Rigging and Weight

Rigging and Armature

Rigging is used to animate models, you have a structure of armature which act like bones in a human body. The armature makes it easier to move the model around so you can animate it. To rig you will first need a model, you can rig any model but you mostly want to choose something that actually moves and bends. A good example is a human or creature, to move most creature have bones in real life but some move without which will still need armature when animating so basically anything that moves. A bad example is a phone, whiles phones do move when being used they aren't moving by themselves and phones do not bend unless the animation is some trying to break a phone then this could be useful. Armatures are used for real life animation as well and not just digital. Most stop-motion animations use armature which isn't seen since its like how we don't see bones on a person since they are on the inside, so if you were to cut a model in half you would find the armature inside just like you'd find bones if you cut a person in half. Here is the model for Gromit from Wallace and Gromit. The armature is all flexible so the animators can position it as detailed as they want.

When rigging in Blender it is very similar. However, first you must make the armature to match your model. Before you do this go to 'Edit' - 'Preferences' - 'Add ons' - search rig and find 'Rigging: Rigify' and enable it.

Now start by pressing shift and right click to move your cursor to where you want to play the start of the armature. For this low-poly man I have placed it in the middle of the models crotch, I recommend turning on snap at the top so you can get it precise.

Next, press shift A and select armature and choose single bone. At first you might not be able to see it, this can be changed by going to the right and selecting "Viewport Display" and then "In Front". To carry on making more bones, go into edit mode, select the top circle of the bone and extrude by pressing E. Do this until you have the amount of bones you want, these represent the spine, neck and head.

Once you have made the bones for the body you'll then have to make the arm and leg (only on one side). Move the cursor again with shift and right click.

Turn to your side view to move around the bones so they fit inside the model like this:

Next, to make the arms and legs be connected to the main body bones, you have to make parents. To do this select the top arm bone and the main body bone after by using shift click. Press Ctrl P to bring up the parent tool and select 'Keep Offset'. It will add a line going from the arm to the body. Do this with the leg after and they should look like this. The arm and leg will now rotate with the body depending on which bit you rotate.

Now that we have one arm and leg made we need to make the other ones which is a very easy process. All we have to do is select the arm and leg and then press Shift D to duplicate it. Move it along either the X or Y axis depending which way your character is facing with G and X or Y. Then right click and press 'Mirror' and select either X or Y Global.

Next we need to connect the armature to the actual model, to do this we need to go back into object mode. Select the model and then the armature and press Ctrl P again and then press 'With Automatic Weights'. To test if it has worked go to 'Pose Mode' and move the bones around.

Weight

The example below is a good example of how Weight works. When bits are red it means they will be 100% connected to the bone, and dark blue being 0% connected. The first image is before the bone moves and the second is after the bone has moved. The red box follows it 100% and dark blue hasn't moved at all. The colours in between are just different percentages of connection.

First select the armature and then Shift Click the Mesh and go into Weight Paint (where object and edit mode are).

Once you are in Weight Paint you will get to choose which bone you want to look at, to change bone Shift Click onto the one you want to look at and it will highlight blue.