Rigging and Setup Related Questions

Hi,

my second post in Blender Artists forums, and first post in rigging area!

I started recently to evaluate usefulness of Blender for my current workflow.
I’ve already gone through basics of parenting, rigging, constraints, weight painting and such, and now I have some questions.
I’m quite familiar in rigging in general, but my experience is mostly limited to 3ds Max, Maya and other software.

I have to say that some features seem to be a bit too hard to find so here some questions.
I bet I’ll eventually find answer to these in either manual or by being persistent, but I bet somebody already has an answer to these questions!

Q: Can a mesh have multiple vertex groups;

  • NOTE: what I mean is 15 bone character could have setA and setB.
  • Why; when I finish a pass of skin weighting, I could copy full set and keep it as backup.

SOLUTION: Copy a mesh, it should keep vertex groups. But this isn’t so neat solution.

Q: Can I have multiple Armature (Skinning) modifiers on mesh using different vertex group (set)?

  • Related to above, is this possible?s
Q: Can octahedral bone size be locked to physical dimensions? - I.e. can I specify somewhere actual size (width) of bone object? Having unwieldly expanding bones feels problematic, forces to change display mode to box type bones

Q: When adding skin modifier, is it possible to somehow exclude rigging / setup related bones?

  • When I Ctrl+P mesh to armature, it adds non deform bones which I have to then manually remove from vertex groups
  • This seems illogical, after all non-deform bones do not belong to skinning

Q: What command matches Ctrl+Alt+S scaling and where in UI this value resides?

  • This keyboard shortcut does scaling without affecting children or length of bone, I came across this in some tutorial
  • Where can I find it in UI, it must be a toggle somewhere?
  • Also, it seems to apply local scaling to bone which themselves are not objects in Blender just parts of armature, so where does this scale value reside in UI? It’s not in bone properties, neither it is in “N” panel Transform area…

Q: If I’m in weight painting mode, is picking bones from armature (Ctrl+mouse click) only possible if armature is in pose mode?

  • This seems to add one extra step, and drops me out of weight painting, unless I’ve done above mentioned step

Q: Is it possible to give rig object colors for easier rig “reading”?

  • Same goes for wireframe color of mesh. Can Blender handle unique mesh colors, or are the colors specific to UI theme?
  • I bet this would happen on armature level, as there are no separate objects, bones them selves are part of one armature

Q: Is there a keyboard shortcut for manipulator gizmo size, or can I assign such keyboard shortcuts?

  • I.e. can I press some key and +/- to resize gizmo?
  • Search in User Preferences / Inputs does not bring up any transform or gizmo results

Any help is appreciated, I’ll post solutions myself if I come up with them.

Thanks!

At work, so i can’t directly check stuff. Don’t have an answer for everything, but hopefully others can help too.

Q1:
Unfortunately not, this is a feature I would really like to see though, as there are plenty of other things vertex groups are used to control as well as armature weightings, and sets would be great for organising this.

Q2:
Not that I am aware of. A workaround would be having duplicate deform bones with different names for each modifier, and each bone in the second set to the corresponding one in the first. Guaranteed to be tedious and slow. I’d be interested to know the actual use case here though, as it seems a somewhat unusual thing to need to be able to do.

Q3:
No idea, I mostly use stick or custom bone shapes

Q4:
Never seen this happen, sounds like a bug. In my experience, only groups for deform bones are created.

Q5:
No Idea

Q6:
Afaik this is required, I normally leave the armature in pose mode all the time.

Q7:
For colouring bones, see: http://www.blender.org/manual/rigging/posing/visualization.html#colors
For meshes, cycles materials allow a visualisation colour separate from the actual rendered colour, idk about colouring the wireframe though.

Q8:
No idea, I hide the gizmo and use hotkeys.

Hi Sazerac,

was unable to answer yesterday, thank you for good info!

Q1: Too bad about multiple vertex sets.

Q4: now that I think about this… It might be that it may have been “pilot error”, maybe I added the bones earlier and then changed them to non-deforming…

Q6: OK.

Q7: Got the coloring of pose mode rig working. I didn’t guess that I have to create groups to color objects - Will check the new manual properly - and wow, when did manual update happen, I’ve only used Blender for little while and google has sent me to old manual links…

Thanks again!

I’m going to suggest that you take the time to run through some tutorials that might help…
there are numerous ones on blender on youtube…

this series is one of my favorites…
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL58E9A0927AB357EF

to answer some of your questions directly however…

Q: Can a mesh have multiple vertex groups;

No… you can only have one ‘set’ of vertex groups per object…
However saving an extra Object Mesh with those vertex groups is not that difficult in blender…

Plus Remember that in Blender the ‘name’ of your bone and the ‘name’ of your vertex group is what AutoMajically links your bone and vertex group… (given that you have the Armature modifier in the Modifier stack and you have ‘vertex groups’ checked in that modifier)

Q: Is there a keyboard shortcut for manipulator gizmo size, or can I assign such keyboard shortcuts?

Not that I’m aware of…
but there is the option in Preferences > Interface > for the “Manipulator” size…

Q: What command matches Ctrl+Alt+S scaling and where in UI this value resides?

I have looked for this for years… never found it…
with all the guys working on the “Interface” of Blender… Perhaps that will get cleaned up…

Q: When adding skin modifier, is it possible to somehow exclude rigging / setup related bones?

Yes!.. simply turn off the 'Deform" setting on that individual bone(s)… before you do your Ctrl+P…

this setting can be found by selecting your bone in Edit Mode or Pose Mode > Properties Panel > Bone (bone Icon) > Deform > uncheck it… and that bone now is no longer included in the Armature Modifier deform influnce

Q: Can octahedral bone size be locked to physical dimensions?

  • I.e. can I specify somewhere actual size (width) of bone object? Having unwieldly expanding bones feels problematic, forces to change display mode to box type bones

I’m not exactly sure what your asking here… but let me try throw some stuff out here to see what might help…

You can change the display of your bones in several ways…
Select your bone > Properties Panel > Amrature (the little man Icon) > Display and pick from one of these display choices… some of these choices also can change the way bones work (BBones for instance)

also…

Select yoru bone > tab into pose mode > Properties Panel > Bone(bone icon) > Display > Left click in the feild under “Custom Shape” to choose a shape you would rather have as your ‘Display’ bone…
(you probably will have to watch a few videos and do some practice runs to get your Display objects to line up properly)

Q: Can I have multiple Armature (Skinning) modifiers on mesh using different vertex group (set)?

Yes… and no…

again … only one vertex set…

but you can have mulitpule Armatures and Mulipule Lattices and other Animation modifiers on your object…

If you use more than one Armature… you must remember that the names of your vertex groups must match the bones of the Armatures… thus… the bones in each Armature cannot be the same… from one Armature to another …

However… I can’t think a lot of instances where I would want to do that…
from a practical stand point of multipule Armatures… it would simply be easier to just have one Armature with all the bones I need to do the manipultations I need on that one mesh…

but there could be some instance where you might need two separate Armatures…
I just can’t think of any off hand…

However If your thinking in terms of … I want to build my Face Rigg separate from my Arm Rigg…
Remember that combining two Riggs together is pretty easy in blender…
Shift Select both Riggs and hit ‘J’ to Joint…
(you will have to do some bone Parenting after this)

Remember also there are a hand full of ways to Animate Objects and Meshes around in Blender…

one object can be parented to another …
There are Empty objects that are good for changing pivot points and starting points for other objects…
Armatures…
Lattices…
Hooks…
etc…

Q: What command matches Ctrl+Alt+S scaling and where in UI this value resides?

Huh, I never even knew that command existed… But maybe I’m seeing something else. When I hit Ctrl+Alt+S, blender minimizes down to just the top most header. Normally, I’m a windows user, ATM I’m on a linux box, and I’ve had problems with the alt key in blender, so I’m not sure if it’s blender doing the minimizing, or it’s linux. Pretty sure it’s blender, but I’m not sure why one would even need this, never seen this feature in other software. But then again, I never looked, just minimize the the app to the taskbar/program laucher of the os.

Think about it, if it’s in the UI and a novice user hits the wrong menu option - boom! my software is now just a window header? where did it go? how do I get it back? what happened? etc…

Q: Can I have multiple Armature (Skinning) modifiers on mesh using different vertex group (set)?

Yes, but it can get tedious, depending upon what you are after. norvman’s example of a separate face & body rig, not too bad to work with. You control this with vertex groups. The deform modifiers I’ve worked with have a vertex group field defining what vertex group they should control. So you create a face vertex group, and a body vertex group. The face armature modifier set to influence only the face vertex group will control that part of the mesh, likewise with the body armature modifier will control the body vertex group. Careful blending of weight between the face & body vertex groups is needed here.

Just my thoughts,
Randy

Q: If I’m in weight painting mode, is picking bones from armature (Ctrl+mouse click) only possible if armature is in pose mode?

It depends how you go into weight painting mode. if you go into it by first being in Pose Mode, and then click the mesh to go into object mode (do NOT select object mode from the header, you must select the mesh by clicking it in the 3D view) and then go into Weight Paint, you can select any bone you like while staying in Weight Painting mode.

Q: What command matches Ctrl+Alt+S scaling and where in UI this value resides?

  • This keyboard shortcut does scaling without affecting children or length of bone, I came across this in some tutorial
  • Where can I find it in UI, it must be a toggle somewhere?
  • Also, it seems to apply local scaling to bone which themselves are not objects in Blender just parts of armature, so where does this scale value reside in UI? It’s not in bone properties, neither it is in “N” panel Transform area…

Ctrl+Alt+s in Object Mode is Main Menu > File > Save Copy. @revolt_randy: This is what I see in in win x64.

With a bone in Edit or Pose mode:

Ctrl+Alt+s is a visual scale adjustment of a bone (local x and y axis) if the armature is in Properties > Armature > Display > B-Bone display mode. It is most useful as a visual/selection aid to deal with layered bones. It doesn’t affect real scale and it doesn’t reside in a panel anywhere.

Ctrl+Alt+s scales the bone envelope when the armature is in Envelope display mode. That indicator/setting is in Properties > Bone > Display > Deform > Envelope > Distance.

These features appear in the (context aware) Armature or Pose menu > Transform.

-LP

Just to be clear… B-Bone display does not enable but is the only way to see the segments of a “curved bone” (a bone with Properties > Bone > Curved Bones > Segments set above 1). The other display modes don’t show a bone’s segments/curvature but the segments/easing settings will still deform the mesh accordingly.

This often confuses new riggers (bones that won’t segment and strange mesh deforms).

-LP

norvman / revolt_randy:
Thanks for the answers and vertex group / armature info - will continue testing armature stuff…

jaxtraw:
I’m not sure if I understood what you said. So far, to me it seems that it’s only possible to access different bones in weight paint mode like this:

  1. Have the mesh in weight paint mode - have armature in pose mode > Ctrl+Mouse click to pick bones, or rather their vertex group

OR if armature is not in pose mode you can:

  1. While mesh is in weight paint mode, in Properties panel, in vertex data tab > pick vertex group from vertex group window to paint it
  2. While mesh is in weight paint mode, in Outliner, under character, Vertex Groups, pick vertex group you want to paint

@LarryPhillips: Thank you for bone display features clarifications!

A new question.

Was testing bone axis orientation stuff more in depth and noticed this. Is it possible somehow to refresh dopesheet to show current controller type after creating Action clip? if I update bone (or any object?) controller, it does not update in dopesheet list. Couldn’t find anything in menus or manual.

My issue is that now if I change bone controller to Euler XYZ, Action that is open in dope sheet does not reflect this change. Only way I found to update controller in Dopesheet/Action Editor was to delete and/or create a new Action, then it would show updated controller data for bones. However, this naturally deleted the animation I created…

Example:

  1. Create bones.
  2. Open Dope sheet window, set it to Action Editor mode.
  3. Create a new action.
  4. Animate some bones in armature.
  5. Change bone rotation controller from Quaternion to Euler.
  • Channels in Dopesheet Action still show four Quaternion channels instead Euler xyz channels.

@LarryPhillips You’re right, even on my linux box, blender says ctrl-alt-s saves a copy, but yet when I do that hot key, the blender window disappears and only the top header bar (with the close/minimize/maximize buttons) is present. Screwy stuff. And you also jarred my memory - yes ctrl-alt-s scales b-bones on their x & z axis.

AFAIK there is no way to change this. Once you insert euler keys, you can’t change a bone over to quaternions and the action editor refresh to show this. You don’t need to delete the action though, you only need to delete the keys for the bones you changed and re-key the bones that changed. So if you only changed one bone’s rotation mode, you don’t need to trash the whole action, just that one bone’s keys.

But… If you can write python scripts, you should be able to write one to do this for you. When you switch a bone from eulers to quaternions, the euler data is still there. So you’d just need a script to collect data about the euler rotations, convert it to quaternions and insert new keys.

Generally, by the time someone starts to animate with the rig, the whole question of euler vs quaternion should be answered.

Randy

revolt_randy: Thanks for the info, I already checked some snippet from (here) Blender Artists forum, which converted selected bone rotation controllers to Euler XYZ, it was only a few lines and it didn’t convert animation keys.

However it’s time to learn some Python I guess, if I’ll be sticking with Blender!

@LarryPhillips

Just to be clear… B-Bone display does not enable but is the only way to see the segments of a “curved bone”

very True … and well spoken…

Thanks Larry

Ctrl+Alt+S …
when you have an Armature selected…
and are in edit mode…
and are using BBone Display…

will ‘Scale’ a bone down on the bones local X-Z axis… but in ‘Y’…

(yes… I’m running Blender on a copy of Linux Mint)