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Course

Advanced Rigging
feed Course Overview
Rigging a Character keyboard_arrow_down
  1. 02

    Re-targeting the body

  2. 03

    Re-targeting the face

  3. 04

    Baking the rig

  4. 05

    The mesh deform cage

  5. 06

    Refining cage deformation

  6. 07

    Adding shapekeys to the cage

  7. 08

    Weight painting the hands

  8. 09

    Weight painting the face

  9. 10

    Rigging extra objects

  10. 11

    Body parameters

  11. 12

    Understanding facial actions

  12. 13

    Finishing facial actions

Timelapse keyboard_arrow_down
  1. 01

    Vincent Timelapse 01

    Free
  2. 02

    Vincent Timelapse 02

    Free
Posing Vincent keyboard_arrow_down
  1. insert_drive_file Vincent drunk pose visibility_off
  2. 02

    Posing Vincent

    Free
Documentation keyboard_arrow_down
  1. insert_drive_file BlenRig_5_Quick_Introduction_Guide.pdf visibility_off
Rig keyboard_arrow_down
  1. insert_drive_file BlenRig 5 for Blender 2.8 (V1.04) visibility_off
  2. insert_drive_file BlenRig 5 for Blender 2.7x (V1.02) visibility_off

Course

Advanced Rigging
Rigging a Character keyboard_arrow_down
  1. 02

    Re-targeting the body

  2. 03

    Re-targeting the face

  3. 04

    Baking the rig

  4. 05

    The mesh deform cage

  5. 06

    Refining cage deformation

  6. 07

    Adding shapekeys to the cage

  7. 08

    Weight painting the hands

  8. 09

    Weight painting the face

  9. 10

    Rigging extra objects

  10. 11

    Body parameters

  11. 12

    Understanding facial actions

  12. 13

    Finishing facial actions

Timelapse keyboard_arrow_down
  1. 01

    Vincent Timelapse 01

    Free
  2. 02

    Vincent Timelapse 02

    Free
Posing Vincent keyboard_arrow_down
  1. insert_drive_file Vincent drunk pose
  2. 02

    Posing Vincent

    Free
Documentation keyboard_arrow_down
  1. insert_drive_file BlenRig_5_Quick_Introduction_Guide.pdf
Rig keyboard_arrow_down
  1. insert_drive_file BlenRig 5 for Blender 2.8 (V1.04) Free
  2. insert_drive_file BlenRig 5 for Blender 2.7x (V1.02) Free

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Rigging a Character

Refining cage deformation

March 23rd, 2016

info License: CC-BY
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Juan Pablo Bouza
Juan Pablo Bouza Publisher

REFINING CAGE DEFORMATION

Learn various techniques for fine tuning the deformation of the Mesh Deform Cage. Also learn how to add drivers to the models in order to control the Subdivision level from one single property in the BlenRig Panel.

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21 comments

stephen thomas
stephen thomas May 25th, 2016

Why do you set up drivers for subsurf when you can control the subsurf of the whole scene from Scene/Simplify? Is there a practical difference between the two?

Juan Pablo Bouza
Juan Pablo Bouza May 25th, 2016

Hi @stephen thomas:

Just to have more individual control. If you have many objects with subsurf in a scene and you just want to check the facial expressions of one character with subsurf on, it is the way to do it. Otherwise all objects in the scene would have subsurf on and playback speed would become impossible.

I don't know, you could also put different objects in different layers to solve this, it's up to you actually ;)

You are free not to do it this way anyway!! :D

Bone-Studio
Bone-Studio March 23rd, 2016

This rig is really cool Juan Pablo.

Can you use DeltaMush with BlendRig to improve deformation and volume preservation?

Cheers and congrats.

Juan Pablo Bouza
Juan Pablo Bouza March 24th, 2016

Hi @juangea!

Yes, of course you can, although I wouldn't recommend to just throw the corrective smooth modifier to the model, as it gives jumpy results if the original deformation is too bad and intersecting. So, what I usually do is to create a vertex group for the corrective smooth, and apply it only in specific areas.

With BlenRIg, the body deformation is very good in most cases, so I usually use a little bit of corrective smooth just in the face.

I'll cover a bit about that in the face chapters! See you!

Show more replies
Bone-Studio
Bone-Studio March 25th, 2016

@Juan Pablo Bouza: Awesome :)

Thanks!

Ben Muensterman
Ben Muensterman May 12th, 2016

When I select the IK Hand bone, I am only able to rotate on the x-axis. When I try to move with "g", nothing happens. Do I need to switch the arm between IK and FK? How can I do this?

Juan Pablo Bouza
Juan Pablo Bouza May 13th, 2016

Hi @Ben Muensterman:

You sure you turned off the reporportion mode??

Show more replies
Ben Muensterman
Ben Muensterman May 13th, 2016

@Juan Pablo Bouza: Thank you for replying so quickly. I did have reporportion mode turned off. If I turn it on and back off again, the hands will move freely. However, the shoulders are then given a new default position that is not what I intended. Maybe a mistake I made somewhere earlier in the process?

Juan Pablo Bouza
Juan Pablo Bouza May 13th, 2016

@Ben Muensterman:

Mmmmmm, I should see the file... wanna send it to jpbouza gmail?

Juan Pablo Bouza
Juan Pablo Bouza May 13th, 2016

@Ben Muensterman:

So, you turned repoportion mode on, fit the rig and then baked the mdef cage and the armature? After baking the armature, did you go into Edit mode and run the fix joints and calc roll operators?

Ben Muensterman
Ben Muensterman May 13th, 2016

@Juan Pablo Bouza: I sent an email with the .blend file. Yes, I have been following the videos, and I am pretty sure I ran both operators.

Juan Pablo Bouza
Juan Pablo Bouza May 13th, 2016

@Ben Muensterman:

File corrected and mailed! :)

Ben Muensterman
Ben Muensterman May 13th, 2016

@Juan Pablo Bouza: BlenRig is wonderful so far, and you have really gone above and beyond with helping me out. Thanks so much!

Juan Pablo Bouza
Juan Pablo Bouza May 13th, 2016

@Ben Muensterman:

No problem! :) Let me know if you find yourself in trouble again!

kevin ferrand
kevin ferrand May 16th, 2016

hi, sorry for my english in advance, I have a problem with the fk controlers, they don't work at all, only ik work, i switch to IK/FK mode in the T menu but nothing change, even if i open a new file with no character rigging. It seems to me that i process like you. can you help me please?

kevin ferrand
kevin ferrand May 16th, 2016

it seems that's a problem with "copy transform constraints" when i switch off the bones that i want to move in fk, that work... maybe It miss a drivers to control that.

Juan Pablo Bouza
Juan Pablo Bouza May 16th, 2016

Hi @kevin ferrand:

Check if you have the option called "Auto run python scripts" in the blender preferences - file

Show more replies
kevin ferrand
kevin ferrand May 16th, 2016

@Juan Pablo Bouza: thank you very much, it was the problem, that's work. and thank for this very good addons.

Robert Wesseling
Robert Wesseling May 24th, 2017

Hi, not sure if you are still active here, but in my case I want to use automatic weighting for (at least) the fingers. I cannot figure out how and what bones I have to select. I got the error message all the time "Bone Heat Weighting: failed to find solution for one or more bones" while the bones in beautifully in the fingers.

Update: Ahh, I found out that I had to delete doubles, and remove mesh not connected.

Pascal Ferrère
Pascal Ferrère Oct. 12th, 2017

Hi Juan,

First thanks a lot, this plugin is really great. I do have a question though.

I made a rig using the plugin and following your tutorial, overall everything works great except for the neck of my character. When I try to rotate 'neck_fk_ctrl' (just like you do in the video) nothing happens. It seems like the neck controls on my character are locked or not being considered. Am I missing something? Any tip for me?

Thanks. Pascal

SDCHANG
SDCHANG May 3rd, 2019

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