First Part

Building the Rig

This tutorial covers the entire animation process of this little guy, rst, creating a simple fk armature or rig, then assigning the mesh vertices to each bone using the weight painting technique, and last, animating it using non linear animation tools. First I add the armature object Im going to use, the 3D Cursor was located at the mesh pivot, so it gets created there. One thing to note is that in this moment the armature has a rotation value different from 0. Its a good idea to apply the rotation value before beginning to rig and specially skin the mesh so local coordinates of the armature object are the same as the global coordinates. Ctrl+A in "Object Mode" will do the job.

Apply size and rotation Ill turn on "X-Ray" on the armature and "Wire" display on the mesh at the "Draw extra" buttons, that helps when building the rig because you can decide were to place joints, for example in this kind of model, I like to place joints between two edge rings, not in the midle of one for better deformation.

X-Ray Then, in "Object Mode" you can re-position the Armature object, the armature pivot point denes the center of object rotacion, so its a very important thing to place it right.

Bone in position There it is, now Ill grab the bones tip and extrude it a couple of times to make he birds back chain (set of connected bones), so thats two for hes back and one for hes tail, the chain is NOT located in the middle of the body because he is not a worm, he got a spine in his back that allows him to move, same goes for neck etc, specially in more realistic characters.

Back and tail chain I have added a three bone chain for the left leg and then simply duplicate it to make the other leg bone chain. Select Linked Press L hoovering on any of the chain bones can quickly select an entire bone chain.

Legs chain duplicated The back and legs chains aren't connected by any means, so Ill parent the legs root bones to the back bone selected in the image, this will make the leg chains to follow the back bones rotation, so with one leg root bone and the back bone selected (in that order) Ill use the Ctrl P shortcut and the "Keep Offset option". The "Connected" option would make the bones to join and form a single chain but I dont want that.

Keep offset parenting You can test your rig right away by pressing the TAB key to enter "Pose" mode, if it enters "Object" mode instead, press Ctrl TAB once to activate pose mode, then TAB will keep switching between "Pose" and "Edit" modes as I want it to be.

Testing parent For the wings, I have added a new 3 bones chain, and I have used the mirror tool to place the other wings chain, Im in using the "3D Cursor" pivot option to use it as the mirror center point, so I have placed it at the center of the armature. Mirror tool in armature "Edit" mode is executed by M.

Mirroring wing chain Now Ill add the root bone, this is the bone were all chains end up, when you move the root bone, you affect the entire rig, its used to move the whole character for example controlling up and down positions in a walk cycle (ok ight cycle), the root bone is not necessarily the objects center of gravity so its not a good idea to use it for rotation while spinning or jumping in the air, etc.

Root bone added As I said, Ill parent these bones (selected in the image) to the root, tested it in "Pose" mode, works ne, good.

Each chain root parented to Root bone Now a 4 bones chain for the neck and head, also parented to the root.

Neck and head chain parented to Root bone

At last, Ill parent the beak chains to the "Head" bone this time. Thats it for the rigging, no constraints are needed in these one, just simple FK chains. Recalculate bone normals Ctrl N in armature "Edit" mode recalculate the selected bones "roll" normals, its very useful to have the bones Z axis pointing in the right direction.

Beack chains parented to Head bone

Second Part
Skinning Now comes the part where we make the mesh to actually be deformed by the armature. First thing is to add the "Armature" modier to the mesh so I select the mesh object and hit Add Modier|Armature. The "Armature" modier should be before the "Subsurf" modier, I want the armature to deform the non subdivided mesh, so the subdivision can work on top of it and make a beautiful smoothed surface. Actually, by the moment of writing this tutorial you cant place an "Armature" modier below a "Subsurf" one but in the future it might be possible. Use TAB auto completion to quickly ll in the text buttons like this one.

Adding armature modier OK, the modier has two options enabled: "Vert.Groups" (Vertex Groups) and "Envelopes". If I pose my rig right now the mesh would deform horribly by the default envelopes deformation distances but Im not using envelopes in this one, so Ill turn them off. Envelopes turned off To start weight painting make sure that the armature is in "Pose" mode and then select the mesh object, then hit Ctrl TAB to enter in "Weight Paint" mode. First Ill paint the tail bone s weight so Ill select that one.

Weight Paint mode, tail selected

This is the "Paint" panel located in the "Editing" buttons F9, here you can chose your brush Weight, Opacity, Size and more. The weight value will be between 0 (dark blue) to 1 (red)

Paint panel The red verts in the tail will be fully controlled by the tails bone, so I have paint them in red, the cyan ones will be slightly deformed by it. Now I can test the deformation just by rotating the bone. Note: The fact that a vertex group has some verts in red doesn't mean they cant be affected by another bones vertex group. For example, if two vertex groups share some vertices painted in red, each vert group will have 50% of the weight over them.

Weight painted mesh, Tail bone When you click on a bone and start painting Blender automatically creates the vertex group for you so you dont have to manually create and name it. Examples of other vert groups painted the same way:

Weight painted mesh, bone: Back02

Weight painted mesh, bone: Back01

Weight painted mesh, bone: Neck01

Now this is useful!, use the Alt B view clipping to reach hidden or obstructed places in the mesh or scene, hit Alt B again to turn clipping off.

Clipped view, bone: Neck02 Some times verts are easier to select in "Edit" mode like this ones for the head vert group, the you can add selected verts to the Head bone group with the "Vertex Groups" buttons at the "Link and Materials" panel. If there is no group already created for the bone, you can turn on "Weight Painting" for a second an paint on one of the verts just to make Blender create the group for you or you can add the group manually and name it the same as the bone.

Link and materials panel, vertex groups

Head vertex group assignment, Edit mode

Head vertex group assignment, Weight Paint mode

Here is the nished weight painted model, posed to test that everything works right. The eyes are different objects and they are not assigned to any bone yet. Ill parent the eyes objects to the Head bone, but rst I need the armature to be back at rest position.

Armature posed, eyes unparented

Pressing the "Rest Position" button in the "Armature" panel makes the armature to temporarily take its default position, this is useful because there are situations when cleaning all the bones transformation values is not possible.

Armature at rest position So I rst select the eye objects, then the Head bone and press Ctrl P using the "Bone" option.

Parenting eyes to Head bone Now Ill just turn off "Rest Position" and I got my pose again but with the eye objects correctly parented to the Head bone. One thing I like to do is lock the attributes I know I wont use, all the selected bones in the image are chain roots, so in a RMB drag they will move instead of rotate like other bones in a chain, so I lock the "Loc" values and now they cant be moved, a drag will cause the bone to start "Rotate" mode. (locking can be done in the "Transform Properties" panel)

Chain roots Location transform locking