HOW TO[with blender]: do a simple rig/assign vertecies with bones

bernie14

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OK...this is my first tutorial so be kind.....the necessity came up when, while i was making fidel LH, i noticed that the left shoulder strap was not animating correctly in game...


the opportunity came when i noticed CRoland and Chugginator, along with dutchking and GarretSidzaka commenting on "rigging" body parts, so i looked up some blender tutorials and here we go...thanks to those mentioned above for their guidance.....

Here is fidel in object mode. first, i want to center my cursor over the object in question and zoom in a bit.....


Switch to EDIT mode and highlight the mesh part in question, in this case, it is the left shoulder strap.....


Maintain the 3D window view on top, but on the bottom window, go to the Buttons Window.....


DESELECT the mesh with the A key in 3D window and notice the "link and materials" box in the buttons window. you will see the heading "Vertex Groups". click on the button (in my example, it says "gerL_5thumb_03" on the right side).


When you click on that button, you will see the names of the bones in your LH, more importantly, each of these bones are associated with vertecies on your mesh!! click on b_clavicle_R.....


Now, click on SELECT, see how all the vertecies associated with that bone light up!, notice that since i duplicated the RIGHT shoulder strap to make the left one, the left shouder strap is associated with the right clavicle bone, that is what i need to change.....


Now, make sure you DESELECT all your vertecies in 3D window again, and click the b_clavicle_L.....


Press SELECT to see the associated vertecies (that step is not really necessary, but i wanted to show how the left shoulder strap was NOT associated with the left clavicle).....


OK, now we will make the appropriate assignments, so the left shoulder strap is correctly "rigged". In the 3D window, UNDO a couple of times, or RESELECT the vertecies corresponding to the area you want to rig (1). in the Buttons window, click on the vertex group that you want to UNassign, in this case, the b_clavicle-R (2), and press REMOVE (3). this action removes the selected vertecies from that bone.....


Now, go to the vertex group that you wnat to associate the selected vertecies, in this case the b_clavicle_L (1) and click ASSIGN (2). this action assigns the selected vertecies to the appropriate bone.....


THATS IT!!!!

You can verify that the vertecies are in the proper bones by DESELECTING in 3D window, clicking the appropriate bone vertex group button, and pressing SELECT to see the vertecies that now correspond to the bone.....


Now, fidel has the right (and left;) ) straps where they belong!!!!


To recap, in the buttons window/vertex group, use the SELECT button to view associated vertecies and the ASSIGN and REMOVE buttons to associate and UNassociate vertecies to the bones.:D :D :D

THis method brings up two other interesting possibilities.....one is distorting features, for example, you can select the cheeks on both sides, or the eyelids, etc., and make them bigger or smaller, changing the "look" of the leader (i may try this on my next one), the other possibilty, which seems more difficult and tedious (but possible) is assigning or rigging not JUST a different arm or body part, but exchanging the mesh of ONE LH to the bones of ANOTHER (by duplicating vertecies associated to each bone group and assigning them to the corresponding group on the other leader!), i don't know if all the leaders have the same bone groupps, but if they do, this could be a way of giving any leader any animation without distroting the mesh (MAYBE)..

well, that is it hope it helps....
 
Thanks Bernie, I have a load of things I want to do now. Just curious, before I get started will this work?
1. I remove the head of the leader from the body I want.
2. I remove the body of the leader from the head I want.
3. I rig the two together and get an entirely new leader.
I think it should work...
 
Thanks Bernie, I have a load of things I want to do now. Just curious, before I get started will this work?
1. I remove the head of the leader from the body I want.
2. I remove the body of the leader from the head I want.
3. I rig the two together and get an entirely new leader.
I think it should work...

i think it should work.....since the head has SO MANY bones, i would proly try "rigging" the body u want TO the head u want....u might want to consider not changing the hands either, since they also have a ton of bones....if the two leaders have the same set of bones, then i think it SHOULD work, but i have not tested it, good luck and let us know how it turns out...
 
BAD NEWS....i have tried to put fdrs suit on gandi, with no success....
 
Nice job with this tutorial, I was planning to do it, but now that you did it, I'll have more free time to create new things :)

If you want a fast method of body switching, you can do like I did for my Paradise Leader of Final Frontier. I edit Peter's head, I deleted his body, I imported Abe's body, I deleted Abe's head, I joined Abe's body object (his suit) to Peter's head object and than I rerig the abe's suit to Peter's torso bone. I suposse I could have rig the entire body to all the body's bones, but it would have been much longer and it may occur some problems because of the bones proportion, so riggin the entire body to the torso bone is a nice solution. The face is still animated, but the body doesn't move.


Nice job on this Castro by the way !
 
^I was going to do that. :p
I have an idea for a WWI German leader (what a surprise ;)). Stalin's body w/ Bismarck's head and a lot of skinning. And C.Roland, do you know if I can just select a bone with all of the vertecies highlighted and delete them? *tries
 
Nice job with this tutorial, I was planning to do it, but now that you did it, I'll have more free time to create new things :)

If you want a fast method of body switching, you can do like I did for my Paradise Leader of Final Frontier. I edit Peter's head, I deleted his body, I imported Abe's body, I deleted Abe's head, I joined Abe's body object (his suit) to Peter's head object and than I rerig the abe's suit to Peter's torso bone. I suposse I could have rig the entire body to all the body's bones, but it would have been much longer and it may occur some problems because of the bones proportion, so riggin the entire body to the torso bone is a nice solution. The face is still animated, but the body doesn't move.


Nice job on this Castro by the way !

thanks for th advice, just one question, did you keep both sets of bones? peters AND abes or did you get rid of abes (bones)?..OHH, another question, did you just join objects (such as CNTL-J) or did u merge the vertecies?
 
i did it!!!! here is gandhi with fdr's suit....



and here is how....
I was having a heck of a time with the all the bones, etc. getting them all confused, not knowing which ones i had "re-rigged' etc, so to "clean up" the act, i did the following and it worked!!

1) i imported fdr's nif into blender, clicked on the mesh and went to edit mode.
2) i deleted (using faces) his head and hands.
3) back to object mode and ONLY exported the suit as a nif (NO BONES)
4) imported gandhi's nif AND the "suit.nif", when i imported the suit nif, it DID NOT have ANY vertecies associated with ANY bones.
5) i rescaled the suit to fit gandhi.
6) i went back to the gandhi mesh and in edit mode, deleted the torso and arms, left the head and hands. (i did this using faces again, NOT the vertecies associated with bones, cuz i would lose faces that i did not want to lose).
7) onlt AFTER i had the head/hands on gandhi and the fdr suit ready to wear, did i JOIN those two objects....
8) here comes the tedious part....since the suit is now NOT associated with any bones, and it's hard to guess which faces to "link" with neck bone, clavicle_R, etc, i opened FDR's nif in another seperate window! I set those windows side by side, and used FDR's "assignments" to assign the proper faces of the suit to the proper bones of gandhi!
9) for example, in gandhi's window, i had the buttons on the bottom. i would click, let's say the b_clavicle_R bone, then SELECT---and nothing would come out..but then, i go to the FDR window, do the same thing and VOILA, the faces light up and now, it is just the TEDIOUS matter of selecting those faces on the gandhi mesh and ASSIGNING them to the proper bone!!!
10) i did not do every bone, instead, since the head and hands have the MOST bones, I just did the neck, clavicles, shoulders, torso, biceps and forearms.
11) to get it in game, follow CRoland's excellent tut, except for one little thing....since you have TWO meshes, u follow the TUT to a TEE for the first mesh, but then, the other mesh gets COPIED to the parent NiNode!

simple right :rolleyes: , well, tedious but POSSIBLE!
 
You have way too much time on your hands bernie. ;)
I think I'd follow C.Roland's instructions, your way is a lot more tedious even though it's an excellent find. Here are his basic instructions:
1. Make sure the body+head you're combining have the same material before merging.
2. remove the body of the head you want.
3. remove the head of the body you want.
4. Merge them.
5. Join the Vertices.
And that's it. You can either link just the torso bone (see his head "paradise") or go above and beyond and do the arms too. I tried it yesterday but I forgot about the material part. :( I'll try again today. But interesting finds bernie, with no one guiding you its pretty amazing.
 
i did it!!!! here is gandhi with fdr's suit....



and here is how....
I was having a heck of a time with the all the bones, etc. getting them all confused, not knowing which ones i had "re-rigged' etc, so to "clean up" the act, i did the following and it worked!!

1) i imported fdr's nif into blender, clicked on the mesh and went to edit mode.
2) i deleted (using faces) his head and hands.
3) back to object mode and ONLY exported the suit as a nif (NO BONES)
4) imported gandhi's nif AND the "suit.nif", when i imported the suit nif, it DID NOT have ANY vertecies associated with ANY bones.
5) i rescaled the suit to fit gandhi.
6) i went back to the gandhi mesh and in edit mode, deleted the torso and arms, left the head and hands. (i did this using faces again, NOT the vertecies associated with bones, cuz i would lose faces that i did not want to lose).
7) onlt AFTER i had the head/hands on gandhi and the fdr suit ready to wear, did i JOIN those two objects....
8) here comes the tedious part....since the suit is now NOT associated with any bones, and it's hard to guess which faces to "link" with neck bone, clavicle_R, etc, i opened FDR's nif in another seperate window! I set those windows side by side, and used FDR's "assignments" to assign the proper faces of the suit to the proper bones of gandhi!
9) for example, in gandhi's window, i had the buttons on the bottom. i would click, let's say the b_clavicle_R bone, then SELECT---and nothing would come out..but then, i go to the FDR window, do the same thing and VOILA, the faces light up and now, it is just the TEDIOUS matter of selecting those faces on the gandhi mesh and ASSIGNING them to the proper bone!!!
10) i did not do every bone, instead, since the head and hands have the MOST bones, I just did the neck, clavicles, shoulders, torso, biceps and forearms.
11) to get it in game, follow CRoland's excellent tut, except for one little thing....since you have TWO meshes, u follow the TUT to a TEE for the first mesh, but then, the other mesh gets COPIED to the parent NiNode!

simple right :rolleyes: , well, tedious but POSSIBLE!

For better performance and to be sure to doesn't have any problems, you should join the two object so you won't have 2 meshes. Like this, you'll be able to merge verticles where the two object merge (I know fot fdr suit and Gandhi head, it does't matter because the neck is inside the shirt, but sometimes it does). For this, you need to have only one material for the body and the head. This mean you have to copy fdr suit texture on the gandhi UV and in the UV Image edit, you have to adjust your UV map (check some of the Final Frontier texture if you want an exemple).
 

I didn't use either Bernies or C.Rolands method for this LH I plan to upload in a few minutes. :p If you haven't guessed its patton. This is what I did:
1. delete churchill's body and just replaced the original LH like what you do with C.Rolands "how to modify import/export LH" tutorial.
2. Delete De Gaulle's head, export 3DS so that its boneless.
3. Import the 3DS into the Head.nif in nifskope, scale it up by 10, fix the textures, etc.
4. Attach the body to ninode "torso"
So its kind of like C.Rolands way but without merging the two objects, and I don't think it will hurt performance because the body is really just a poly, nothing more.
Oh, and forgot, on export don't export a skin partition. ;) I think this way is really simple and easy, even if you don't have the arms moving I love it. :D
 
This may be slightly off topic, but is that Fidel LH downloadable anywhere? It looks awesome!
 
This is a great writeup bernie. Thanks.

And that Castro is awesome!
 
This may be slightly off topic, but is that Fidel LH downloadable anywhere? It looks awesome!

fidel will be available in a couple of days, at most this weekend, as part of "the Cuban Civilization".....Jose Marti (philosopical & organized/representation) and fidel (aggressive and charismatic/police state) will be the leaders, the "Club Tropicana" wil be the UB, replacing the colosseum (same benefits (+) -5% war weariness and can turn one citizen into artist), the UU, don't know yet, maybe some type of cavalry (that fought with TR?), almost all ready, just gotta make the UU, finish marti and add some civilpedia entries....:D
 
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