Insect Rigging - Model already joined... how can I rig?

I’ve been following this gentlemen’s tutorial here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF6ryktrht0

Around 15 mins in, he starts selecting individual parts of the main body to rig to each bone. I’ve been searching all over and I can’t think of the right way to phrase my issue, but essentially, all the model’s body parts have already been joined. Is there a way I can rig it as is? Or did I really screw myself over joining all the insect’s parts long ago?

http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=43858 Here is the blend file. Essentially I’m trying to create a swarm of insects, but I really need to know if there’s another way to rig for joined models, since I’ve already made several other models that I would hate to scrap because I didn’t read ahead.

You should be fine rigging either separate meshes or a combined mesh. There are different parenting methods used for each.

The dog model in the video has separate mesh items making up the dog. Since the dog is a robot, made up of hard surface or non-deforming parts, the author is parenting each part of the dog to an appropriate bone. He could have joined all of the parts into one mesh and used an armature deform modifier to get the same results.

Your mesh would work better with an armature modifier because it is a single mesh and because it’s an organic object instead of a hard surface object. Organic rigging is often easier to accomplish using an armature modifier since the mesh will need to deform at the joints. An armature modifier uses vertex groups with the same names as the bones in the armature. Then vertices are assigned to those groups with appropriate weights. Bones in the armature that deform the mesh need to set to deform in the bone properties. (New bones added to an armature have this on by default.)

The density of the mesh of the insect is very high. I would not recommend rigging this mesh. First, you should retopologize the model to simplify and reduce the topology. Also, there are quite a few flipped normals in the model. (Normals are the direction the polygon face points. )

Because you want to animate a swarm of these critters, you will want to lower the vertex count of the model as low as you can and make use of the subsurf modifier to fake a higher density model.

I would suggest you find some tutorials on topology and modeling basics. Then, retopo the insect to lower the vertex count. Next get a good rigging tutorial to help out. I suggest Humane Rigging by Nathan Vegdahl as the starting point for rigging. Youtube has some good tutorials on rigging, but they are few and far between. Be careful what you watch.

Good luck!

Yes sir, thank you for your reply! I watched some retopology tutorials, but it seemed to lower the poly count all I had to do was use the decimate modifier to reduce the tris count. Moving forward, I didn’t see how to locate flipped normals, but since the body of my insect will be entirely black, maybe that will not affect it visually?

I’m checking out the Humane Rigging tutorial you gave me. Thanks for you all your help!

Not true! :ba: watch some more tutorials from CGCookie for example, I hope you did not make the mesh with Tris (3 sided faces) you should use Quads (four sided faces) for Blender. And you need to distribute the vertices approximately evenly, and you need them in the right place, and you need slightly higher densities around complex body joints, and, etc. etc.

Also not true! :ba: Flipped normals will interfere with shading, light bounces, “bump” maps, etc. etc. To flip normals, just select them all in Edit mode and key CTRL+N - if your topology is right Blender will flip them all to be outward facing from the centre of the mesh. You should ALWAYS have normals facing correctly. Flipped normals often occur when you mirror faces, to correct, just key CTRL+N once you have done the mirror operation and while you still have the mirrored vertices selected.

Cheers, Clock. :slight_smile:

PS. Note what my friend Danpro said about good Youtube tutorials being few and far between…

PPS. To see flipped normals, just change their display colour to white and rotate your 3D view, flipped normals will be much darker.

I didn’t see how to locate flipped normals, but since the body of my insect will be entirely black, maybe that will not affect it visually

God no! Listen to the good advice you’re getting and don’t learn bad habits now. Because they’ll come back to haunt you later on. :slight_smile:

Tris are fine for a model if you intend to export it out to something like xnormal or a game engine. But try to keep the source in quads when ever you can. There are certain situations where tris can be used effectively, just like ngons. But that takes a bit of experience to learn. Tris can be a pain to edit too. Particularly if it’s a complex mesh.

The decimate modifier is a great tool, but don’t rely on it too heavily. There’s more to retopology than simply lowering the vert/poly count. The end result still has to be useful. If it’s an animatable character it’s important that the mesh deforms well.