How to pose a ragdoll rig?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I’ve set up a ragdoll rig, using some of the tutorials found on this forum and so far so good, all works as expected. However, I want to be able to pose the ragdoll prior to the simulation running and keep having issues.

Firstly, I thought I could use a child-of constraint to make the hit boxes follow an armature, but this creates an odd jumping issue when the simulation takes over.

I’ve also tried creating an armature and vertex groups for the ragdoll’s hitboxes, but the armature continues to influence them, even when the simulation takes over, which leads to undesirable motion!

RagdollTry|video

Are there any other options?

2

I haven’t tried it my self and I am very noob with ragdolls. But this addon looks promising (not free though).

Looks like you can activate the ragdoll feature at any frame and is supposed to be easier to create ragdolls in general.

3

I did end buying this addon for the convenience of setting it up. I found the odd jumping i was getting was my fault. Once I had set the hit box and constraint relationships correctly it all worked fine. The only problem I have now is Blender being unstable when changing values and settings in rigid bodies and constraints etc…

Thanks for the response in any case!

4

It shouldn’t. Here’s what I’d recommend:

  1. Duplicate the ragdoll (deforming) armature. Delete all constraints from it. Parent all RBs to appropriate bones in the duplicated armature. No constraints on your RBs either.

  2. Create a new bone in your duplicate armature to control “animated” trait. Create a new driver for the animated trait on one RB, set it something like animated = (bone.pos.y<=0). Copy this driver to all other RBs.

  3. Animate your duplicate to control the RBs. At the last frame you want to control the RBs, keyframe your animated control. At the next frame, manipulate and keyframe this control to turn the animated trait off.