In this tutorial, I go over a basic-to-intermediate rig for the alien character. The rig covers only the body; I went over the facial rig in a previous tutorial. I show how to do the full setup on the left half (creating and placing bones, and also applying constraints), and copy it over to the right side for a perfectly symmetrical rig. Most of the features in 2.5 are the same, however, the keyboard shortcuts and a few menu items have been moved around, but I show you where they are.
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55 Comments
I will get to watching your ever clear tutorial on this one but have to congratulate you on the title for the tutorial. Sounds like it could be the title of a ‘Sting’ song – “Rigging and Alien in New York” – just made me chuckle
very good this tuto … so I have a question, why you do not use a controller of the elbow?
most models use this system, I think it gets more resources and easier to animate the character, you could show how you can add a controller of the elbow?
again congratulations on video tuto
Dave just a little tip. When you first loaded your alien scene there was no need to append your file. when you open a blend file from 2.49 there is a little check box which you can uncheck called load ui.Unchecking this box will allow you to keep the blender 2.5 layout.
thanks chris. guess i need to open my eyes a bit
Hi! Your tutorials are great
. This one is great, but i can not find “inherit rotation” in blender 2.49. do you know where it is?
Thanks, really nice tutorial David
I’ve learned a lot of thing in this tutorial as the facial rig but in “the new way”.
Sounds like you’ll love the final 2.5’s features of animating.
I’m waiting the next one
Another awesome tutorial David
Although, I’m trying to do an animation and a problem that I’m having is making a realistic environment. Can you make a tutorial on that?
i made one for my youtube channel a couple of weeks ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAaCz10WLDg
Cool tutorial. It’s nice to discover rigging with 2.5. Looking forward to the next tut. Thanks.
Bernard
Awesome tutorial David, very good explanation !! Thanks blendercookie.
Wow, amazing tutorial! If only I’d known about the automatic weights sooner, though. xD I’m really looking forward to the actions constraint segment as well! Also, I’m not sure how far you want to take this, but is there any chance we’ll see you make a walk cycle for the li’l green fella? =) And as always, I am left with a question or two.
When you had the chainlength on the forearm set to 3, would it have been possible to limit the influence of the IK-chain on the shoulder blade, without affecting the influence of the first 2 chain-parts?
Also, is there a specific reason you placed the Subsurf on top of the modifier stack? =)
Thanks,
Patrick
yeah, i’ll be doing a walk cycle, and some basic animations along with it.
to answer your questions:
1. i’m not aware of a way to edit the influence on the individual bones in the chain; not to say there’s NOT a way, i just don’t know of it.
2. when modeling, subsurf is usually one of the first things i apply (aside from the mirror), so that’s just the chronological order it was placed in
Cool, I can’t wait. =) Thanks for your answers as well, I’ll go look into the bone influence thing sometime soon. =P
Nice tutorial, I’m really loving this Alien series!
I took a time to found the X-mirror too
This has been the most detailed tutorial I’ve seen on body rigging so far and I enjoyed it very much although some parts of it were a bit hard to get a grasp of for me but that’s just because I’ve never really looked into animation too much yet. Thumbs up for the alien series and looking forward to the next part. Thanks David.
Hey David, Thanks alot for this rigging tutorial. i’m just getting into rigging and this was just perfect.
I just submitted my comment, and now I have to restart the video. Maybe this should be taken into consideration for the site =). or not.
wait tutorial Alien Walking
Thanks
Great tut bud, in the begining you had the “2.49 interface problem” instead of appending the file, you can open it, and at the left there is a Load UI check… uncheck it. SHAZAAAAM!
Can you make this video public on Vimeo? I always see “The creator of this video has not given you permission to embed it on this domain” when I try to watch it directly on this page, so I have to watch it on Vimeo.
Ooops – done.
Hi! nice tutorial
You can actualy see the individual bone axis but not in object mode (in the object mode you can see the axis of the object wich I think it’s the dot not the actual bones) in blender 2.49 is in “editing mode” – F9 // in the buttons menu or window // and in 2.5 I think it’s in Object data (under where you have changed to b-bone).
P.S. : I am rather new to blender … do you know how can I change the individual bone axis so that the Y axis would be Z ? When you CTRL + R(Set Roll) you rotate the bone on it’s Y axis (at least in 2.49) but I need that axis to be Z .
Some other thing (sorry for 2 comments one after the other but I haven’t watched the entire video when i wrote the other ) if you want to deselect something with box selection (B) I think you need to press Middle Mouse and not Alt. Or I suppose you could have deselcted all (A) and reselect the bones you need (I am talking about the head bone that got selected).
Great tutorial!
I just got one problem. when i applied the automatic weights the eyeball bone moved the mouth ¿Is there a way to fix that?
I’ll answer to myself, what i had to do was use the weight paint to fix my problem.
This is my very first time modleing and rigging a character all is going well but the only problem the mesh doesnt deform well on the left hand compared to the left and the rest of the body.
my God, i thought you were going to chip in with some decisive insght at the end there, not leave it with ‘we leave it to you to decide’.
very good this tuto … so I have a question, why you do not use a controller of the elbow?
most models use this system, I think it gets more resources and easier to animate the character, you could show how you can add a controller of the elbow?
again congratulations on video tuto
Hello Wes. Thanks for exiting tutorials.
I try to rig up my own character with your alien-rigging-tutorial at my 2.50Alpha 2. There is 2 thing I dont understand.
You say T.Bone in Pose Mode. Deforme- Curved Bones 4. Yes I have, but my bones ar twisted yours ar smooth????
You say. Scale up Head bone in Edit Mode. Yes I have, but my bone still small???
Can you advise me
Tanks in advance. http://i1023.photobucket.com/albums/af353/Spender19/Skrmavbild2010-03-25kl003643.png
@Spender
Try to clear the rotation (Alt + R)
Thank you for the tutorial!
Just a tiny question: Why did you change the display from Octahedral to B-Bone??… do you like it better that way or is there a practical reason? (or both lol)
Thanks?
Wow… very cool… I have avoided Blender up until now because I was always afraid of the lack of Character Animation tools… but having usde Lightwave and XSI foundation until receint times… your above video has convenced me to give Blender a good solid try…
Thanks for the tut…
Hi, I love your tutorials, I enjoyed the 2.5 Alien creation one as well. I am not being sarcastic, I find your small mumblings humorous and I like how you threw in / used the sculpt tool and proportional editing. I was wondering however, in future videos, or past ones, if you could make either text based versions or CC “Closed Captions” on the videos for the hearing impaired. I would like to leave a note to all of Blender Cookie, because I would like to teach my mother who is deaf and very interested in Blender, but many of the tutorials I watch she may not be able to understand or hear.
If you cannot I understand, keep up the great work and hope to see more soon.
Excellent tutorial! Very informative.
I have a follow up question: I am rigging a character (humanoid) that is split into multiple meshes (head, shirt, pants, etc.). Should I just select all of the meshes and bind them to the single armature, or is there a better method that you would suggest?
and yet another reason to add as to why blendercookie is one of the best cg resources online. I can’t thank enough for these wonderful tutorials. Next paycheck I’ll definitely be a citizen. Keep up the good work guys!
Very nice tutorial but i got a problem. When i check the “X Axis Mirror” box and do it the same way as you “Strg-R” to clear the other side it clears it but when i switch over to pose mode it’s still rotated in some other ways (in edit mode it’s perfect)
in 2.5 alpha 2 (build 28400) when you press alt s nothing happens in b-bone mode
Try “Alt-Gr-S”
Thanks for helping
Hey, thanks for the tutorial.
I’m on a Mac and using 2.5 alpha 2, and alt-s does nothing for me as well.
Since I’m learning Blender, I can’t find a way around this either…
Any help?
very good this tuto … so I have a question, why you do not use a controller of the elbow?
most models use this system, I think it gets more resources and easier to animate the character, you could show how you can add a controller of the elbow? is very impotant to model?
again congratulations on video tuto
thanks David, i noticed there is actully a way that you can turn on the axis thingy. go to the Object Data screen and there is a Axis Check mark you can turn on !
Party Hearty! You have NO IDEA how much this has helped me out! Thank you so much! Keep up the truly amazing work!
the axis you were talking about in the thumb rigging is there. on top of the animation bar at the bottom in the middle there is that x y z icon that says global next to it click on the icon and it will turn on.
I followed your tutorial with a character of mine and it was great! I only had 1 problem though. Though it might be because this is my 1st rigging, I think its because of the version of Blender I am using. I used 2.49b, and when I link the armature and the mesh the mesh gets all messed up when I pose my guy. At 47:16 where you get that menu, the 2.49b menu gives me different options and I chose from heat. If you could help me that’d be great. I hope i can successfully finish my first full rig. Thanks!
why when I parent alien to bones, alien is whole deformed.
Hi, just a quick question. I’m having a slight problem, I can’t seem to get the Alt + S shortcut to work when trying to resize the bones (for example: trying to resize the neck). Everytime I try, it seems as though the orientation is trying to change instead of the scale. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Correction on the last post, Alt + S tries to adjust that bone longer or shorter instead of thicker/thinner.
why the ALT S key is not working in 2.53 for armature..did the builder change the key for scaling the armature???
what is the new key for thinner of armature???
The “ALT+S” key is now “Ctrl+Alt+S” or in the “Armature” menu “Scale B-Bone width”…
@Mirco, you are a shining example amongst mankind
was just looking for the same problem, thanks again!
I have the same problem everyone else is having. Alt-S does nothing and Ctrl-Alt-S brings up something about HP support. any help will be appricated.
Fixed my own problem. I went to imput and changed the shortcut manually.
Thanks alot, its working perfectly on my character. I was surprised how well the automatic weights worked after making a few small changes