Rigging

Support Animation and Rigging
#1

Hi There!
I’ve only been “blending” a couple of weeks so I am technically a newbie.

Modelling in Blender has been an enjoyable experience so far, but hey, rigging has not been at all easy! I have tried to rig a character I created, and immediately ran into problems. I’ve tried all sorts of tricks, but have been unsuccesful so far.

I am trying to bend the guy’s arm at the elbow. As you can see in the before/after after pictures, I keep getting an ugly result as a number of polys at the angle overlap. I just cannot obtain a nice, smooth bend, no matter how hard I try.

I would be very happy if anyone out there could offer a suggestion, because I am REALLY stuck.

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/3384/beforeqi0.jpg (BEFORE)

http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/9898/afteruf0.jpg (AFTER)

Thanks a lot for your kind help!

Happy Blending to all of you. :wink:

#2

yep rigging is harder than you think it should be

you can solve deformation problems with shape keys (pretty advanced for a newbie)

here is a link to a fantastic tute
http://kokcito.tk/tut/rig1.html

you may have found the wiki tutorial page
but if you haven’t :slight_smile:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials/Links

the thing to remember is what it looks like in the final render
if you can’t notice geometry overlapping and intersecting (maybe the camera isn’t that close on the joint) - then it isn’t a problem if the model doesn’t behave the way things do in the real world

(of course this might not be relevant to the model you are working on now - but it might save you some time in the future)

#3

There is a nice tutorial here

#4

Thanks guys. I’ll see what I can do… :slight_smile:

#5

I’ve been trying to follow the suggested tutorial. At one point, the author says that the “weights have been smoothed”. How is this achieved?

Thanks a lot.

-Mark

#6

sorry for the breif answer but I am running late

here a a pic from one of the other tutorials that shows a smoothed joint
it means the transition from 100% influence(red) to 0%(Blue) is gradual
hopefully the pic will explain

http://kokcito.tk/rvk/weights.jpg

this is done with weight painting the vertex groups

have a play around with it and if you get stuck - just ask