Is there a detailed breakdown on the mancandy rig with a detailed explanation of the rigging setup? For instance, what’s the purpose behind the double skeleton? Thanks.
I believe the only breakdown available is the post on the orange page.
http://orange.blender.org/blog/mancandy-updated/
But the reason behind the double rig is for the feet. The rigs on the feet (the ones that actually deform the feet) are attached to the leg bones. So if you actually end you grabbing the torso bone to move the whole character the feet remain attached to the character. The copy is what you actually animate, the original bones than copy the rotation which than deform the actual mesh.
In simpler terms the IK bone does not follow the chain if you grab at the other end, if you have a mesh assigned to that IK bone and you want the mesh to be attached at all times, you would need to make a duplicate bone that is always attached to the chain, assign vertices to this duplicate and have it copy the transformation of the IK bone. As far as the IK bone goes we don’t care anymore if it’s left behind or not.
Thanks for this info. I actually had a link to this but forgot about it.
Ok, after picking at mancandy’s bones and taking what I need from this great rig I’m still left with some questions. Beyond the basic bone joints I wonder what purpose the other bones such as shouldertip, backbackstrt, etc, have. On some of my rigs I use some bone just for containing the mesh parts for better deformation. Beyond that, extra bone around the jaw, eyes, thighs, etc are only used to hold stuff in place for deformations. Also what “new” methods where used by Bassam to set up the weights for mancandy?
I’m still using the old way of setting up weights, assigning vertex groups, then “Name Groups”. I should be using the new way of weight painting and creating groups or envelopes to vertex groups. I haven’t seen my way around a decent new rigging workflow yet. I was hoping that more rigging workflow tips trickle out of the Orange team as we move ahead. I don’t have lot’s of free time for trial and error rigging workflows these days.