I just wanted to start out by saying that I’m a beginner when it comes to rigging. I have rigged a character using the Rigify rig in blender, which worked like a charm for me but I have major issues when it comes to adding stuff to this rig. I have already bound the mesh to the rig. Maybe I can’t do that before adding the rifle model to the rig? I’m not sure about this.
As the title said I would like to add a two-handed rifle that my character should be holding in his hands. I am not sure how I would go about solving this problem because the IK/FK-switches makes it difficult for me to understand what should be parented to what etc. As I understand it I should be able to parent the weapon model to the hand joint in order for it to follow the hand. Or should I make a joint for the weapon?
It also would be great to have functionality so that I can remove at least one arm from the rifle so that the character can do a wave animation with the supporting arm as well.
Hey, Pdexter, I’m a beginner too, but with that disclaimer on the table, here’s what I suggest.
I think you should create an additional _weapon bone (or wutever you want to call it) and have it Parented (ctrl + P) to the hand bone but Keep Offset instead.
After that, you can Ctrl+P your way into Binding your weapon to your Armature.
Then select the armature and hit Ctrl+Tab to go into Pose Mode. Then select your Gun and Ctrl+Tab to go into Weight Paint.
Once there, select the bone you want to weigh it to and paint your gun until it’s completely Red (red = 1.0 bind strength).
My only exception here would be when you Ctrl+P your gun to the bone…
when the popup menu comes up… don’t pic “use automatic weights”… instead just use “Bone”
That way you avoid having to weight paint the gun at all… it just sticks to the gun bone…
First, can I ask if you have any experience with rigging? Really, to be able to do simple tasks like this, the best way is by rigging things with bones, IMO. When I think of someone carrying a gun, I think it’s a simple task, you’re carrying a gun, what’s the big deal? This can be a bit complex at first in blender. Picking up an object and throwing it, take a bit of time to figure out. That’s a one handed animation, and I’d do it all in fk, so it’s easy for me. Also, throwing a ball doesn’t require rigging with bones. But when you start talking 2 hands connected to 1 object, that simple task becomes a bit more complex in blender.
How I would do it is to add bones to the gun. 1 for the gun, and 2 smaller ones for the hands, children of the gun bone and positioned where the hands should be on the gun. Then on the ik hands, I would add copy loc & copy rot constraints to them targeting the bones on the gun. Now when the arms are in IK mode, the gun bone controls the arms/hands.
When one hand leaves the gun to wave, use rigify’s fk/ik snapping. Snap the fk arm to the ik arm, keyframe the fk arm. Advance one frame, keyframe the arm again. Then switch to fk control for the arm and animate the arm in fk mode.
I was also wondering what settings I need to have in order to export an animation made with the Rigify rig. I have no idea and I haven’t found anything helpful on Google either. Do I need to do anything with my meshes or my rig? Do I need to bake the animation? Do I need to have anything selected while exporting? etc. etc…
