, transforming this bone transforms the entire character. “When tossed in the air, the COG is the point about which something rotates.”
Body
Hip
Bones fall into one of three categories:
1. Manipulable rig elements: Bones meant for transformation by the animator.
2. Deform bones: Bones set with Deform active, these move the mesh and often don’t need to be dealt with directly by the animator.
3. Non-manipulable rig elements: Elements of a rig that work as part of a larger system to cause an effect, but don’t need to be dealt with by the animator.
When an animator works with a character, he wants to see two things:
1. The character, in one form or another.
2. The character’s controls.
3d Character Animation Movie
Everything is connected to the hip bone except when using a Centre of Gravity bone. Thus the structure of a biped is:
COG
Hips
Stomach
Chest
Neck
Head
Clavicle R
Clavicle L
Thigh R
Thigh L
Character Setup
What is the character going to be doing, what sort of character is it: cartoony or realistic? Fewer bones is faster and “more fun to animate”. Key is the character to look anotomically correct but not have the skeleton anatomically correct.
3-4 bones for spine and straight bones for chest rotation.
Solutions for avoiding pinching in shoulders: model the character in a way that avoids this problem e.g. detachable arms or add in an extra bone to separate the twist from the rotations (17min).
Screenshots notes
FK Basic
If you delete objects that are their influence is removed from the child objects, meaning that the child object returns to it’s original position before being parented.
Anchor to what you know
I am in a pit of despair as I try to grapple with the more advanced aspects of Blender and 3D production in general: rigging, IPO curves, materials and nodes. So I’m finding solace in the things that I do know how to do: painting, being creative, and designing. My plan to overcome this is to gradually expand these familiar territories into this project with the main entryway being modelling as I seem to be picking that up quickly.
Why is an idea like anchoring to what you are good at important? Because the worst thing I find that can happen is to loose one’s confidence. Thus this is a way to keep the ship afloat.