Hi there!
I’m a bit of beginner for rigging, and have been looking around for some assistance on this item. Essentially I want to have a robot with fairly stiff rigging. No real bends in each limb (no knees or elbows). BUT I do want the left arm to be a noodle arm of some sort… or at least have 2-3 ‘segments’ How do I accomplish this? I do want everything else to be rigid FYI.
Thanks everyone!
I think your issue may be that you don’t have enough vertices. Vertices are what get deformed by bones, and the faces are drawn connecting the vertices. So you can’t make a floppy noodle without giving it lots of loops cuts:
That makes sense… Also perhaps the way I’m attaching the armature is a problem too? Again, kinda a beginner rigger. =>
Let’s say you’ve applied the armature manually, except for noodle arm, how would you just attach one armature ‘segment’ manually?
I’m not sure what you mean. “Applied the armature manually” == parented with empty groups and then weight painted? (“Apply” is something with a specific meaning in Blender, at least in regards to modifiers like an armature.)
Beginner rigger should parent the mesh with autoweights to the rig, after the rig is finalized, and, optionally, clean things up with weight painting afterwards. If you’ve edited it, just do it again. :(Things that seem hard when you’re starting get easier with practice, and the way to that practice is doing it again, so redoing work is usually not so dreadful of an idea as beginners imagine.)
Hmm… Let me try another approach. How can you disable an armature on a limb, do some work, then enable it manually? So I imagine you’d have to un parent a limb… then you have to manually parent a limb once you add more loop cuts etc. (to make a noodle arm)?
You don’t have to disable the armature. You just have to make sure that added vertices (or changed vertices, I suppose) have appropriate weights. In the case of a loop cut, it will interpolate weights automatically, IIRC. In more general terms, you need to redo your weights every time you change your mesh, but if you’re using automatic weights, which would be appropriate for a noodle, that’s not a big deal.
Cool! I’m sure I have other problems with my rig in that case. LOL. I’ll have to play with it more I guess. Maybe my problem is I don’t know how to manually attach an object, or a bunch of objects to a bone…
Thanks as always for the invaluable assistance Bandages!!!
To attach an object to a bone: select the object. Shift select the armature (in 3D view.) Enter pose mode. Select the bone which you want. Ctrl-p → bone relative.
I’ll try that out! Also looking at the tutorial from CG Cookie rigging up a tentacle. => I think the part I’m kinda missing, is how to attach that tentacle, to let’s say the body of the octopus.
