Ok I finished rigging. I hope this is more clear to everyone.
After that we will go though vertex group. parenting and weight painting. After that i will add all the ik solvers.
Any anim master have crits about this rig tut?. Could be cool to know before continuing. 
Ho and keep the bone renamator script near. This is a real time saver for big rigging situation.
Thanks for looking.
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I thought I’d try my hand at rigging tonight so I followed the gingerbread tutorial.
I got to the part about copying the animation to buffer then pasting the mirror on the 21 frame. However instead of just copying the position to the other leg it reverses it out behind him as seen here:
FRAME 1
FRAME 21
Legs are named with the .L and .R extension. I’ve fiddled with this for about an hour trying to make it work but I can’t find out whats wrong with it.
Anyone know?
Though the link is not image, give it as links.
good question you got there. Are you sure the name of the 2 bones are the same?(except .L/R) sometime we put caps we it shouldn’t…
also are you in front view?that all I can think for the moment.
if only Had had a .blend
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you can send it by email: [email protected] <- this is a working address.
You can also use layers to hide the part of the rig you don’t want to see, that way you can just click the layer’s button “active” to see the part of the rig thats hidden.
Brian
Layer work only for object afaik. For bone you can use the HIDe feature (HKEY, alt-HKEY)
Ok.
I’ve emailed the .blend to you Gabio.
Thought I’d add this for any noobies that may be following this thread.
To hide a bone in pose mode select it (RMB) then press Shift & H-key
To see the all the bones press Alt & H-key
Or,
Enter edit Mode (Tab key) press the A key to select all bones (do this while your mouse curser is in the window) Select bones turn yellow.
Then press F9, and all of your bones names will be shown. To the left of each bone nsme is a HIDE button. Turning the hide button on or off will effect what bone(s) will be shown in Pose or Object mode.
To hide, just the H key is enough though.
thank
Okay. Thanks to Gabios help I was able to mirror my animation and finish the walk sequence. 
Now I have some questions:
How do I loop the walk?
How do I make my gingerbread man actually move along the ground?
Thanks
Any chance of the blender conference videos but not in bittorrent format?
Although I don’t see what that has to do with animation. I agree. Bittorrent sucks. Wheres some mirrors? :x
Okay so I was rigging my alien person with just the basic arms, legs and torso. Rigged successful. So I moved the armatures around in Pose Mode putting him in random positions. Then I decided I wanted fingers, so I went to edit the armatures but the mesh was in the wrong position.
So I moved it back in Pose mode. But the arms still aren’t perfectly matched up. When I move the armatures in edit mode then press tab the mesh moves.
Why is this?? Its so annoying! :<
How do I fix it?
Thanks
all those pages you have there are amazing. you’ve helped me so much with character modeling and animation. i swear i’ll only be going to these sites for the next three months. thanks, dude.
there is a “rest pose” button for that.
there is a “rest pose” button for that.[/quote]
Thanks, it works now 
. But what exactly does it do?
Also as I just discovered, if you move the armatures in edit mode after rigging does it reset the vertices it was assigned to? Cause I rigged a hand then moved some fingers in edit mode then it wasn’t rigged anymore. 
EDIT: Actually, played around with it more, rest pos doesn’t help.
Can someone please explain to me the different modes of these armatures?
I press TAB put the bones for the fingers in the right place, then press TAB again to exit edit mode then it jumps to another position. So I try to fix that up then when I press TAB again its moved once again! Even when I do finally fix it I unselect Rest Pos and it jumps again! So frustrating. How can I fix this?
Vertex Group
before doing anything, make sure your armature is neutral. It mean all the bone have the same rolling angle. To do so go in editmode, select all bones and press CTRL-N.
Now we have an armature and a mesh.
To deform the mesh with the armature we will need to parent the armature to the mesh. Doing so will bring you a little menu:
-The “Bone” option allow you to parent the mesh to a single bone. Good for mechanical animation for example, because you can save animation of object as action and use it in the NLA.
-The “Object” option will do usual parent between the armature object and the mesh object, nothing fancy here.
-The “Armature” option will bring you an other menu:
-Don’t Create Groups": From there you can match the armature with the mesh waiting for you to do th rest.
-“Name Groups” will create empty groups you can fill to your taste (long job but usually good).
-“Create From Closest Bones” will create all the groups and fill them with the closest vertex in a way there is no vertex left(no to say this is a bit buggy as you can’t be sure all the vertices of one finger is actually parented to the good bone.
But I think I forgot to tell why we are doing all this:
In blender, you can group vertices together. The option are in the edit window. There you can create group, change the name, assign and select vertices. All you have to do is to parent the mesh with the armature, select the option armature and make sure there is a bone and a group of the same name(Blender can create group, based on bone’s name). Then the bone will move the group of the same name.
Now there is a weight option. This mean all the vertices you assign will get this weigth in the entire morphing. If the vertice is in only one group. the default weight is 1 but if the vertice is in more than one group, the morphing you will attemps(the move you will do) will be blended between all the groups(if they are all set to 1) so you can ask one group to get .5 of influence and if the vertice is part of 2 groups, the ratio of influence will be 1:2.
An example of weight is in this blend file.
See the diference if I bend this grid with weight and an other grid with simple vertex groups(side to side):
In the weighted one the force of the two bones are influencing both part of the grid.
Back to the main subject, we can now parent our mesh and armature together using the armature and creating from closest bone. The blend file without group is here.
I could also make it by just creating group and fill it by hand. But I think for now it’s less long to fix some missing vertices than doing it all by hand.
Now that this is done, take a peak at the outliner for new stuff: you can now see and select vertex groups:
Take note all the bones set to unskinnable don’t have a following vertex group at all. This is nice less job.
In the 3Dview go in weight paint mode.
keeping the outliner near, select all the groups one by one and see if there is no problematic group. Then you can add or remove weight by setting the weight parameter in the edit button(with vertex group) to 1 or 0. No need for fancy bending where. The best we need is to put join in both group so it create a soft bending between the two bones.
Color tell if there is weight or not: blue = 0 and red = 1.
Note: in this mode, just by painting weight on place where there wasn’t weight(blue place), you can add vertices to a group. In fact: 0 = not in this group and weight > 0 is in the group.
There is some tools to help in seeing:
in object button (F7) press the wire button in the Draw table.
In the paint panel in editbutton: set opacity to 1. This mean when you click on an area. all the vertices here will get the max value now, if not, you will have to click several time to get there(usefull for tweaking though).
Here is an example:
The leg should be uniform but as in the picture it wasn’t.
the correct should be:
Note: the circled edgeloop is planned to be blend zone where vertices are in 2 groups.
That’s it, very simple. Now we have to look for all the group one by one. If the bone was well placed it should not be too buggy.
Here is a quick how-to using the bone 1_Back who was holding the missing vertices in the previous picture. We will give these vertices a weight of 0 and make sure all the other vertices are genuine in the group.
this is the original output of the group 1_Back:
Quick look where the bone is:
Now the idea is to give 1_Back a big amplitude as the rest of the Back chain, everything will overlapping like a wall of bricks.
So to make this a very soft join we would need to take all the vertice of the bottom and a bit of the 2_Back’s space. Here is the result:
I just painted a weight of 1 all around and removed it between the leg.
And as proof of concept 2_Back would look like this:
last one: a thumb:
when blending group you have to thing a bit about the way you want stuff to move when you move one bone. see your hand when you move the thumb, almost half of the palm is moving. So you may trop some weight to cover more space.
So we have the original output:
and the bone under it:
Now see what move when you move the thumb: a lot. Just paint what is moving, also keeping in mind the blending zone.
The final result:
The circles is where we plan to blend joins. And yes the hand is one of the most complex place to rig.
You can download the blend file containing all the vertex group all ready to go.
Last note: Don’t forget to do right and left part at the same time so you don’t loose your idea. Doing it symetrical is a good habit.
Also from time to time select the armature and go in pose mode to move some bone to see if the join work ok and if you didn’t forget a vertice.
Next:
-Create automated stuff with constraint.
ARGH! :x The tutorials moving ahead without me.
I’m still having troubles with my alienman.
Heres an example of the problem I’m having:
If image doesn’t work:
As you can see I have a leg with an armature in it. Out of place.
When I enter edit mode to fix it up, I see that its already in the right place.
When I press Rest Pos it fixes it up, however I can’t leave it like this for the whole time or else I’ll never be able to animate it.
If anyone can help me, that would be great.
Thanks
PS. I can send the .blend to anyone who thinks they have a solution.
redbyte: Could it be you added a Rotation key for that bone?
Try selecting all bones while in pose mode and then press ALT R to clear any rotations. Then exit pose mode, enter edit mode, etc., going back and forth to see if the position for that or any other bone has been cleared finally.
Hopefully solves the situation If not, let us know.
RobertT
Although I don’t see what that has to do with animation. I agree. Bittorrent sucks. Wheres some mirrors? :x[/quote]
Because there is one of the most complete tutorial on animation done by slikdigit at the conf. 
redbyte: sorry for the delay.
as Robertt said.
go in pose mode select all bones and press ALT-R. Should fixe that.
problem was you moved the bone in posemode as if you were animating.
ALT-R clear rotation(return to editmode value). It’s the very old undo system you see here.
There is only one little part left and we should start animating and seeing various tricks. Exciting