Basic rigging two cubes

Hello everyone,

I’m new to rigging, banging my head trying to rig two cubes together. Pretty basic, right? Well, I’m following what many of the rigging tutorials are teaching to no avail:

  1. make two cubes
  2. create an armature bone
  3. Clone the armature bone
  4. Place one bone in cube 1
  5. Place the second bone in cube 2 (joint location is between the two cubes)
  6. Entering object mode and selecting everything (both cubes and the two armature bones)
  7. Ctrl+P to parent everything as Armature Deform -> empty groups

Now, when I move either cube, the armature stays fixed.

What am I missing?

You are missing this tutorial series :wink:

Kidding aside, you will have better results with Armature Deform > Automatic Weights and moving the bones to move the cubes.

If you choose to parent with “Empty groups”, blender is going to create vertex groups for each bone, but they will be empty (no vertices will be assigned to them) so the bones won’t move anything.

You have to go to the vertex groups of each cube (in the properties panel, the tab with a “triangle” shape). There you will see vertex groups with the names of the bones. You will need to assign vertices to each of the groups (in edit mode to select the vertices)

Alternatively, you could Parent with automatic weights, blender will automatically assign vertices to the vertex groups, and you will be able to tweak the groups if needed in the same manner.

Even though your description seems straightforward, there are some gaps that could be filled to help you out.

Blender organizes the scene into Objects. Meshes, armatures and lamps are examples. The two cubes can either be:

  • one Object with two cubes
  • two Objects with one cube each.

Why does it matter? well…

  • One Armature Modifier is applied the the Object, and each cube will have a vertex group named after the bone controlling it
  • Two Armature Modifiers are applied, one to each object, and each cube will have a vertex group named after the bone controlling it.

There is also the question: Did you duplicate the bone in object or edit mode? If you did it in object mode, then it means you have two armatures - which will complicate things.

So here is your revised workflow.

  • Shift+A (Add) >Mesh >Cube (if you don’t already have one)
  • With the cube selected: press Tab (Edit Mode)
  • Shift+D to duplicate cube, move it to the side
  • Press Tab (Object Mode)
  • Shift+A (Add) >Armature >Single Bone
  • Press Tab (Edit Mode)
  • Shift+D to duplicate bone, align new bone with other cube
  • Press Tab (Object Mode)
  • Press A (Deselect All)
  • Hold Shift, select cubes and then select bones
  • CTRL+P (Set Parent) >Armature Deform > Automatic Weights
  • Select Bones, CTRL+Tab (Pose mode)
  • Grab, Rotate, Scale the bones to affect the cubes