How do you Rig a Character? (+blend)

Support Animation and Rigging
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Here’s my attempt at rigging, the blend is there so you can make suggestions and upload (it or just play with the rig :slight_smile: )

mainly I have 3 questions:

  1. How are you supposed to name these? (so you can flip poses properly and stuff)

  2. how do you make a good foot rig? (and do you know of any good ones out there I can look at :smiley: )

  3. any good tips on rigging?

comments and suggestions greatly appreciated!

Attachments

leg2.blend (533 KB)

rigg.jpg800×600 19.3 KB

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From the Wiki:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/Advanced_Tutorials/Advanced_Animation/Guided_tour/Armature/edit

To change the names: Start by editing one of the names as Arm. Add the suffix to it (_L or _R). Then hover your mouse over the name field and do CTRL-CKEY. You just copied the name of the bone! Select the other bone, hover you mouse over the name field and do CTRL-VKEY. This will paste the name as-is. But as there is already a bone with the same name, Blender will add .001 after it. No problem; just go into 3Dview and do WKEY –> Flip name. There you have it – a working mirror again.
Here’s some more info:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Rigging/Some_Beginner_Rigs

If you want a complete, extensive tutorial on creating a full rig from scratch, including hands and feet, I’d suggest the book in my signature (Introducing Character Animation with Blender) as a good place to start. Once you’ve completed that, I’d strongly suggest having a look at the Mancandy FAQ.

Here’s Bassam’s video tutorial of his foot rig, which is very good.
http://video.blendertestbuilds.de/BC2005/za04b_bassam.avi

Here’s another nice, but pretty advanced leg rig:

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just go into 3Dview and do WKEY –> Flip name. There you have it – a working mirror again.

Thanks for looking that up :smiley:

I’d suggest the book in my signature (Introducing Character Animation with Blender) as a good place to start.

I’ll look into getting it, thanks :D!

Here’s Bassam’s video tutorial of his foot rig, which is very good.

Bassam’s video tutorial is missing something (somewhere, there’s an error - I get the first 30 seconds, and then it cuts out -and that’s playing it in blender sequence editor - VLC only plays it for 4 seconds)

Here’s another nice, but pretty advanced leg rig:

the foot rig is lost atm(link is dead), but the Nelb-Red rig was produced somewhat like it…

I guess I just need to dissect some more rigs :smiley: (including that one)

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I do have a hint on mesh-making when planning for animation. Instead of tube-like joints (ring after ring after ring), make two ‘hinge’ joints, then the bottom and top areas of the joint, to make sort of a diamond.
Think of it as two tubes that are connected at two points that come from the ends, then the rest is covered with a stretchy face that covers the knee cap and the back of the knee.

At that point, the top ‘knee’ vertecies, as well as the two ‘hinge’ verticies, are children of the Thigh bone, while the bottom ‘knee’ verticies and the rest of the shin are children to the Shin bone.