Rigging and Skinning

By Immer Baldos

This document is a tutorial on character rigging using Blender version 2.49b. The goal is to create an

armature for an existing mesh.

The Character Mesh

1. Open blender and open the file “5.Rigging and Skinning - Character Mesh.blend”.

2. Go to Wire Frame mode (Z) and place the 3d cursor at the center of the mesh then add an

armature. Scale, Grab and place it in the appropriate position.

3. Go into Edit mode then enable X-axis mirroring.

4. Zoom in and select the bottom vertex of the armature.

5. Mirror extrude the bones (Shift-E) and limit the movement to the X axis (X) then Left click at the

appropriate location.

6. Grab and translate the bone vertices to the appropriate Z axis locations (G � Z � Move Mouse

� ENTER/Left Click).

7. Check the sides view if the bones are within the mesh. Adjust as needed using a grab on the y

axis. Tab out of edit mode before gabbing if the entire armature is outside the mesh.

8. Repeat mirror extrusion and grabbing one axis at a time on the lower half of the mesh as shown.

9. Check and align the bones in side view as needed.

10. Add the last bone, the foot using the same mirror extrude and grab-one-axis-at-time method.

11. Check the top view for alignment problems. Pan around the model and correct misalignments.

12. On the top view select the top most vertex of the armature and extrude it (E). Again grab and

translate one axis at a time. Add 3 additional segments until the top of the head.

13. Check the side and top view for misalignments and correct as necessary.

14. Select the vertex near the chest area and mirror extrude up to the arms.

15. Also do the Thumbs.

16. Again check and correct alignments.

17. Add a bone for the necktie. Make sure that edit mode is active. Align the bone to the necktie.

18. Tab out of edit mode and select the mesh.

19. Parent it to the Armature and select Parent to Armature (CTRL-P � Armature)

20. Select Bone Heat

21. Go to pose mode and rotate each bone to check if it articulates a given part of the mesh

correctly.

22. Sample Rotation of the Arm

23. Select each armature and clear rotation (ALT-R) to get to the start state.

24. For areas with problems such as the one below, weight paint mode should fix it.

25. Select the armature and go to Pose mode.

26. Select the Mesh and go into weight paint mode.

27. Left click the blue areas near the eyes until all is red.

28. Select the bone for the necktie in side view mode and set the weight to 0.

29. Weight paint the top part of the neck tie to blue.

30. Go to front view, and clear all rotation on all bone (A � ALT-R).

31. Select the mesh and hide it (H).

32. Parent the eyes to the Top Bone.

33. Unhide the body mesh (ALT-H) and realign the eyes. Scaling may be required to fit the eyes in

the sockets.

34. Choose a pose and render.