Animation. Ohh the frustration.

[sarge]

I am truly tearing my hair out over this one.

I am afraid my problem is the way I initially created the modeled the character. But I also am clueless as to how to change it.

I am posting pictures of my character. Please be kind and don't rag on it to hard. I am aware it is awful. But I'm new to modeling and doing my best.

I initially modeled my character standing straight up with both arms extended. And I added the armatures.



I went through assigning vertexes and such. Now all I am trying to do is lower his arm and make it look natural, and this so far is the best I can come up with.



Does anyone know of any good animation tutorials that specifically discuss the best ways to attach vertexes to armatures.

I'm afraid my initial model may have been done in such a way that I may not be able to make it look realistic.

ANY pointers would be greatly appreciated!

[NeOmega]

try making the bones longer... your biggest problem I see is you point of pivot for your vertices are too close to the torso... if you move your shoulder joints out further...

[PBE Joshua]

Agreed, bring the shoulder's joint further away from the center of the body. Also you might need to weight more carefully.

[scarpelius]

Read this http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthr ... n+modeling
It will help you to understand how to corectly model the arm body joint.

[Sycle]

The bone placement and topology look okay, the problem is that you're using rigid weighting.

The vertexes along the shoulder need to be influenced by multiple bones/joints so you can get even deformation. Without that, you'll always get that sheering effect.

[sarge]

Thanks, I am going to go through that tutorial shortly.

I also tried moving the pivot point farther from the torso, and it did help a bit. But to make it a bit better I also moved the mesh just below the arm in, so that when the arm moved, the mesh didnt change shape so much.

This made a big difference moving the arm down, but once I moved the arm above shoulder level, It began to look ridiculous again.

Sycle, do you mean that I should be assigning those vertexes to more then one bone? Or that I should add additional bones?

I will look more closely at weighting.

I'm just a total noobie and artisticly challenged to begin with.

But I'm determined!

Thanks for the pointers!

[nuclearbum]

well, first issue, you're body is a little odd with how far it bulges out, which can be causing things to look a bit odd. i'd divide the torso side and squeeze it in a little more. you're trying to solve that problem by moving the arm out further, but that makes the shoulder extra long and so another little error becomes more apparent when moving the arm up. this error is that our arms can't move that much upwards from your current pose (try moving your arm without moving your shoulder). So as you move your arm up, you'll start to see that it effects more than just that single bone movement. also keep in mind balance, so we will tend to shift a little as the arm moves up.

here's a little mini example.
only the arm moving
the arm, clavical and upper spine moving.