character rigs are definitely the most common type of rig.
So in this video we'll be going over how to rig this character mesh.
You can download this base mesh in the description down below.
So to start things off, if we want to create a humanoid skeleton for this character,
we'll have to think about what bones we need to reform him. Let's see.
We would need thighs, shins, feet,
upper arms, forearms, heads ahead bone, several spine bones,
maybe, maybe collarbones.
This seems like a lot to keep track of if we're doing it from scratch,
luckily blender provides a basic humanoid skeleton for you already.
Let's figure out how to access it
normally, when you add an armature object from the AD menu,
the only choice you have is the single bone that spawns. When you click it.
However, we can turn on a native ad on
that lets us add an armature like usual,
but gives us the option to have the armature come as a pre made based human skeleton
to do this, all we have to do is go to edit
preferences
add ons.
From here, we can go to the search bar and search rig If I
rick if I is one of blenders, auto rigging systems
and can be very powerful,
but we'll get into that later
for now. We want to simply turn on red. If I
feel free to read up on the documentation of any
add on by clicking its respective documentation button here,
let's close out of our preferences window and try again to add an armature object
this time, you'll notice that we have an additional menu when selecting armature.
Feel free to try all of these out because they're pretty cool.
However for our purposes since our character is a human,
we're going to be using the human metal rig.
Our next step is to simply match the joints
with how we want the character mesh to bend.
In other words,
elbows should match with elbows and hands should match with hands et cetera.
For this will need to go into edit mode.
Once in edit mode,
we're going to want to first match the size of our character
right now it's a bit big. So let's scale it down a bit.
But when we do that it's a bit disappointing to have the rig
move up off the ground when it was already at perfect floor level.
So we can simply change our pivot from median 23 D cursor.
Hockey users can press the period key and select it from the pie menu.
Now when we scale we can have the feet stay in place while the rig gets shorter.
Just what we wanted.
If this isn't working for you,
make sure your three D. Cursor is in your world origin,
you can change that by hitting shift S.
And selecting cursor to world origin in the pie menu,
let's just scale it down until our skeleton fits inside of our character.
I typically use the collarbones as reference.
We also have a bunch of facial bones that
we won't really need for our basic character.
So let's delete them
but which ones can we delete and which ones do we need?
Truthfully the only bone you'll need here is the head.
So let's just select everything here with the box
select tool and then de select the head bone
Which is actually labeled spine.006.
Then delete all the facial bones at once.
From here our arms are clearly not matching.
So I'm going to select the bones and move them where they belong.
But you might find this a bit tedious to do for the whole body
luckily however we only need to do it for half the body
to mirror edits you make on the bones on one side of your character.
On two bones on the other side,
simply open the right hand side menu and go to tool
under here. You'll see options where you'll be able to enable X. Axis mirror.
Now whenever you move a bone on the left side
the right side will follow.
Let's continue matching our rig to our mesh
For this. It might be easier to turn your pivot point back from three d. cursor
to median point.
The most important thing about matching a rig to your
mesh is that the elbows and other similar joints match
for the spine
will simply make sure that it follows the
general location of where a real spine would be
and for the head we just need to make sure the
pivot point is good and it fills the whole head.
The collar bones should also not be too long or too short.
So adjust accordingly.
Now our character has no fingers except for the thumb.
So we can go ahead and get rid of all the fingers.
Except for the thumb, the index finger and the pinky.
Oh and technically if your character is male
you can delete the breast bones if you like
or you can leave them in if you plan to use them in some way
up to you.
But if you do make sure those have proper placement as well.
Now that we've done all of that
lets parents are character mesh to our rig.
We can do this by going back into object mode,
selecting our mesh. Then shift selecting our armature
from here we can right click and go down to parent
hockey. Users can still press control P.
For the same menu
from this sub menu you'll notice a section labeled armature deform
under which we can select with automatic weights
from there. We can select our armature and go into pose mode.
This will allow us to test the rig and see
if the mesh is following the bones as intended.
Now if you're like me and you forgot the parent the eyes to the armature as well.
Just selected
shift select the armature and parented in the same way
it looks pretty good
if there are any issues with the deformation,
make sure to correct the weights.
By editing the vertex groups of the character mesh.
You can learn more about how to do this in the separate vertex groups video.
Now some of you might be wondering why it's called a meta rig.
This seems to imply that it's sort of an in between step for something else.
Well, while the rig if I add on does provide these metrics for easy.
Humanoid skeleton rigging.
That's not all it does.
In fact,
its main purpose is to automatically generate all
the advanced rigging features an animator might need
including I. K.
F. K.
Custom bone shapes and more
so while we can use the metric as an actual rig. Just like we did earlier.
If you wanted to use the metric for generating a new advanced rig instead,
there's just one extra step we need to do
to go over the steps from the beginning again,
simply add the human metal rig. Or any redefined rhetoric actually to your scene.
Then adjust the joints In edit mode to match your character.
Making sure not to delete any vital bones.
If you were to the rig, a five generation would not work.
You might be asking,
how do I know if it's a vital bone?
Well, if you're unsure. Just reference the basic human rhetoric,
any bones in this rig safe for the breast
bones are typically essential for generating a rig.
If I rig.
Now, instead of parenting your mesh to the armature,
simply go into the armature data tab denoted by this green stick figure icon
in the Properties editor
here. If you scroll down,
you should see a large generate button,
click this and wait until it's done
and there we go. You have just generated an advanced rig by rig with constraints,
custom bone shapes and other advanced tools.
All customized to fit your characters, shape and size
from here, you can just select your character mesh
and shift,
select your new rig if I armature and parent your mesh to your rig as you did before.
This rig is quite powerful.
However,
if you want to learn how to set up inverse cinematics or bone layers yourself,
we will address these in separate videos.
I hope this video gives you a good
understanding of how character rigging works in blender.