Taking a quick moment with this tutorial to give a preview and explanation for a totally awesome new feature in Blender 2.49, which should be released soon. There is a release candidate for Blender 2.49 available on blender.org, so you’ll have to download that to follow along with this tutorial. The feature I’m talking about is Etch-a-ton, which allows sketch-based rigging. It’s an incredibly powerful tool that’s certain to help speed up and simplify the process of rigging in Blender. This tutorial walks you through the basics of how to use it. Of course, there’s a lot more to this tool that what I can show in 10 minutes, but this should plenty to get you started. As with before, you can download this tutorial directly to your computer and it has also been uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo. Have fun!
Archive for the ‘Chapter 11’ Category
New Feature! Bone Sketching
Thursday, May 7th, 2009The Stickman Rig
Friday, February 27th, 2009
This is the Stickman rig that I walk you through creating in Chapter 11. I love using this little guy to block out my animations and get the timing right before moving on to do more detailed work. So go ahead and have fun with him! Dissect him and his rig to see how they work. And of course, I’d love to see any animations you come up with.
A couple notes:
- Stickman’s leg bones are on Armature Layer 8 (the first layer in the second block of Armature Layer buttons). I’d recommend hiding that layer
- There is no IK on Stickman’s arms. If you want to use IK there, you’ll have to either add it yourself or work around it by using the AutoIK button in the Armature panel. That won’t give you real IK (you’ll have to key all bones in the arm rather than just a single controller), but it will allow you to place the arm where you want it to be.
- Have fun!
Files:
Shape Keys
Friday, February 27th, 2009
In this file, I’ve created two shape keys for Suzanne: one with her eyes bulging and the other with her screaming. To the right you can see that these keys can be animated using both the Ipo Curve Editor and the Action Editor. The cool thing about the Action Editor is that it gives you sliders with your pre-defined limits.
Files:
