Hi
I Need to know how to Rig and Animate my Whirlwind. I have very basic skill of animation and not skills at all with rigging.
Here is just a pic so you know what I have to rig and animate.
Note Model is not fully finished yet.
Ok I have looked some tuts online and still have no idea on how to get this working. Any advice?
In this case, describing how to rig this would be just about as easy as describing how to preform open heart surgery… and probably why you haven’t gotten any replies - it’s not any easy subject.
A couple of tips to start you off on learning to rig, don’t look for just rigging tutorials, look specifically for mechanical rigging tutorials. Learning how to create a good foot rig for a biped will do you no good, for example. I think there is one on blender cookie for rigging a backhoe arm, take a look at it.
Here’s two I made for two different types of machines:
Both videos have 2 things in common - 1st all the meshes that will be animated are separate mesh objects and those objects are parented to bones to control them. 2nd, the bones are placed at the pivot points for each object.
Identify what you want to animate and start with the simplest part and work with that first to get the hang of what you are doing. Good starting points might be the side hatch or the hatch on the top by the smaller turret thingy. In both cases (either hatch) you’ll only need one bone, work on those and expirement with posing the bones so the hatches move, then work your way up from there. Maybe tackle the smaller turret/gun by the top hatch next.
When you get some of it working, or maybe only half working, then come back and you can post a more specific question (with pictures & example .blends if needed) and you will probably receive more responses and better help than you have so far…
Randy