Armature basic question.(two different looking armature)

Support Animation and Rigging
#1

HI GUYS,

Hope you are all doing well.

I am new to rigging and I need your help. Though I did some bone to bone armature, but recently I downloaded a animation file(.blend) from Blendswap.com by mikh 3x4. I have problem understanding following things.

  1. This is basic rig
  2. then what is this type of rig, and how to create this…?
  3. what is this control mean for…? (i tried to move it in pose mode but it doesn’t affect mesh)
    4. WHAT IS PROTECTED LAYER…?
  4. I TRIED TO UNDERSTAND CONSTRAINTS BUT NEVER GOT ITS FUNCTION.

SORRY :frowning: I have too many questions.

Attachments

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#2

The green shapes are the animation controls. They are “bone shapes” that you can move instead of digging inside the character to move the actual deformation bones. Most riggers build these to make the animator’s life a lot easier. Your #3 is a target, specifically for the characters left knee. It’s left knee will ‘point’ at where ever you place that ball shape. Protected layers are layers the rigger does not want the animator messing with. And constraints are how the rigger either limits the location, rotation or scale of some bone (to avoid impossible deformations) or gets bones to interact with each other (so, for example, scaling a single ‘hand’ bone causes the all the finger joint bones for that hand to curl.)

Character rigs are some of the most complicated rigs around. I’d suggest you find a rigging tutorial, and work through building at least one rig from scratch yourself, to really understand how all the pieces fit together.

#3

thank you ORINOCO. its really helped me a lot. I watched some tutorials before on above queries, but you specific answer helped me most. Anyway thanks again and i’ll follow your suggestion on creating my own rig from scratch…:slight_smile: