All Articles

As a follow-up to last week's rigging article, I thought I'd share this tip I found in a forum post recently where someone asked;

"Hi guys I rigged a character in one file to have it clean, then I posed it for a test and took him to other scene where he is too big. I tried to scale him but it destroys the whole character (the skeleton resizes at diferent rate than the mesh does). I tried to scale the skeleton, the mesh, both, a group...and nothing works. Any ideas?"

With modo 601 came a video called Fireboy where Andy Brown rigs and animates one of Warner McGee's characters. The video is quite detailed, but if you just want to quickly jump in and rig a character, I've broken it down into simple steps below.

Preparation

• Make sure your character is a nice clean mesh without holes or flaws. Just to be sure, run > Geometry > Mesh Cleapup before you start.
• Separate the components, such as body and eyes into separate layers.
• Centre your character at X & Z, and zero on Y
 

Create Skeleton

• Click on the Setup tab along the top menu
• Under Commands select > Setup > Skeleton
• Then click on Tool Properties tab and make sure that Compensation and Intersection are turned on (2:20)
• In Add-mode, create your skeleton. Be mindful of when to use symmetry, and when to turn it off.


Align Bones

• Double-click on the root bone (in the viewport, or from the Item List)
• Adjust all joint locators so that the red line is pointing along the X-axis by selecting each joint individually, then clicking on the universal transform tool to move it. It's quicker if you have two viewports open side-by-side - one Front, and one Right to make seeing where you're at, easier. (5:55)

Zero out transforms on all joints (Sets a resting position for deformations)

• Go into Setup modo. A yellow border will apart around the viewport
• Double-click on the root bone
• Go to > Properties > Zero > All
• Turn off the Setup mode toggle
• Save
 

Bind skeleton to Mesh

• While in Item mode, select Setup mode
• Double-Click on the root bone in the viewport, and then Shift-select the character mesh
• Then under  > Commands > Deformers > Bind > Heat  (you can use any of the other options)

The modo 601 documentation has at least three times as much content as previous versions. And you'll be fascinated by some of the hidden gems you'll find there. So reading the modo docs on your iPad is a great way to kill time whilst being productive - especially when you don't have a paperback with you, or internet access. And five minutes a day discovering something new is more worthwhile than playing games 😉   

Note: MODO701 does not come with a .pdf version of the help docs  

• In your Applications folder, right-click on the modo icon and select 'Show package contents'
• The PDF is located in the 'Help' folder
• Open iTunes and drag the PDF onto the books icon
• The pdf will appear on your bookshelf once you synch your iPad