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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Discussion
100 Responses to “Rigging an Alien”Leave a Comment
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
I’m on a mac with 2.5 and ALT S wasn’t doing anything for me… try CONTROL ALT S
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!
Alt + Ctrl S. It took me a while to figure it out.
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
Awesome tutorial man. Thanks aton.
Only part that was alittle hard to follow where few parts were you paused to refigure stuff out. Looking foward to more from you.
is this the same process rigging a HUMAN character?
All that ran through my head at 8 minutes was: The eye bone’s connected to the…stalk bone.
David,
Hi, I hope you can tell me what I have done wrong. I am almost done this tutorial but something isn’t right. I followed the steps below from the video (09 – 12 below) then went into Pose mode to try it. I rotated the “heel” bone backwards and the whole foot rotated, but when I rotated the “foot” bone forwards towards the toes, (35:34) in your video) the leg and heel bones didn’t follow, only the foot bone rotated.
Here’s a link to a video which shows what’s wrong. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYzQGLXfzdA
09. Select the “shin” bone and then add an “Inverse Kinematics” constraint and change the “chain length” to 2. Then set the (Target: Armature) and the (Bone: “ankle_L”).
10. The “ankle” bone needs to be parented to the “foot” bone then select “Keep Offset”.
11. Now select the “foot” bone and parent it to the “IK_foot” bone then select “Keep Offset”.
12. Now select the “toes” bone and parent it to the “IK_foot” bone then select “Keep Offset”.
Also, just curious. If I sign up to CGCookie, do I get the .blend file and get to download the Video too?
Thanks
At 31:45 when I move the leg, the knee gets back and left like a grasshopper.
And I haven’t got an icon of armsture with white figure under Bone Constraints.
What did I do wrong?
Friggin awesome tutorial, thanks. Now I just need to find the best way to do clothing with it, maybe it will work without a hitch? XD
When I try to give it segments nothing happents. What do I do wrong
PLZ HELP I have a model of my dog and I tried to rig it. But I only can rotate things and not grab them. if I rotate the head it becomes smaller. And if I rotate the back legs and the tail, then a part of it stays at the same spot and a part moves. PLZ HELP someone
Which version of 2.5 are you using in this tutorial? I’m using 2.55 and when I press ALT+S to scale a bone, nothing happens. I tried 2.54, got nothing again, and eventually broke down and brought my model into 2.49 just so I could scale the bones like I’m seeing you do.
I can’t wait for 2.5 to get out of beta. 2.49 is just so ugly and unfriendly.
@Ravecraft in 2.5 the key command is CTRL-ALT-S.
In the future. PLEASE delete parts of the video where you do things and then realize you made a mistake and go back, I had to completely restart the foot rig over because I got really confused and lost when you started making mistakes because I was following along with the video…
Hi,
I agree with Urgh
. My foot rigging is a mess.
I think you do something you don’t tell in the video, because when I’m rotating my foot, my leg is not moving, even if I’m rigging after your pause.
By the way, thanks a lot for all the tuts.
Please help.
I concur with Urgh and ImpPulse. It would save time and fair amount of confusion if the foot-mess-part was not in the video.
However, thanks for the tutorial.
The foot stuff is not that bad. I watched the whole video first before rigging anything and was able to catch everything you did when you fixed it before trying it on my own.
I did however run into an issue when adding the inverse kinematic constraint from the forearm to the IK_hand. As soon as I attached it, it kinda nudged my whole arm section of the armature out of place. The foot IK constraint seems fine… just the hand gave me issues.
Any thoughts on why this might be?
Thanks,
Ajo
I don’t understand what’s happening: i can’t select two meshes (bones in the case) to conect the parts… one part stay orange, and other stay yellow. What’s this ?
@Flavio
Change to Object mode to select the mesh and the armature
It’s not working… for example, i want to conect the leg with the body, so i go in the object mode and I select the two, but one stay orang and other yellow. Just the yellow one is possible to change things, but the orange not. In the video,
when he’s going to connect the parts, all them stay normally yellow when slected, and my not. Did I do something wrong ?
Poblem is resolved: just select all the bones and press ctrl+j =D.
I love all the tutorials on the alien series, exept one. THIS ONE! I cant watch it. somehow I get the little pictur in the corner of the video and the rest is a white scree. I was wondering if there were any other postings of this video or if you could send me a download. Ty
love the site
Thanks so much for this video and the others that follow it. I actually don’t mind the mess ups as it shows some of the pitfalls to avoid. I, like some otheres, watch the tutorial all the way through first and then decide if I want to follow along. Otherwise, I just add to my knowledge base if I don’t follow along.
A good thing to do is write notes while watching these tutorials as well. I always have my notebook ready. Yeah, I know, I know. (Actual pen and paper? Yuck!) LOL
i type in armature but it only finds: ACTUATOR.Can you please help me
Type in “arm” and you should find it
Oh yeah, and you can’t have another armature selected…or you could go under “add – armature – single bone” under the info bar at the top of the screen
So, I press CTRL-ALT-S and….it won’t “skinny-ize” my bones, and instead puts up my system information(HP Support Information”)… Is there any other way to do this?
Nevermind, just got to go into properties and change the shortcut key to crtl-alt-shift-s or something like that…. feel like such a noob…:P
Can you do a tutorial on rigging non-deforming, mechanical structures? That would be awesome!
Please help, constraint isn’t working, it acts the same as in the video before the inverse kinematics were added. but i have now added inverse kinematics and it still behaves this way ?!?!?!?!?
thanks for any help
To show each bone axes you go to the “Object Data” of the armature and under “display” tick “Axes”.
Thank you for the tutorials they realy help. Keep up the good work
I did the automatic weight at the end, but when I move my left foot, the right toe goes with it and when I move my right foot, the right toe doesn’t move. How would I fix this?
adding automatic weights didnt work for me, i use blender 2.59…
Awesome tutorial.I did a bit complex rig that this one but you pointed some very usefull things. I had the same problem that you mentioned when moving the arms above 90 degrees.Good solution.
hi! I made a mistake when i copy the left side over to the right side. I pressed Shift-D too many times now I got 2 extra left side bones structure. I try to delete it on object view but it all now becomes one. How can I delete those extra bones on the left hand side separately? Thanks!
I sorted it! Thought i was gonna have to start again for the 7th time!
Would someone plz have a look at this problem?
http://forums.blendernewbies.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=6067
im having a “floating arm” problem after i follow the steps taken from 38:8 – 38:50 my arm doesnt work like the video it slowely creeps up rotating from the shoulder as i try to move the hand …. if anyone could with this id appreciate it
please help lol
Hi, I just want to say your tutorials are awesome and I learned some new things. However I am having some trouble, probably noob trouble. Around 36:20 where you are adding the control bone, When I try and scale any of my bones in edit mode, they will not move along the x or y axis, also when I parent the IK_Hand.L to the control bone and then switch to pose mode, the IK_Hand.L bone is off somewhere and not where I and originally placed it in the hand. I’m presuming I pressed something by accident or something and any feed back or help would be great. Thanx. -Mi
Masterful tutorial. Very enjoyable!! Thanks!
I cant parent my eyeball to the eye bone like in the video (46:03-46:13). If i select only the eyeball it selects the whole alien and connects it in a weird way. Can i make my eyeball not be part of the alien somehow? I have allso tried parenting the eyeball from objects relations tab but it still parents the whole alien. Other than that everything has gone smoothly and i love the tutorials. Oh and im using Blender 2.60
oh Derp.. I just forgot to tap out of edit mode when i created the eye in the first place fixed now.
I’m having issues with the forearm: After I disconnect it from the “upper arm” and I turn both influences to ’0′, my arm(segmented) does not rotate with the IK Hand. I’ve checked the “Inherit Rotation,” and it is checked. Do you know what could be the issue?
Thanks for the help,
Sulfo
Hey great tutorial. But i was wondering is there any ground rules for rigging? Like a guide that tells you what you should Parent things to and how to use constrants. Thanks
Very clear and helpful tutorial. Thank You.