Hey there. Just curious, but can you make an object in Blender, say a fork or leg bone, act as an actual rigging bone?
The reason is I am making a skeleton and was just curious if it can be done instead of making the individual object bones and then creating a rigging bone for each one of the couple hundred of them.
Thanks for your time.
if i am reading your post right then yes i think you can, once you have created a bone you can use the options while in pose mode under armature vistuliastion to make an already existing object be used as that bone. (i think i have never done it myself)
i think there is a more in depth way to do it on the wiki pages but not sure where. if you have truble finding it post back.
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sorry i think it might be just under armature bones panel in the spot which says BO (next to multi button) i think you just put the name of the object in there, sorry if i have confused you.
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yep thats the way to do it. sorry about the mess up top just got a bit conffused. but i have just tried it out and as long as you put the exact name of the object you want the bone to look like in th OB box then it will use that objects shape as the bones draw type.
hope this long post has helped if not post back.
Hmm. I found out how to make bones, but I am a bit confused. There are two boxes in the panels: OB in the Links and Materials panel and BO in the Armature Bones panel. Which box is the one I put the object name in?
I tried to put the object name into the OB box, but it appends “.001” to it.
Doing this I still have to make a rigging bone for every skeletal bone I make. I was looking for a way to make the object itself a bone and NOT have to make a rigging bone for each one. Sort of like give the object an attribute to act like a bone. I tried what you said and it doesn’t seem to work. I have a huge Octahedral rigging bone in the middle of each of my bones and they do not take the shape of my objects.
Okee. I found out how to make the bone the same shape as my Skeletal Bones and I had a joy figuring out how the bones are oriented when it is created. I figured out I could creat the bone in the same plane and object center and then simply Ctrl Rotate it to the exact position.
By this time I figure I can not make the object itself a bone, but make a bone the same shape as the object. I guess I will have to live with having about 200 Skeletal Bones as well as about 200 Rigging Bones.
I am not sure what that will do to the PC when render time comes, but at least it looks correct.
One more thing. How on Earth do I figure out where the head and tail are on a rigging bone that is made to look like an object?
I see no spheres that show the head and tail like when I first created the bone.
sorry my friend but i got conffussed just telling you how to do it.
i dont know if this will work so dont blame me if it does’nt but if you can keep the objects on one layer and your bones on another then maybe you will be able to see the defult bones again.
i will try and have a play with it for you ill post back if i work it out.
sorry i could not be of more help.
It is okee. I found out how to make the bones look like the skeletal bones and how to relocate the bones to keep the joints where I need them. I just have to be careful that when I create the skeletal bones to create the rigging bones the right way at the same time.
I just wish that Objects in Blender can be given an attribute so they act as bones with certain vertex groups that can be assigned as the head and tail. I think that would be a very nice feature of Blender. Then we can rig a character or some other mobile entity without having to make a bone for each piece. It is going to take me alot of time to model an entire articulated skeleton PLUS a matching number of rigging bones for each and every skeletal bone and cartilage joint.
I thank you for the help, my friend.