A couple of weeks ago I introduced you to Sticks the new mascot for SusanG Productions. I had him modeled and ready to set up for animating, then I made some adjustments
thinking they would facilitate animating him. They might have, or not, but they also took away some of the character of Sticks.
When I got ready to start the process of rigging Sticks I thought all his pieces needed to be connected so he was one smooth object and not a bunch of pieces. So I attached all his parts and then went about deleting faces and welding points so that he was one object with the one element and not one object with several elements.
Then I set about starting the rigging process. For those who don’t know, rigging for animation is the process of creating bones and controls to make the animating easier. It helps, when rigging a character, to have them in a T-pose, standing straight with arms straight out to the side.
I hadn’t posed Sticks in the T-pose before I connected his parts so I had to do it after. With all his pieces and parts connected I could only get him in more of an A shaped pose without some serious pinching. This is where I could have stopped and re-evaluated but I pressed on only to discover why a T-pose for rigging and not an A-pose.
So why a T-pose and not an A-pose? It turns out to be pretty simple. With a T-pose it’s easier to see the side of the body and easier to figure out where the joints should be. With an A-pose the hands and arms block that view from the side and so make it more difficult to add the bones. Yes, you can do it from the front or back but there are some parts that are just better or more easily done from the side.
Still I persisted and got started adding bones and controls. Here I have the xray feature turned on and you can see how hard it is to see the bones through the hand and arm.
I continued along to where I had both legs and their basic controls setup. Here’s what it looks like with Sticks in xray mode.
Here’s what the bones and controls look like with Sticks hidden. It’s kind of interesting, and will get much more cluttered looking.
Fortunately, I stepped away from the computer for a while. That gave me the opportunity to reconsider my approach. I didn’t like the way things were going to look and deform with everything connected. It wasn’t going to be the Sticks I designed. And I decided I need to make a small adjustment to the design.
I made my design change first. It would be easier than doing it later. In the original design Sticks had no ankles. However, I have one sketch of him where I was working out the 3D idea, and in that, I gave him ankles. When I started rigging I wondereind if maybe he should have ankles and now he does. Adding them was fairly easy. I had the foresight to save the original design of Sticks as a separate file before I connected his parts so I just went back to that file and added the ankles. I saved that and then saved it as a new file so I could adjust his pose and start rigging.
I still needed all the parts attached so he’s one object and so the skinning will work right. And that’s what I did. I just attached everything but I didn’t connect any of it. This way I have one object with several elements. I can select the individual elements and change them without deforming other parts. That’s the beauty of Sticks.
Here he is now in all his current T-pose glory ready to be rigged.
It maybe that I’m wrong and this idea won’t work either but it’s worth a try and it should maintain the design and personality of Sticks. We’ll see how it goes.