masterBone question

Support Animation and Rigging
1

hi,
I’m making a character, roughly following the bsod character animation tutorial.

I’ve gotten to the point of adding the knee bones and have noticed a difference between my character and the one in the tutorial.

In the illustration:
‘Knees now behave properly when spine1 is moved down and back.’
on page:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation/Final_rig_adjustments#Adding_a_master_bone

…the characters master bone moves with the character, but mine does not.

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d176/howarddevore/masterBone1.png

(the master bone is the big one, disconnected because I’ve moved the lowerspine bone as in the tut)

I rechecked and the tutorial does say that the master bone should be a child of none…so how does the master bones move?
What should i do to it?

thanks,
Howard

(incidentally, the text on the tut says: ‘Test out the new knee bones by moving the spine1 bone around, especially down and back.’ but in the illustration next to it the master bone is what is selected.)

2

From the tutorial :

Make this new bone the child of none, so that the only way this bone will move is if we move it directly.

And

This bone will the be highest parent of all the other bones in the armature. The master bone will be the one to move when we want to move the whole body at once, like in a jump.

And in the next steps in the tutorial you should make the mater bone the parent of the spine and both legs so that when you move the master bone it moves the entire armature . The master bone then will become the “handle” by which you can animate your armature, i.e. you only move that bone to animate a jump for example .

3

hi Vertex Pusher,
Thanks for your reply. I’ve got it working as you say in your post, and I understand its purpose, I was just worried that it did not follow along when the chars body was moved with the lowerspine bone.
It doesn’t seem like a ‘problem’ per se, as i can still animate the char, I was just wondering if i had neglected to do something.

regards,
Howard

4

… just worried that it did not follow along when the chars body was moved with the lowerspine bone.

Well I think that’s because of the bone display type the tutorial uses is different from what you used . And displaying in the “classic” octahedron draw type makes the disconnected nature of the master bone seem worse then if they were dawn in the stick draw type . If you look at the tutorial pictures again you’ll notice that it is disconnected towards the bottom of the page …

5

cool thanks. :slight_smile:

6

Howard,

The “master bone” is the parent of the lower spine, so as with any parent-child setup, the parent will not move when only the child(ren) are selected and moved.

I also personally like to have the “master” bone :

  • named “ROOT” (just my own convention) … but UPPERCASE so that it stands out in the bone llist

  • positioned under the character’s feet and sized much larger than the rest of the bones

I’d also rotate the “lower spine” horizontally and extend it out the back of the character to make it easier to access. (You’ll have to disconnect the next child spine bone first).

For more details on these mods, see :
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/BSoD/Introduction_to_Character_Animation/Improved_Foot_Rig

Mike

7

hi Mike_S

gotcha!
Thanks, there were some interesting tips in that post, I’ll give those a try at some point for sure. I’ve also opened the link you gave and will have a read once I’ve dealt with my kids nutritional needs a minute :wink:

(why can’t kids eat goddam CG!?!)

regards,
Howard