Help needed: Rigging my dragon's wings

So, I’m quite new to this, and this is my first model. I rigged some bones and stuff and I could move them and pose them, but I went back and I added bones to my wings, and I can’t figure out how to connect vertex groups with bones…



Anyone mind walking me through this?

Every bone that is a deforming bone (there is a check box under armature/bone properties called Deform) must have a vertex group of the exact bone name in the vertex group of the mesh object. These vertex groups will automatically get produced when you parent the mesh to the armature with automatic weights or empty weights. If you add bones afterwards, you will need to add these groups to the mesh manually or you could re-parent the mesh to the armature with empty groups. (Select the mesh then shift select the armature, CTRL-P, Empty Groups.)

Bone naming conventions are left and right side bones need a .L and a .R suffix. Without the proper naming, you will not be able to use the x-mirror functions.

A dragon is a tough first project if you are new to rigging. I’d suggest getting Nathan Vegdahl’s tutorial, Humane Rigging as a first step in learning rigging in blender.

Good Luck!

In edit mode, select the vertices you want to be affected by the bone (let’s say: Bone_Wing_One.L). For this hypothetical bone name, it would be the vertices on the left wing, near that bone (The left wing, because of the suffix .L at the end of the bone name.) Then, in the vertex group panel, create a new vertex group and name it “Bone_Wing_One.L”, capitalization and spelling etc. must be exactly the same as the bone name. Apply the selected vertexes to the vertex group, and now when you pose that bone, those vertices will move.

You can adjust the vertices in the group by applying or removing them. It is OK to overlap vertex groups (have the same vertex in two or more different groups) the vertex will move according to the positions of all the vertex groups it is part of. This lets you have smooth transitions between areas controlled by different bones.

I’d suggest for your first attempt at rigging a dragon wing, that you simplify the structure to maybe three bones per wing, starting at the dragon’s body, and ending at the tip of the wing. This won’t give you the control you need to furl and unfurl the wings, but it will let you flap them for flying poses.

Welcome to BlenderArtists :smiley:

I reparented the mesh, it works fine now.

Do you guys know how to work cloth or softbody simulations? I wanna apply one to the membrane of the wing.