Rigging: Revealed

[scadams]

I am working on this tutorial for rigging the piranha alien and I am having some issues. As I work through adding the bones and the child bones they, as a hierarchy work fine but the flesh of the model is not moving with the bones. Anyone have any ideas on how to fix this???

[RebelHill]

you need to rest, or bind the bones to the mesh, select them, push r key... this is pointed out somewhere in the tutorial, probably in an earlier part and you missed it.

[scadams]

I actually did that. But I will keep trying. Thanks

[scadams]

I hit r on all of the bones to rest them. Still nothing. I even went into the bone properties menu and did the same thing and still nothing.

Also, let me add that I am doing this in layout for the first time. Normally, if it was a simple character I would do it in modeler on a separate layer and then cut and paste it into the character.

[4dartist]

Check that 'Enable Deform' is toggled on in the Setup menu of layout.

Check that the bones are children to the item you want to deform.
Mesh>bone>bone>bone>etc.

Check that the bones aren't looking for a weight map that doesn't exist in the bone properties.

Check that the bones are checked on in scene editor, this activates them (clicking Rest Position usually does this automatically).

[jeric_synergy]

Details, details, details..... it's the whole business.

[scadams]

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for your replies! I tried all of your suggestions unfortunately not all of them worked. However, those ideas you gave me did lead me to discover what would work. On the set up tab, under Modify, orientation, rest the bones there worked as it should so now all is good and I am moving forward on the tutorial.

Thanks again!

Scott

[jasonwestmas]

sounds like your r key is not mapped to the 'rest' function. Which is probably a good idea imo.

[greg.reyna]

sounds like your r key is not mapped to the 'rest' function. Which is probably a good idea imo.

I totally agree. It's too easy to hit it by mistake. I remap all the individual keys to things I do all the time, like drag, size, smooth shift, etc. AFAIK the Rest Bones function can't be reversed. Undo won't help you. It's always puzzled me as to why the without-qualifier r key is the default for this, alliterative assonance notwithstanding.

[jeric_synergy]

I totally agree. It's too easy to hit it by mistake. I remap all the individual keys to things I do all the time, like drag, size, smooth shift, etc. AFAIK the Rest Bones function can't be reversed. Undo won't help you.
Aii-yi-yi! Thanks for the warning!

[RebelHill]

AFAIK the Rest Bones function can't be reversed. Undo won't help you.

It cant be undone... but it can be REdone.

So ur animating something and u accidentally hit r on a bone, which screws up ur bind... no biggie, go back to your frame 0 base pose, and just rerest it.

[jeric_synergy]

It cant be undone... but it can be REdone.

So ur animating something and u accidentally hit r on a bone, which screws up ur bind... no biggie, go back to your frame 0 base pose, and just rerest it.
And, if you're a schmuck like me who repeatedly destroys the frame 0 rest pose, you can also:

duplicate the pose on far negative frames, multiple times if need be;
and/or I believe there's at least one plugin that will prevent you from shooting yourself in the foot by protecting frame zero keyframes.