Neewbie Here, Why Blender public knowledge and tutorials about rigging is like on 1998-Year level?

Support Animation and Rigging
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Good day! I want to touch the nitty-gritty subject of becoming a rigging master.

I was studying the blender around 9 months and i always want to do a reallistic human rig that can do everything. So to speak honestly, i did not have much sucess. I tried to rig using Autorig-Pro, but the author was extremelly uncooperative, and ignoring like a half of my questions so i refund addon, not to mention all problems that occur in Rigify rig were presented here as well. When doing a research on my own i was kinda shocked - despite Blender hitting 20 Years of existence, there’s not much detailed tutorials on a advanced humane rigging and skinning. I mean, that’s all? Why the rigging tutorials is so worlthless? Where’s is courses on advanced deformations, using either bones and/or shape-keys? Proper manual skinning? How to human rig hips/thighs, which is the main area that’s new people have most struggle with? Anatomiclly correct Splits, extreme poses like action or fighting game characters will actually do? So to put it like that, if you want to learn the Physics you won’t come with Physics laws on your own right? Hell, there’s no even good books on the Blender. To me it seems either professionals who have passed the nightmare of studying either doesn’t want to share presious info or everyone knows all, but again for some reson not willing to share. Look’s like rigging skill is some black magic or knowledge from sacred black monolith, who gives it only to choosen one. I don’t understand why science of rigging threating like it’s a war secret’s or something. Only real good tutorial channel i know is Dan Pro. But he is just a one person, he can’t cover everything and the last video was like 9 moths ago. Most videos on youtube is useless shlock for people with short attention spans, which will quit after 2 weeks. And i also don’t get why there’s so much information on the animation, but not the rigging, or animators just outsourcing all hard work to capable people?

And what about game models? Im pretty sure you can’t just use automatic weights and throw dozens of bones into the game rig, due to performance reason’s and yet they need to be look reasonably good as is, especially in cutscenes, without usage of complicated render specific features like, corrective or subsurf modifiers. Or the fact that you can’t have a preserve volume option in game engine, so weight paint should be different. And you could say “but it depends on what you want”,nonetheless, there need to be basic principles, tips and tricks aspecially regarding human characters, im pretty sure devs animators don’t invent the wheel every single time.

So to sum it up, my question is this - dear riggers/animators how are you went you way though? Do you studying a ceratin books? Or you just spending thousands of hours without much konwledge blindly fightting yor way though the hard way? I have hard time to find a even non-Blender specific teacher in my country, sadly because there’s not much traction in that area. English is not my main language so i apologise for any grammar mistakes or poor wording. I hope i doesn’t sound harsh, just a thoughts of a man that spare around 900 hours in blender with no sucess and frustrated beyond belief…

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Hi,

You should have a look on the Human Progress topic from Chris Jones.
Rigging technics shared, on both body, face, or even eyes are amazing.

Here are some examples from the topic :

See you :slight_smile: ++
Tricotou

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Well just start with the basics and try to define for yourself what you mean by “everything”. What is it going to do; and then determine how to do it. You need to reason it out with basics and figure out what will work with the model you have. Every character I’ve rigged has been different. I can’t remember any two being the same. Every model is different so your deformation will be different and the challenge is to rig what best fits that deformation. Bones, shape keys, lattices, mesh cages can all be used. You need to be able to use any of them. Other than that, it’s a secret.

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@stilltrying asked good questions, what are the video that you have been watching? Did you check David ward videos in youtube? There is a rigging series in the Blender cloud by Nathan, it will teach you the basic of rigging in Blender. Did you try Blender rig5 most of the Blender character from BF (BI) are made using that technique.
The Problem most new users are having, they are quickly buying addon when they didn’t understand the basic of using a tool.
Difficult to help when you are not so specific.

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Thanks mate, i will definetly watch this!

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Hello! Im inly interested in realistic characters, no toony stretching and all that. So you will create different rigs for mutltiple human even if they don’t that different? Seems counter-productive to me. You still use the same basis you created, am i right? For example in game like Bethesda’s Fallout/Elder Scrolls all base player male/female race is the divierge form same basic mesh, so you can easilly repourposed body for different armor/clothing. I hightly doubt that theese rig are any different at all.

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Good day. I talk overall about youtube tutorials whith short lengh around 5 to 15 minutes. Clearly you can’t five any in depth info with short length. Most of them just retell info you can easily find by yourself. Yes, i watched Nathan tutorials. Yes, it is good, but again it’s basics. Everyone loves to explain simple things, but as soon as things get complicated - silence. Where it info for intermediate/advance users? Again my problem stand’s with the lack of information and good examples. No books, no hour long courses which i can examine in my own pace or in depth courses. How can i go next? Call me a stupid person, but i can’t creat something or go in depth if i can’t examine or reverse-engineer other peoples work. Am i not specific enough? I want to know about how to rig agile character, that can perform action-hero moves with anatomiccally correct deformations and without ugly pelvis strething. How to get good deformations in the hips area? That thing is giving me a nightmare. There’s specific resourses about in depth human rigging? I will watch videos suggested by the tricotou user tomorrow.

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AHA! Now we are getting somewhere. You have a character that needs better deformation in hips? Can you post a blend of what you have and I’ll look at it. It could be topology of the model. It could be simply adding a few helper bones. Let us know what you want to do with it. Is it moving more or less than a human? Is it something extreme that you made up but want to know how to deform. For example, how far will it kick it’s leg up forward? Backward? Sideways left? Sideways right? Will it turn its foot? How much? Will its knee bend slightly back (very useful for animation called “breaking the joint”) ? I’ll be more that happy to look at your model and offer some solutions or critiques if you have it rigged, if I can. Is it for a game? Which game engine? Is it for film (that is what I work on mostly). I don’t think you will find a rig that can do everything. For instance, Blenrig is very good but if you try to fit it to a different model, you better know how it works because it is easy to break. Even if you find that magic rig that does “everything” you still will have to skin it and if you have a bad deformation from a crap model, you still need to know how to fix it. FYI Bethesda uses vanilla rigs for NPC’s which is why they have to be a certain size and they can only do certain movements. Other than that, they rig characters individually but as far as I know, they still use a hacked gamebryo for their engine and max for models. I lost my contact there because he headed out to better pastures in California. I’m sure if you post a blend your having issues with and explain the issues by animating it, someone here can provide an answer and solution.

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Thanks for response! I currently can’t send blend file, but i will do it by tommorow as soon a i can. I will also post screenshots from the game, to show what im trying to achieve. I always wanted Bayonetta from respectfull game be my first project . And i want to animation be at least on par with cutscenes. From my understanding, in game cutscenes devs using same model, just much more advanced rig, and all that extreme poses she make look’s very good. Part that im so frustrated, because im even didn’t start animating before i do a fuly capable rig, so i don’t want to stoop in rig limitations right away. For first time i want just to add facial bones to rig that is available in Source Film Maker Workshop but, when i start to examine, i came to conclusion, well - it’s total crap. There’s no hips and shoulder bones, pelvis is ugly stretching on the z axis, and so on. Then i moved on to the Autorig-Pro. But sadly, there’s no solution for this things from the box. When im trying to create my system for hips and anchoring pelvis i stumble unto more problems and it’s driving me mad. And again, there’s no solid examples on how to deal with this issues. Or at least what i google.

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It’s not just whether the meshes are different-- it’s what you need them to do, and how you want to animate them. It is often less effort to create different rigs (and sometimes different models) than it is to create a single rig that can do everything you would ever need it to do.

Video game characters don’t spend a lot of time doing the splits, and if you check out some ripped video game models, you’ll generally find that they can’t do the splits very well. Multiple bones aren’t actually all that expensive, basically about as expensive as another vert, although most video game engines have limits on how many bones can affect any individual vertex (which may be more expensive to do UE’s 8 or whatever vs Unity’s 4, but I don’t know.) But video game characters are tuned to their needs. If all that you need is a basic walk/run, you don’t need to worry about doing the splits.

If you were to look at something like hentai animations, you’re going to find a lot of characters doing the splits, but you’ll find that models have rigs and often meshes specific to the scene, rather than being re-used between scenes. I think. Because I haven’t seen those models.

If you want to do the splits, or other extreme leg poses, adding thigh twist bones is probably the simplest thing you can do to improve your models. Topology is very important, and most topo studies you’re going to see are going to have poor deformation in the groin (because they’re aimed at video game characters that don’t need great groin deformation.) Sorry, I don’t know best topo for this-- I’d really love to look at the models used by pro hentai animation artists sometime.

How do you learn? By reading here and there. For example, that’s how I learned that it’s okay to use different rigs for different needs. But mostly, by experimenting and making models. I’ve looked at many books, highly recommended, and none of them were that useful for me (so far.) Same with tuts, at least, beyond the basics. But then, I still have a lot to learn. (And it should be said that if you look at a pro package like Maya, you’re going to find a lot of tools, even rigging models, that just don’t exist in Blender. At least, that’s what I’ve picked up in my reading, I can’t afford Maya.)

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I’m not a rigger and don’t know much about it beyond the basics, but so far the best resource I have found about rigging in Blender is this channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/Dantreige/videos

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So, you guys want me to be more specific? Okay, ill do what you want.
Prepare yourselves, there will be a lot of pictures!
It’s been easier to me to point out most of the problems on the screenshots, im really sick right now so it really tiresome for me to wright long posts.
[IMAGE POSTING RESTRICTIONS ARE DUMB AND NOT HELPFULL FOR NEWBIES!]
Links to the album bellow:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1fM2lA1DdYboBw0WG8XExm97kcoy-VNuf

Well, Autorig.Pro have twist bones for hand and legs, i already manually paint them, as best as i can.
i’ve also add a 2 pair of bones:Thigh_inner and Stretch&Scissoring. First will prevent from stretching crotch on the Z axis, second is stopping leg verticies from falling though pelvis. Basically i can control amount of crease around that area. They work as i intended on the simple driver, but they working only for FK, because i don’t know how to do universall solution For both modes.
[IMAGINE PICTURES HERE]

Next, i have 2 blend files - one with the glute_lower bone and older one without it. I add it so i can exclude twist bones from controlling connection between pelvis and thighs, and also fix Z hip rotations - but it introduces newer issues, now the hip loses volume on the Z axis, because i block rotation on that part.
[IMAGINE PICTURES HERE]
I want also ask about preserve volume option - do it really helps rigging? because if you do a simple rig it helps, but since i need to keep proper hip/thighs moving/anchoring system they introduce bulge effect on the Legs Z Axis and on the Shoulders (i already fixed shoulders using mix of linear skinning). Not to mention it kills compatibility with other engines/programs.
[IMAGINE PICTURES HERE]

So for all my issues, maybe i need just strive to do a corrective shapekeys working on the simple driver, than create complex bones only system for pelvis? I mean crearly both in cutscenes and gameplay, there’s no realistic simulations of muscles or something like that involved. I’ve also done shapekey from the 90X Degrees leg move up to 75Z degrees, maximum possible position without bones rolling problem, but i can’t properly nailed it so it look’s like in the game. I was guided by the stretching lines on the suit, buts something just doesn’t cut it out for me. Also i don’t know on which point do it actually need to put a startting point on the driver side.
[IMAGINE PICTURES HERE]

Regarding topology. I am have zero skills on modelling, so looking on the topology i can’t certaintly tell what mesh is capable off (at least when it is not really low-poly). And even if i did, ill have a hard time to rival masters that is moddelers from Platinum Games. But the thing is in cutscenes poses looks really good, and at first glance model is not diffrent from the gameplay, certaintly more advanced rig is used. And even in gameplay, most of the time, deformation looks fine, pelvis won’t stretch and character thighs looks as they should be. And again, topology is not worse that characters (Laura?) Dan Pro is showing in his examples, and he said that she’s ment for creating yoga-type poses.Il post screenshots down below. I have a hard time getting a good picture of poses, because in game camera have mildly aggressive autocorrection, so i can’t zoom out on a character too much.
[IMAGINE MANY PICTURES HERE OR]
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1M0VsgEtDQeoVdgllVYtKdPtiV3CScLDo
P.S: Is there a way to send blend files privately to the specific users? I do not want share rig publicly.
P.P.S Dear mate bandages(thanks for detailed response,BTW!)

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I’d call it a taste preference. Quaternion deformation (“preserve volume”) is great for things like twist bones. But it’s not good for extreme leg poses-- tends to balloon the pelvis out, and it’s entirely possible to reach the 180 degree singularity of quaternion def which is very, very bad. Shoulders can be ugly as well, but not as bad as extreme leg.

Mostly, you can work around the deficits of whichever skinning method you prefer, just by using more bones. You can even double up your armature, using preserve volume on one part of your armature and not on the other, although I’d recommend a hard transition rather than blending, as blending will lead to volume loss, so that requires some thinking about your weights. (Hand painted, sure, works well, provided you’re willing to throw an extra loop cut here and there; autoweights, not so hot.)

Quaternion deformation should be supported by at least some engines. Can’t say exactly which. Just have to know what you’re looking for, because Blender doesn’t use the terminology that would help you know.

Unfortunately, topology is a really, really important part of getting good poses, especially when you’re looking at extreme poses. If you take some low poly game model made just for walk/run/shoot and start doing crazy things with it, it’s just not going to work, no matter how much time you spend rigging and weighting. To achieve what you want, you very well may need to start learning some modelling. Retopo isn’t even all that hard, just tedious, although as I’ve said, I don’t know the best topo for extreme poses, just that the topo I’ve seen frequently thrown around isn’t it.

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You can’t even imagine, how greatfull i am. So i need to learn retopology? Guess key word is the matter, since i’ve google “adding more loops to the model” and i get nothing. So i should dig in that direction, is there’s a good tutorials that you can personally recommend? In case of modelling, man i needed 10 years at least, to create something that good, even if i have existing concept. Well, at least there’s abundance of modelling tutorials, so at least it’s something.
So now i understand, why studios like Illumination Intertainment always use “cartoony” chraracters, they should create games! There’s so much assets they can reuse!

My point ont the rigging information still stands.

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Nobody needs 10 years to learn how to model-- they need 10 years to learn how to model beautifully, maybe :slight_smile: But that’s about the art, not the technical ability.

If you don’t know loop cuts, then you do need to learn some modelling to be able to retopo a model. I believe that BlenderGuru’s doughnut series is a pretty good introduction to modelling (and some rendering as well); a lot of people get started that way. At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYj6e-72RDs . Skip around if he’s talking about things you already know.

After that, I would recommend reading the Blender manual (on mesh editing tools) and learning what they do by experimenting. Learning your tools will make it much easier for you to do what you want.

After that, there are plenty of retopo tutorials (and multiple techniques, some involving addons) that shouldn’t be hard to google. They do expect that you know the basics of modelling.

If you put your back into it, I think you can accomplish all that in a week, not ten years.

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Yeah, there isn’t much resources about rigging, because there are less people that do it than modeling or animation.
Humane Rigging is a really good resource, even if it look simple it explain well the theory , all that can be applied to other cases.
Another really good resource is Stop Staring by Jason Osipa : https://www.amazon.com/Stop-Staring-Facial-Modeling-Animation/dp/0470609907
That cover all the facial rigging, from modeling to animation, it’s a must read !
Mancandy FAQ is quite old, but at that time it teach me a few stuff. I Guess now many things can be simplified because blender as evolved a lot, but it may be interesting to watch.

I just looked a bit at DanPro tutorials and they seems quite nice too.

I don’t think someone would take the time to make an indepth tutorial on how to make an advanced rig character from scratch, because it will take much time. On some project I work on, making a rig from scratch could take more than a month , and it was some cartoon stuff. (I never worked on realistic human character).

Once you know well the basics of bones constraints etc, the best is to study some already made rigs to see how they solve some particular problems and see if you can apply that to your case.
Seeing rigging demos also help, you need to retro-engineer functionalities but again , if you are familiar with the general theory you should be able to come up with your own solutions.

Also, bear in mind that advanced rigs you see on big productions uses advanced techniques (https://vimeo.com/181910645), they have a R&D team that can solve many problems ect… and on small budget productions, many things get cheated because of time constraints : Animators can sometime work around skinning issues, or you can make a shape key to solve a particular case.

All that said, to get more on the issue you mention , you can fix issues around the shoulders or the hips using some shape keys driven by the bones rotations.

What you see with rigging and knowledge around it applies to other fields, like compositing or scripting,
you can find many resources but they tends to cover only a part of the big picture . Because it takes too much time to cover everything. At some point you need to take a few tips from here and there, or come up with your own solutions.

Hope that all this will help you a bit even if it may not be the answer you expected !

Good luck !

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