Help with Rigging - How Not To Blow A Mesh Apart?

[JBT27]

My colleague is starting to rig meshes - I'll admit this is not my strong point so I just don't know.

I didn't see what actually caused the problem, but she said she added a child bone, and used Joint Move on some other bone, and suddenly the mesh deformed out of shape and she couldn't get it back to the rest position.....and I mean well out of shape, it was a mess :foreheads

This is the second or third time this has happened, but we can't figure out what not to do to avoid it happening again.....other than apparently not add child bones into a rig or use Joint Move.

Sorry it's vague, but we're a bit stuck with this.

Julian.

[SplineGod]

Whenever you use joint move or some of the other bone tools it deactivates the bone.
Once you do this you need to reselect all your bones and hit the r key to REST them again. Make sure you do this with the character in its rest pose (where the bones match the geometry), expressions off, motion modifiers off, IK off.

You can add child bones or use joint move etc as long as you remember to rest the bones. For a child bone you may only need to rest it once you create it. Remember to add the child bone on frame zero and rest it on frame zero.

[JBT27]

Thanks Larry! - we do seem to be making some progress now following your advice :)

Julian.

[SplineGod]

Good! Feel free to email me directly if you have any other issues. :)