In 2.5 is there a way to “bind” the object to the bones so it can be posed or animated without painting weights or painting bone heat manually? I did it once with a figure. I selected the figure then the bones and then used a keyboard command to bind the mesh and bones and it worked well but I can’t remember how I did it.
For example. I have created a tube object with 3 segments and 3 bones. I don’t like painting the bone heat manually because I can’t do it accurately, so I am wondering if there’s another way to do it?
The way you were parenting things there gave you the bone weighting options. Basically, select the mesh, select the armature (both in object mode) and ctrl-p to parent, selecting the automatic weighting option. In 2.5x if you do this, it automatically adds an armature modifier to the mesh, so keep that in mind. If you already have an armature modifier, remove it before parenting. If you unparent & reparent the mesh to armature, it will create another modifier, resulting in 2 modifiers. I don’t remember off hand how it worked in 2.49…
Thanks so much Randy. Yes that other thread was for another problem but I see what you mean. I want to be able to pose this by grabbing a handle instead of posing each bone separately. Is there a simple way to do this using a handle at the top of the pencil. I want to animate the pencil hopping. Would you use FK or IK for this? Any ideas as to how I can go about doing this?
Blender cookie has one on ball bouncing, it would be essentially the same rig as that one. IK would be involved as well as segmenting the bones. You then have basically two control bones, the root for position and the top for “squish/bounce”. I might be able to help with a quick example after I finish work today.
