You will not notice any difference yet. These control the amount of curved deformation on the bone at its base and its tip, respectively, and can range from 0 no curve to 2. Do the same to the remaining bones below, with values of 8 and 6, respectively. To see the results, go out of Edit Mode Tab. You should end up with a nice curvy spine as seen in the following screenshot: Since these bones are already set to deform the mesh, we could just add some shapes to them and move our character's torso to get a nice spine movement.
But that's not enough for us, since we also want the ability to make this character stretch. This will make sure that the stretching of the parent bone will not be transferred to its children. This can also be accomplished under the Properties Window, by disabling the Inherit Scale option of each bone.
When in Pose Mode, these bones would also appear subdivided, which can make our view quite cluttered. Change back the Segments property of each bone to 1 and disable their deform property on the same panel under the Properties Window. Name these new bones as Spine1, Spine2, Spine3, Neck, and Head, go out of Edit Mode Tab and you should have something that looks similar to the next screenshot: 9.
Now let's create the appropriate constraints. Select the Copy Location constraint. With the pelvic bone below the first spinal bone, its location will drive the location of the rest of the chain, since it will be the chain's root bone.
Thus, this constraint won't be needed with the addition of the pelvis. Make sure that you check out our next recipe, dedicated to creating the pelvic bone. With those bones still selected, bring up the Constraints menu again and select the Stretch To constraint.
You'll see that the deformation chain will seem to disappear, but don't panic. Go to the Properties Panel, under the Bone Constraints tab and look for the Stretch To constraint you have just created. Things will look different now, but not yet correct. Press the Reset button to recalculate the constraints and make things look normal again.
Try it and see the results. The following screenshot shows the constraint values: 53 Rigging the Torso This constraint should be enough for stretching, and we may think it could replace the Copy Rotation constraint. That's not true, since the StretchTo constraint does not apply rotations on the bone's longitudinal Y axis.
So, let's add a Copy Rotation constraint. Since the two bones have the exact same size and position in 3D space, you don't need to change any of the constraint's settings. As the icing on the cake, disable the X and Z scaling transformation on the controller bones. Now, when you select any of these controller bones and press S, the scale is just applied on their Y axis, making the deforming ones stretch properly. Remember that the controller bones also work as expected when rotated R.
The next screenshot shows the locking applied: Enter into Edit Mode Tab , select the Shoulder. L bone, hold Shift, and select both Shoulder. R and Spine3 in this order; that's important.
When creating spine rigs in Blender, there's no need to create lots of bones, since Blender allows us to logically subdivide each one to get soft and curved deformations. The amount of curved deformation can also be controlled through the Ease In and Ease Out sliders, and it also works well with stretching.
When you scale a bone on its local Y axis in Pose Mode, it doesn't retain its volume, thus the mesh deformed by it would be scaled without the stretching feeling. You must create controller bones to act as targets to the Stretch To constraint, so when they're scaled, the constrained bones will stretch and deform the mesh with its volume preserved. There's more You should notice that the spine controllers will be hidden inside the character's body when you turn off the armature's X-Ray property.
Therefore, you need to create some custom shapes for these controller bones in order to make your rig more usable. Refer to the recipe Customizing shapes and colors for your bones in Chapter 1, Get Rigging. See also Chapter 1: Tips on weight painting your character Chapter 1: Customizing shapes and colors for your bones Chapter 2: Rigging the pelvis Rigging the pelvis If you want your character to move like Elvis, you'd better pay attention to its pelvis.
The technique we're going to see in this recipe is often called "inverted pelvis", and you'll understand why when you go through the next few paragraphs. This approach is very useful to achieve more relaxed poses with your characters. The pelvis is usually the first bone in the spine chain and, because of the nature of the bone structure, its pivot point for transformation is not at the ideal position for the twist movement that we can do with the pelvis.
That's because our actual center of gravity is closer to our belly button than it is to the base of the bone. Open the file Pelvis. You'll see the character Otto with a basic deformation rig already applied as our starting point.
That's because the pelvic bone is the parent of all other bones. What can we do to make him twist his pelvis to a more relaxed pose? Since the armature's visualization mode is set to B-Bone, you'll see that all the spine bones are divided in segments in order to achieve a desirable curved deformation.
Go back to Pose Mode and try to rotate R and move G it again. Besides having a good pivot point for this bone's rotation, some problems arose from it: the deformations are ugly, the legs and other spinal bones are no longer its children, and most importantly, the nice curved B-Bone deformation between the pelvis and spine bone is gone! That's not what we want. This second "wrong" step was intentional so that you can clearly understand what we need and what we must avoid.
Since this bone will act as a controller thus not deforming the mesh directly , go to the Properties Window, under the Bone tab, change this bone's number of segments to 1 and disable its Deform property, as seen in the following screenshot: 7. Go back to Pose Mode and rotate the Pelvis bone. Now you'll see that the spine doesn't rotate along, the center of gravity for rotation is near the belly button region and the soft curved B-Bones work as expected!
You should also turn off Inherit Rotation for the bone Spine1, so the Pelvis bone acts like the torso's root bone for translation and still works correctly for the twist rotation. You may wonder why the legs rotate along the pelvis, when they should remain still. This is because this pelvis setup needs an Inverse Kinematics IK constraint for the legs, but that's the subject of another recipe called Creating IK legs with a three-pivot foot, in Chapter 5, Hands Down!
The Limbs Controllers. The file Pelvis-complete. By using an inverted copy of the pelvic bone as a controller, we can set the pivot center of a rig around the belly button region.
By inverting a copy, and not the original deformation bone, we can make sure that the soft curved deformations from Blender's B-Bones are applied as expected. There's more If you've just read the previous recipe, maybe you're wondering: what about stretching the pelvis? Stretching the pelvis Although our pelvic region doesn't stretch, it can be useful for cartoony rigs to have this option available.
This setup allows you to achieve distortions similar to what you see in the next screenshot: The file Pelvis-complete. Try scaling the Pelvis bone and see for yourself! See also Chapter 2: How to create a stretchy spine Chapter 5: Creating IK legs with a three-pivot foot 60 Chapter 2 Making your character breathe When you animate a character, the main goal is to make it look alive, isn't it?
All techniques involved in the art of animation, regardless of the medium paper, computers, clay It can be very useful to add a controller to make your character look like its breathing. Although the breathing by itself isn't going to make your character believable, it can be added as a layer of visual complexity, contributing to the mood of a scene.
If your character is nervous, scared, or has just finished a sprint for instance, you should probably make the breathing more noticeable. Open the file Breathe. You'll see a character with a very basic rig and weight painting, and with a bone shaped like a pair of lungs, as seen in the next screenshot. This is our room to work, since adding bones and shapes is not our focus here. Take a look at Chapter 1, Get Rigging if you have any doubts on how to set up the character like this.
Go to the Properties Window, under the Bone Constraints tab. You'll see that there are two constraints assigned to that bone: the first is a Stretch To constraint, which allows the bone to be scaled while maintaining its volume.
The second constraint is the one you have just created, and allows this deformation bone to be scaled following the transformation applied to the Lungs bone. Now let's just change its values in order to get a proper controller. Disable the Y option, since our character's imaginary lungs are just going to inflate and deflate, and the scaling would be applied only in the horizontal plane. Make sure you also set the two values of Space to Local Space, and bring down the influence slider to a value like 0.
This will allow you to make bigger changes in the Lungs scale and still get subtle results. The following screenshot shows the constraint setup: 6. These values may be different on your own characters, but the principle here is that the distortion on the mesh would be bigger on the ribs part of the mesh, and smaller on the belly. But you should feel free to even invert this, if you seek a funnier effect. Now, scaling S up and down the Lungs controller will make your character look like it's breathing.
The file Breathe-complete. The breathing controller is nothing more than a bone which sets horizontal scaling on the ribs and belly bones. The secret is to have different and low Influence values for the constrained bones.
When you scale the controller up, the character looks like it's breathing in. You should use this controller as a secondary one, just for adding details on top of an existing animation. There's more In this recipe we saw something simple but important: more than one constraint can be applied to a bone at the same time. Not only that, but a bone can have multiple targets for its different constraints, making a rig considerably more complex as you add new constraints.
Stacking constraints This example is based on a rig with more than one constraint applied to the spine bones, showing that a single bone can have its properties changed by different controllers. You must notice that the constraints are stacked, and this means that the order in which they are applied is important.
In our example, the breathing would be applied after the stretching. Fortunately the order isn't important in this unique example, but you may be wary of stacking too many constraints, since the results can be hard to predict. See also Chapter 2: How to create a stretchy spine Chapter 1: Customizing shapes and colors for your bones Controlling the neck and head Our head movement can be broken down to basically two controllers: the head bone itself and the neck.
It is possible to rotate the neck while keeping the head straight and vice-versa. For example, to move your head forward you have three options: ff You rotate just your head like when you nod affirmatively to someone else's question. You see these three positions in the following screenshot: It is very useful in rigs to have the freedom to choose how your neck and head should behave when transforming their parent bones.
You should be able, for example, bend your character's torso forward while keeping its neck and head looking forward, without inheriting their parents' rotation. This is often called hinge control. In this recipe we'll learn how to properly control the "hinge" property of the neck and head.
Open the file Neck. You'll see the character Otto with an deformation already set and controller bones for its spine and pelvis, with support for stretching. There is also an interface called Hinge, with two controller bones already created. Everything up until here is covered in previous recipes, so you should take a look at them if you have any doubts on how to create the interface, pelvis, spine, or stretch controls. The first thing we would do is set the hinge controller for the Neck bone.
Select the Neck bone and go to the Properties Window, under the Bone tab. Right-click over its Inherit Rotation property and choose Add Driver. The checkbox field will get a pinkish hue. As you noticed on the previous step, in Blender, even checkbox values can have drivers applied or have its on or off state animated through a keyframe. This is achieved by right-clicking over them and selecting the appropriate option. Open a Graph Editor window and pick the Drivers mode on its header.
Click over the Inherit Rotation Neck driver on the left-hand side panel to view its details on the Properties Panel N on the right-hand side. Find the Drivers section on the Properties Panel. Leave the driver type as Scripted Expression, but change the Expr field value from True to 1-var.
The next screenshot shows the driver and its values: The Expr field has the value of 1-var, used to invert the mapping of the bone driver. That's useful here, where our default behavior is to have the bones to inherit the rotation of their parents. In front view, rotate the Rib bone to the side.
By adding drivers to the Inherit Rotation property of single bones, we can animate the "hinge" feature of the neck and head bones, allowing the animators to pose the characters with more freedom and flexibility. There's more The ability to animate and drive checkboxes in Blender 2. In previous versions, that wasn't possible and the rigger would have to try emulating that particular feature with fairly complex constraint setups.
Not just the neck and head You can use the same principle shown here to make hinge controllers for other parts of the body, notably the shoulders. When animating limbs with Forward Kinematics, it's often desirable a hinge setting in order to have more freedom when posing your characters.
See also Chapter 2: How to create a stretchy spine Chapter 1: Customizing shapes and colors for your bones Chapter 5: Setting up the shoulders 67 3 Eying Animation In this chapter, we will cover the following topics: ff How to control where your characters look at ff The eyelids controllers ff Controlling the pupils Introduction There is a famous quote which says The eyes are the window to the soul, and its through them that we'll make our characters express most of their feelings.
We must have a tight control over how our character's eyes appear and behave on screen, because that's where our viewers would naturally pay more attention to. Subtle things such as the eyelids shape or the size of the pupil can make a big difference when you want to make the audience believe that your character is alive. We're going to see how to create rig features to enable a good amount of control for the animator.
The objects for this small region of the body can be a bit tricky to set up, requiring lots of bones and constraints to achieve good expressions.
How to control where your characters look at Unless your characters have a very unique style, their eyes will have to look at something.
Based on this idea, there is a common practice of making this "something" a bone where the eyes will always point to. This is very useful when animating, since you can position this bone to the exact place where your character should look at without further worries. Eying Animation How to do it Open the file Eyes. This file has a head mesh with two eyes ready for you to work on them.
Notice that the eyes are separate objects from the head. Go to Edit Mode Tab in side view Numpad 3 and move the tip of the bone so that it points to the character's front, next to the eye's pupil, similar to the next screenshot.
Activate the armature's X-Ray display mode in the Properties Window, under the Object Data tab, within the Display section to make things easier to see. Name this bone as Eye. L and extrude E its tip, creating a small bone in front of it. You should have the two bones positioned as seen in the following screenshot: 70 Chapter 3 5.
L bone around, you'll see that the Eye. L bone keeps pointing to it. Enter in the Armature's Edit Mode Tab again. Name this bone as LookAt and scale it down to about half its height. Now the movement of the LookAt bone will drive the target, and you can see this new bone in the next screenshot: 71 Eying Animation 7. Go back to Pose Mode. Select the left eye mesh, hold Shift, select the Eye. Move the LookAt bone and you'll see that the left eye rotates accordingly, but you'll also notice that the eyeball rotates too much depending on where you place the LookAt bone.
We need to limit the amount of its rotation. Still in Pose Mode, select the Eye. L bone and go to the Properties Window. Under the Bone tab, navigate to the Inverse Kinematics section. Enable the Limit fields for the X and Z limits.
The two sliders on the right-hand side are for minimum and maximum angle values. An acceptable value for this setup is o and 20o for the X axis and o and 45o for the Z axis, and you can see a visual feedback of those limits while the Eye. L bone is selected: very useful for visualizing what are the rotation limits.
In the next screenshot you can see the values set up and the limits shown on the 3D view: Now, when you move the LookAt bone, the eyeball rotates only until the pupil reaches the eye borders. L and Eye. With the bones still selected in Edit Mode, press W and select Flip Names, so Blender automatically detects the bones' suffixes and alters them to the correct side.
When you append suffixes such as. L and. These suffixes are not case sensitive, but you have to stick to one convention, since Blender will not understand this mirroring if you name one bone as Eye. R or Eye. Go back to Pose Mode, select the right eye mesh, hold Shift, select the Eye. Now, if you move the LookAt bone, both eyes should follow accordingly and within their limits.
Leaving the X axis for scaling allows you to change the alignment of the eyes, as seen in the next screenshot, where the LookAt bone was scaled S down in Front View: The file Eyes-complete. By creating two IK chains with one parent bone to control their targets, you can easily make a LookAt controller. The IK chain consists of one bone located at the center of the eye and another bone to act as its target.
By using a separate bone parent of both targets, you can make your character look at where you need. The use of an IK constraint on the eye bones allows you to set the rotation limits so the eyeballs don't rotate further than you expect them to. When we look down or up, our eyelids follow the movement softly. This will be accomplished in the next recipe, dedicated only to the eyelids. The LookAt controller is normally a child of another bone: some like it to be linked to the main head controller, so the eyes follow the head movement; some like it to be child of the Root bone, so the point where the character looks is independent of the head position.
You can have the best of two worlds by setting a switcher to alter between these two "spaces". The concept of different spaces and how to create a controller to switch between them is covered in Chapter 5, Hands Down! That's a pretty fast action, but the mechanics behind it may require some thinking by the rigger to be applied correctly.
With careful weight painting, some constraints and bones correctly positioned, we can accomplish good results. Open the file Eyelids. It's a head with some bones already set up for the eye's tracking. That's exactly what you would end up with in the previous recipe. Select the armature and enter into Edit Mode Tab.
In side view Numpad 3 , select the base of the Eye. With its tip selected, extrude E to create another bone. You should end up with a setup similar to the following screenshot: 74 Chapter 3 4. Repeat step 3 to address the lower eyelid.
Do the same to the lower eyelid bones and you'll have one IK setup for each eyelid, as you can see in the next screenshot: 75 Eying Animation If you named the bones correctly and try to move one of the eyelids' targets, you'll see that the eyelids follow the rig, since there are some basic bone weights applied to speed things up for you..
Go back to the armature's Edit Mode and place the 3D cursor in front of the bones you have created. L "M" stands for "mechanism", since it's a helper bone to our setup. L bone. L as seen in the next screenshot. This will make the bottom eyelid move just a little when its parent is scaled in Pose Mode.
Now enter in Pose Mode. L bone, lock all its rotation values, and the X and Z for both location and rotation, under the Transform Panel N. If you scale S this bone down, the eyelids will close. These steps provide the basic functionality we need, but we should take things a bit further: 9.
Move it to the side, so it's in front of the left eye. Scale it down a bit, so it's smaller than the LookAt bone, and lock all its transform channels in the Properties Panel N , leaving only the Y scale channel unlocked. Name this bone as Eyelids.
Make it a child of the LookAt bone keeping its offset distance. This new bone will act as the controller for the eyelids, conveniently placed next to the main eye tracking bone as you can see in the next screenshot: Go to Pose Mode, select the Eyelids. Things will seem to break, but don't panic.
Navigate to the Properties Window, under the Bone Constraints tab, and change the values in the Copy Location constraint: disable X and Z, pick Local With Parent and Local Space, just like in the next screenshot, where you can see the constraint values: 77 Eying Animation This would make the eyelids follow when you move the main eye controller, but their movements should be limited.
Finally, change the Convert field to Local Space, as you can see in the next screenshot: Now, try moving the LookAt bone. The eyelids will follow the eye up or down movements naturally. To finish the left eyelids setup, select the Eyelids. Next, navigate to the Properties Window, in the Bone Constraints tab and locate the constraint that you've just created.
Check the Extrapolate field and, under the Source fields, click on the Scale button and change the Y Min and Max sliders to 0. Set all the remaining source axis sliders to 1. Head over to the Destination fields, click on the Scale button, and set all sliders except the Y Max, which should remain 0 to 1. You must also change both Space fields to Local Space.
Refer to the next screenshot to see the values set in the panel: These constraint values will make the left eye blink when you scale the Eyelids. L bone, without the need to scale it to 0 in order to close the lids, making the rig more usable. Another usability feature is having all eyes controllers in only one place, near the LookAt bone. This way you don't have to navigate much in order to adjust the character's eyes.
Now the finishing touches. Select the Eyelids. This will ensure that our eyelids controller will behave as expected. Your left eye setup is now done. L and Eyelids. The right-hand side eye is now done, as a mirrored copy with all proper constraints applied! To remove the visual clutter for the animator, you should leave only the LookAt, Eyelids.
R, and Eyelids. L bones visible, and move M the remaining eye bones to an invisible layer. In a complete rig, all the bones you have just hid must be children of the main Head bone, so the eyes move accordingly when you move the character's head.
The step-by-step recipes are independent from each other so you can dip in and out of the book to add great effects as and when you need them. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. How to Visualize Data with D3 [Video]. Cardona "Blender 2.
Ad veri latine efficiantur quo, ea vix nisl euismod explicari. Mel prima vivendum aliquando ut. Sit suscipit tincidunt no, ei usu pertinax molestiae assentior. Eam in nulla regione evertitur. Dico menandri eum an, accusam salutandi et cum, virtute insolens platonem id nec. Ut habeo summo impedit has, sea eius tritani sapientem eu.
Vel laudem legimus ut, consul nominavi indoctum ex pri. Combine computer generated images with live footage using compositing techniques. Basic methodology for creating an armature, setting it up, skinning a model and animating it. Useful tools, along with some tips and tricks for architectural rendering. Smart and powerful usage of procedural textures. Improve the final result of your renders with the compositing system. Set up configuration and code for the Blender Game Engine, such as logic bricks and Python scripts.
Reuse data from external. Approach Using a projects based approach you will learn fun and challenging aspects of Blender 3D development.
0コメント