in this video we'll be introducing basic ideas and concepts used in rigging.
We will also however, be going into detail about each step in separate videos,
rigging is a fundamental step for going from
static models to animated characters without rigging,
you would only be able to move and animate objects as a whole.
But what is rigging exactly?
Well, the broad definition of rigging and CG can be described as
the act of assigning relationships between objects so
that moving one thing will move another.
This can be seen in the very basic example of parenting one cube to another.
For example, by assigning a parent child relationship between these two cubes,
you can move the parent cube and the child cube
will follow but you can also create more complex relationships.
With the help of constraints and armature objects
constraints are powerful and flexible relationships
that can be assigned between two objects
beyond the basic parent child relationship
with constraints.
For example,
you can add a copy location constraint to our cube to copy the location of our light
object while also adding another copy location constraint
to copy the location of our camera object.
This creates a stack of constraints just like modifiers. So stack order matters.
So then you ask what are armatures
in CG. The word armature is just another word for skeleton.
Skeletons in real life are made up of bones which serve
as the foundation of how our bodies move and bend.
Skeletons in CG are also made up of bones and do the same thing
allow me to demonstrate real quick.
You can download this character from the description down below.
So let's say we have a character that looks
like this and you want to start animating it if
you want to move rotate or scale the character only
the whole character will move kind of like a statue
in order to move the character like a character.
You would need to at the very least be able to bend its joints individually.
So let's demonstrate that with the arm real quick.
If we simply add an amateur and go into edit mode,
we will be able to extrude and place our bones within our
mesh according to where we might expect bones in real life.
This includes the upper arm, the forearm
and the hand. For example,
once we're happy with that,
we can go back into object mode and parents
are meshed to the armature object with automatic weights,
weights are how you assign certain verses to certain bones.
And as we can see selecting and transforming the armature
will allow us to deform each arm bone individually.
Except that it doesn't. That's where we introduce pose mode.
Pose mode is the mode where you'll be
able to select and transform each individual bone
to deform your mesh.
These bones can be animated individually and each
have their own rotation and location values.
Now in case you feel like the vertex is assigned to each bone aren't fully accurate,
you might want to adjust the weights
to do this. Simply select the mesh and go into weight paint mode.
This will allow you to paint your weights,
letting you better control how you want the mesh to be deformed.
For extra control, you'll be able to add bone constraints to your bones,
allowing you to form relationships between bones
and objects to make animation easier.
For example, having one bone point to another bone to form a simple controller.
But what's a controller?
Well,
a controller is just a bone that doesn't deform the mesh directly
but rather is used to drive other bones in some way.
Most of the time they exist solely to make it easier
and more intuitive for the animator to use the rig.
We'll go over each of these concepts in separate videos.
So I hope this introduces you to the basic concept
of rigging what it is and how it works.