Can someone please point me to a good online tutorial for changing an armature into Custom Shapes?
Thanks
Setting up bone shapes is covered in this tutorial (starting about 34:30) http://www.blendercookie.com/2011/03/22/creating-an-advanced-face-rig-part-two/
I don’t think you’ll find an exclusive tutorial for this per say it because it’s a simple trick.
- You should use a mesh object (not a curve) to make the shape first, which can be hidden by moving to a different layer once you have the custom bone shape working.
- Name the mesh object (or at least take note of its name).
- In Pose mode of the armature, select the bone you want to adopt the shape.
- Under the “Bone” tab, down in the “Display” section you should see a “Custom Shape” field. Enter the name of the mesh object there.
- The bone should now be the shape of the mesh object, although it may not be properly aligned. You can fix this by manipulating the original mesh shape in Edit mode.
- It’s usually a good idea to use the Wireframe option for the bone, and also turn on X-ray mode for the armature to make it easy to select the bones as they won’t hide under the skin of your character model.
- As said before, hide the original mesh shape object by moving it to another layer out of the way.
These steps are as is for Blender 2.5 (you did not say which Blender you were using)