Gned - Upper Body Rigged
Today, at lunch, I got into some basic rigging for Gned, in Blender. For those of you not familiar with 3D modeling and animation, rigging is the process of adding bones, that are linked to the mesh, to create an armature that will be used to make posing the 3D model easier for the purpose of animating the model. More than just adding bones, constraints and rules are set on bones in order to make the entire skeleton (armature) move in a way that makes sense when you move any one particular bone.
I started off by rigging just Gned’s upper body. I took a screen shot when I was done, showing Gned checking out his purple skin.
Gned - Full Body Rig
Because rigging legs is a little more complicated, I did it later, linking it back to the armature of the upper body. Then I took a second screen shot of Gned, fully rigged, attempting to take a step. (Yes, I realize I’m anthropomorphizing a computer model. Shoosh.)
Still left to do, before moving on to actual animation, is to fine tune the armature and then build a small library of poses and facial expressions. All of this leading up to animating a walk cycle and some lip synching to an audio file. So far I’m having a blast. Blender is really nicely laid out and easy to use.
