Skelegon Tree Problem. Hierarchy is a mess

[alanestrada]

Hello.

I'm trying to rig a cartoon character (a deer I showed in previous posts).

I'm using as reference the book "Lightwave 3D <8> Character Animation" by Timothy Albee.

As you can see on the skelegon tree attachment I included on this post. I have 2 roots, 2 heads, 2 spines 1, 2 spice 2, etc...

I guess I was working with symmetry on and I didn't notice (I didn't know skelegons got affected by symmetry too).

so, in the skelegon tree I tried to parent each bone to the correct hierarchy line. What I got was a mess, all skelegons moved....so I was wondering...is there a way to fix this or should I start over with my bones?

The book mentions something about welding and unwelding points in bones...what is this for? welded bones get parented? can someone explain?

How would you fix this mess?

thanks in advance.

[Surrealist.]

Yeah. Welding a tip of one skelegon to the base point (thicker side) of another skelegon makes the tip skelegon the parent. Tip to base tip to base and son on is parent child parent child etc.

Not sure what you were doing exactly in symmetry mode so I can't answer that part. But you should be able to sort it out by seeing what is welded to what and decide if you need to start over.

Don't forget ctl u is unweld if you want to start over fresh. Not sure how that would effect your problem without also seeing a screen grab of the skeleton.

Hope this helps.