Blender Intermediate Rigging - Bendy Bone Neck Rig

in this video i'll show you how to create an advanced next setup using bendy bones in the description you can find links for the original mesh the file that i'm using here so you can follow along as well as the final rig so let's get started first let's change the armature display mode to b-bone switch the pose mode select the two neck bones go to bone properties and other bendy bones change segments to 10. this enables us to work with bendy bones [Music] now we need to create custom bendy bone handles let's add one at the start of the neck let's align it to the neck by shift selecting the neck bone and pressing ctrl alt a duplicate this bone twice to create the middle handle and the end handle snap their positions to the middle and end of the neck rename the first one to mch next start handle the middle one to neck and the last one to mch neck and handle let's assign these new bones as custom handles for the neck bones select the first one set handles to tangent and assign the first and second handle bones in the custom fields [Music] do the same for the second neck bone handles the tangent middle and last handle bones as custom handles these handle bones now control the curvature of the neck to make the neck stretchy give the bones stretch two constraints with the custom handle bones as targets [Music] this results in this behavior [Music] next we will create a setup that will make it easier to animate the full neck add a new bone at the start of the neck snap its tail to the end of the neck [Music] give it 15 bendy bone segments make sure you are in edit mode and set the ease in and out values to 1.5 back to pose mode now assign the handles to this bone too mold the tangent start handle is the first handle bone to fix this weird twist just align its orientation with the first handle bone and end handle is the end handle bone [Music] rename it to mch neck and stretch 2 and handle [Music] this bone will create a seamless curvature in the neck while maintaining the division in the middle for secondary control now let's make the middle handle follow this bone by using a copy transforms constraint [Music] in this new constraint settings set the head tail value to 0.5 and enable the follow bone button also reset the stretch 2 constraints if needed [Music] now you can see how even with the two separate bones we get one seamless curve [Music] select the middle handle again press ctrl a and choose apply selected as rest pose just to make sure that the bone's position will be the same in edit and pose mode by constraining the middle handle bone to the neck you've lost the option to animate it so let's fix that now start by duplicating it and scale it down so it's easier to select rename it to buff neck and parent the original handle to this new bone adding buffer bones is very common in blender because many constraints don't have transformation offsets select the middle handle again and delete its constraints as you can see now we can freely transform the middle handle but it still follows the neck as the next step let's add the head and chest control bones we'll do this by duplicating the chest deform bone and renaming it to chest and then duplicating the head bone and renaming it to head i already prepared some custom shapes that i will assign to these controls now one for the head and one for the chest [Music] and one for the neck as well now these controls do look pretty but they don't have any functionality yet so let's hook them up start by pairing the start handle and the neck bone to the chest control [Music] and then parent the end handle to the head control let's see how it works now and this is what we call a dependency cycle the head is parented to the neck and the neck is constrained to the head so one will keep updating the other one infinitely in this case to fix it just unparent the head control with that most of the setup is done but there is one area that we can still improve so when the neck is stretched or squashed you would expect it to behave in a certain way but if you take a look at it now it is always maintaining this s shape and that does not look very natural and what we would like to happen is that when it is stretched that it becomes straight and when it's squashed that it becomes more curved now this behavior can be changed by changing the ease in and out values on a b-bone as you can see here by making it smaller the neck is becoming more straight and by increasing it the neck is becoming more curved automate these changes we can use a driver this driver will measure the neck length and based on that it will either decrease or increase these values before we create the driver let's add one extra bone this bone will serve as a reference point for measuring the default neck length so duplicate the end neck handle and parent it to the chest control rename it to mch neck length ref it should stay in place when we move the neck or the head now select the mch neck bone right click on the ease out parameter and choose add driver i don't like using this floating driver edit window so i will split my view and change the mode for the left one to drivers and show the side panel and switch to the drivers tab first let's create all the variables we will need change the mode for this one to distance add another one change it also to distance rename the first one to dist this is fine for now just a lot of execution rename the second one to this underscore ref set all object values to be our rig you can easily copy and paste these now for this the first bone will be the start handle and the second bone will be the end handle and for this ref the first bone will be the start handle and the second bone will be the length ref bone now we can start writing the driver expression the first part would be to divide this with this graph [Music] by dividing these two we get the stretching factor so when we deform the neck this value will tell us by how much we have shortened or lengthened the neck [Music] now by adding one minus before the division the value will start from zero instead of from one and it will also be inverted and this is exactly what we want the next thing we can change is how fast the neck becomes straight as you can see now we have to stretch it quite far for it to become straight and when it's squashed it's not curved enough so let's get back to our driver put the existing expression between parentheses and multiply it all by 2.5 i played around with this value and 2.5 gave me the best result this works but it immediately shows us the next issue we have to fix when we stretch the neck too far the value goes beyond -1 and that breaks the neck so we need to make sure that it never goes beyond minus 0.9 for that we can use the max expression and as the first value we type in minus 0.9 and put everything in parentheses we can even go as far as minus 0.99 so let's adjust the expression [Music] and with that the driver is done what's left to do is to copy it to some other easing values right click on it and select copy as new driver then right click and paste driver on the ease in parameter by doing it this way if needed we only need to adjust the ease out driver and the ease in will inherit the changes let's take a look at how the neck is deforming now it's almost there let's select the second neck deform bone and paste the driver on the ease in and ease out parameters and for the first neck deform bone let's paste it only on the ease out parameter i've found that applying the driver to these ease in and out parameters gives the nicest looking neck poses [Music] and lastly we can do some cleanup let's move the head and chest controls to the first armature layer and the neck control to the second one [Music] this way we can display only what we need i have already prepared some colored bone groups to which i will assign the controls now [Music] and with that this neck rig is done if you would like to support this channel and learn more about rigging and animation consider subscribing to my patreon thank you for watching you

Channel: Armin Halac

Views: 9,915

Keywords: blender, rigging, animation, rigtip, techart, gamedev, character animation, cartoon, 3d, visdev, design, maya, tutorial, film, unreal, epic, ue

Id: 5YT3Ocxeawo

Length: 11min 29sec (689 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020