Blender rigging / skinning
Overview
I've been asked or have seen many times the question on how to learn rigging (a.k.a skinning) which is the process of applying weights on vertices of a model to allow it to bend with a skeletal bone structure. This allows armor and clothing to bend and move with the pre-defined animations for the character / creature.
Here are the ways (and tutorials) that I currently know about doing this process with Blender.
Manual Weight Painting the old way (still good to know)
- Rigging Cutely by CuteUnit
- Skinning in Blender by Throttlekitty
- Rigging your mesh with Weight Painting by Scott
Bone Heat (New Feature in Blender 2.46)
- No tutorial yet but when parenting an object to the armature (skeleton), you can select "Create from Bone Heat" (has some issues but if done correctly, can be useful for some things)
Bone Weight Copy script
- Copy from one similar object to another: Easy Rigging in Blender
- Refined mesh for copying weights more accurately: Growlfs Blender Rigging Machines
- Tutorial in German but enough pictures to get the gist of it: Growlfs Blender Tutorial- Skinning- Vollautomatik
