blender 3d rigging tutorials

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shadowfeign
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blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by shadowfeign »

well, I just started working on a couple tutorials for rigging in blender. I'm still fairly new to blender, and thought I'd get you guys' opinion on what I have so far. currently I've just got a couple videos on rigging the legs and feet, but I hope to complete the entire body. I'm trying to focus on rigging this in a game perspective, where everything is parented without control objects in the middle getting in the way of a simple hierarchy needed for games.

basic bones of the leg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8FmSBgf0UA
reverse foot rig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X7CHf6-Nfk
main foot control:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RETL_O9YvQg
constraints for foot control: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVVPkCRMP94

quick video on low poly joints: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWlqYGjnCEU
Last edited by shadowfeign on Fri Aug 28, 2009 9:46 am, edited 3 times in total.
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LiMuBei
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by LiMuBei »

Good tutorials! Nice idea to link the helpers and IK controls via emptys. I'm anticipating part 3!
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by jacmoe »

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shadowfeign
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by shadowfeign »

I should be done with tutorial 3 fairly soon. also gonna add a quick 2.5 though, I messed up the parenting a tiny bit(the control for the toes won't work with its current parenting) the foot roll itself works fine, but moving the toe just causes the ik goal to rotate, lol.
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shadowfeign
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by shadowfeign »

ok, I just updated the original post with the third video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RETL_O9YvQg

this one goes over creating the main foot control and setting up the action that I'll use in an action constraint in the next video.

video 4 will come out in the next couple days, I just need to edit it. I recorded them both together and was originally hoping to have them as one video, but it came out to 24 minutes so I had to split it up. video 4 I link the control object to the skeleton and action created in vid 3. after that is done, the only two things that need done on the leg are the knee, and toes!

Edit: video 4 is now out - constraints for foot control: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVVPkCRMP94
shadowking97
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by shadowking97 »

I have a few notes on my blog about setting up bones to help prevent distortion (i always had that problem, and with it happening even slightly my what I believe to be OCD cringes at it...) If you want you can look at it and use it in your tutorials if its good enough... http://deathbringergame.blogspot.com/20 ... ation.html
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by shadowfeign »

I seem to see this type of solution a lot with blender, and think its a bit overused. most people seem to use it to get around properly skinning and weighting verts, which I admit is a very difficult process.but autoweighting options should never be an end result, only a starting place. I wasn't planning on doing anything about weighting for a long time though quite honestly, which would give me a good chance to take a better look at the fine details of what works and why. Low poly characters though have their own pluses and minuses. perhaps the biggest issue is that you not only have to weight correctly, you need to model it correctly as well. that being said, I think I'll change gears for a tiny bit, and post a little low poly skinning modeling video. I'll be just showing the end result and theory, so it will be in max, but since there will be nothing program specific I don't think it will make a difference.

that being said. there are two things I don't like with this solution when it comes to games. 1) you are adding more nodes in your skeletal hierarchy, not sure if this is still a major issue or not anymore though. and 2) games also don't like scaling bones. so any stretchy bones should be kept to rig controls and helpers and not in the way of skinning.

that being said. here are some things that I'll go over in the video(which will be much easier to see) however I'm gonna test a couple things to see if I can get better results by moving things around a bit further.

currently the option looks like this.... bone runs down the middle of the finger(this may change if I find it works better at the top or bottom) ok, lets look at vertex placement first. your top vertex should be placed at a 45 degree angle toward the tip of the finger the bottom joint should be placed at a 45 degree angle in the opposite direction. this puts the verts in the correct place for the final pose. now as for weighting. with such minimal geometry the weighting will go 100% to the parent if you have multiple polys for the joint, you'll have most of the verts weighted to the parent bone in the joint, then you'll leave the last row 100% weighted to the child to keep thickness correct.

weighting like this should give you plenty of control for fingers without the extra bones. it will fall apart moving much past a 90degree bend, however it holds up well enough to what well enough to what the hand is actually capable of. and for the knee or elbow, you'll have a little extra geometry anyway

EDIT:Finished the video so its a little clearer what I'm talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWlqYGjnCEU
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by shadowking97 »

Thanks for the info, I credited you and put a link to your video in my blog. Im going to start using that method for my characters fingers, but however for knees and elbows I will still see If i can use my method that my ocd perfectionism is screaming at me to do.
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ModelTheMasses
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by ModelTheMasses »

quote="shadowfeign"well, I just started working on a couple tutorials for rigging in blender within our new mobile app platform and YouTube downloader application. I'm still fairly new to blender, and thought I'd get you guys' opinion on what I have so far. currently I've just got a couple videos on rigging the legs and feet, but I hope to complete the entire body. I'm trying to focus on rigging this in a game perspective, where everything is parented without control objects in the middle getting in the way of a simple hierarchy needed for games.

basic bones of the leg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8FmSBgf0UA
reverse foot rig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X7CHf6-Nfk
main foot control:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RETL_O9YvQg
constraints for foot control: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVVPkCRMP94

quick video on low poly joints: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWlqYGjnCEU

The last video working with the joints has been the most useful to me for sure. Creating the aspect of movement has been one of my major weaknesses when it comes to character creation. i have some work to do, but this is a nice starting place.
Last edited by ModelTheMasses on Tue Feb 14, 2012 1:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
OSasuke
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by OSasuke »

Thanks for this videos.
But if you can make one for the weight painting it will be very helpfull :D
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shadowfeign
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by shadowfeign »

man, I need to get back to doing these videos. Its been on the backburner way too long. would give me a reason to learn python too, lol.
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by CoreDumped »

http://www.blendercookie.com/

loads of high quality free vid tutorials. I was a complete noob in blender a while back. learnt most of the stuff from there. great site
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by BTolputt »

I've mentioned this before in similar threads (I'm pretty sure I have anyway), but a good thing to look at if you are not interested in having to play around with blender constraints and the like is the "Rigify" addon deployed with the latest Blender 2.5x versions. I worked briefly with the author (Nathan Vegdahl) to get some game-specific changes in there and it saves ALOT of time. Simply add rigify meta-rigs to your armature, scale & position them to match the mesh, then run the rigify process. You get a rig with foot-roll, IK chains, FK/IK blender & snapping, etc pretty much "out of the box". Of course, anything over the rubbery default weight painting provided is something you do yourself.

There is another rig that is pretty awesome, BlenRig 4 which doesn't require weight-painting, but is hence next to useless for gaming. If, however, someone gets around to implementing this paper, one could have their weight-painting-free cake and eat it too :)
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by dragutux »

i'm posting there because i am really looking forward to see if anyone known an exporter (or a procedure
not requiring me to code my own exporter) to export the animations from blender 2.5*..

If anyone has info about that.. well pm me please
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by OgreNub »

There is an exporter already written for 2.5x, and it works really well.

http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=61485
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by jacmoe »

shadowfeign wrote:man, I need to get back to doing these videos. Its been on the backburner way too long. would give me a reason to learn python too, lol.
Yes, please! :)
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by hallucinogen »

CoreDumped wrote:http://www.blendercookie.com/

loads of high quality free vid tutorials. I was a complete noob in blender a while back. learnt most of the stuff from there. great site
pretty good stuff, learned a lot about blender here.

recommended.
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by droid7 »

how export riging animation on blender export to ogre..?
please make a tutorial but everyone else need this tutorial...
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Re: blender 3d rigging tutorials

Post by Gaiha »

**OGRE NEWBIE**

I have been using Blender for a few years now, and the latest update 2.76 since they released it ... I would highly recommend VscorpionC 's U-Tube Channel. She has created a number of video tutorials for both Blender and MakeHuman. The Blender to Ogre Exporter is also very easily installed. Not sure yet how well the exporter will work with exporting into an Ogre V2.1 Project... But I will most certainly let you know when I find out.

I found out the hard way, that rigging can be very tedious, and while I have done it, I don't do it anymore. Instead, I use the Blender "Rigify" add-on, which works exactly the way it needs to, although depending on the rig you choose and the type of skinned model you are using, you may need to do some clean-up, so everything works like it is supposed to. I also create all my human models using MakeHuman, either in stand alone mode or within Blender, and they have an excellent set of default rigs that you can apply. ... the only thing left to do after that, is be sure to set your Model and Rig to a T-Pose before you export. Doing this simple step ensures you have a proper default pose, should you decide to use any other 3D suites like Maya, Poser or Daz (I use all three in addition to Blender).

Rigging Non-Human models is a different story, but the basic principles contained in shadowfeign's Tutorials all apply. The only difference is the shape of the model you're using and the rig you will use... whether it is a biped, quadruped, tetrapod, etc... You can even rig then animate inanimate objects (like a motorbike or an automobile for example), the rigging principles remain the same. The REALLY kewl thing once you've rigged a model and animated it... you can easily create/modify/add any number of movements to that rigged model. Pretty Kewl stuff... Having it render in Real Time, using OGRE would be awesome!

I hope this info is useful... Smoochies!
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