Experimenting with Grease Pencil Rigging in Blender: Empty Groups vs. Automatic Weights

hey guys Joyce and Anthony AKA JJ I wanted to experiment is there a difference when rigging with 2D characters between empty groups and automatic weights but to do that we need to go back to the beginning I am going to just open up a general blend file and I'm using blender 4.1 release candidate before I start I'm just going to go to edit preferences and making sure and add-ons and then making sure that rigify is selected I don't need the default Cube or the light so I'm selecting it and pressing shortcut X to delete to help me when drawing I'm changing the view to front view just going to move it up slightly now I'm going to add my grease pencil by pressing shift a shortcut going down to grease pencil and adding a blank these next few steps I just do these out of habit but I like to change the viewport shading from solid to rendered view I definitely don't want a black background so I'm going to the World Properties changing the color to like a light orange similar to my last rigging video and I'm going to change the strength to one actually I kind of want it a little bit brighter I think that's good normally I like to go to the grease pencil at the top and turn on the canvas which really helps me when I'm moving around the scene and I I'm again I'm turning it on but since I'm going to be in front view the whole time I really don't need it but the canvas really does help me again when I'm moving around the scene now it's time to start drawing I'm going to switch from object mode to draw mode and if you look on the right I'm already in the data object properties Tab and under layers I'm going to turn off lights and under layers I'm just going to change it to the sketch layer and wait before I start draing I actually am going to turn on the mirror modifier which helps for rigging helps everything be symmetrical and right here I changed the drawing plane from view to front but again since I'm staying in front view that really wasn't necessary and always when I'm using the mirror modifier it takes me a second to get used to it I just wanted to show you these are the two reference images that I'm using for this with this I'm just going to kind of fast forward to when I'm almost done because again this is just a sketch layer okay so I'm pretty much finished with my sketch layer and yeah I think that looks good I am going to now turn off the mirror modifier I always get this notification that's my fault I need to go into object mode and now when I apply the modifier it should be good okay now I'm going to go to the inking layer I'm going to make my character a little bit smaller I didn't mean to make her ginormous so I'm just clicking her and pressing s to scale it down I'm going to lower the opacity of my sketch layer and I'm going to click the plus to add a new layer and I'm going to call it face so I'm going to have like a separate layer for Face Body arms legs feet it's just going to help me when I need to go in and weight paint and I'm going to click this drop down and autolock inactive layer so if I need to like erase something it won't go down and erase my sketch layer and off camera I turned on the mirror modifier again I'm just repeating this process and I guess yeah I made a layer for the neck but then after that it's the body the arms the legs and then the feet [Music] I'm going to zoom out so I am done inking now it's time to start coloring but before I do that I need to get my reference image so I just did shift a empty and then image right now I'm clicking RX and then 90 so I'll be able to see the reference image and I clicked open and I'm going to scale this image to see it this time I'm going to be coloring in my character I'm going to select my grease pencil go from object mode to draw mode and well right here I go and I add a new layer in the materials I really looking back didn't need to do that since I'll be using vertex paint but now I'm going to switch to vertex and I am going to add a new palette right there and I'm going to change it to I guess character colors and I'm going to switch to the eye dropper tool and switch it from material to palette so any color I select here will go into my new palette that I just made so I'm doing her skin her hair the different colors of her [Music] clothes let me go back to the draw so if I select that at the bottom right there you'll see all the different colors from the reference image and again this is personal preference under the head layer I'm just going to add Head color and then this is what going to be the layer where I add the fill as I start to go in and color in my character I notice oh I forgot to turn off the lights option so I undo that and turn that off when you have the lights option selected lights will be reflected on your 2D character but that is not what I want for this scene and I'm just repeating this process coloring my whole [Music] character the coloring is finally finished so I'm going to zoom out to show you my finished character okay now that the character is done I'm going to add my Armature I did shift a Armature basic basic human meta rig so as you can see it's very small so I'm just pressing s to scale it to adjust my Armature to more closely fit my character I'm in object mode but I need to switch to edit mode so I'm just going to go in and adjust like you can see the arms that needs to be adjusted the arms and the legs I think the Armature is good okay now that both my grease pencil character and my Armature is done I'm going to go back to object mode and select my grease pencil then I'm going to press shortcut contrl a apply all transforms and then my armatur control a all transforms why did I just do that why did I apply all transforms to my character and my rig I'm going to give you guys an example of what happens when I do contrl a and what happens when I don't so this is my blob my red blob that I finished drawing now that it's done I am like my character I am going to add my Armature you can click add at the top top add Armature basic basic human meta rig so I am it's too small I am going to scale it up and then I'm going to move it down on the z-axis and then scale it a little bit more so the Armature fits my blob I think that's pretty good okay now I'm going to go and generate a rig and I'm not going to do controll a apply all transforms and let's see what happens let me turn off the meta rig so you can see the rig if you see right now my rig isn't matching my character you remember when I went back in the rig and I scaled it and adjusted since I didn't click crl a it's not recognized on the rig so I'm going to control Z I'm going to start over I'm going to add the meta rig again add Armature basic basic humanid meta rig and again I am going to scale The Meta rig to fit my character I think that's good and I am going to do contrl a this time apply all transform so now when I generate the rig let me turn off the meta so you can see the actual rig my rig actually matches my blob hopefully this demonstration showed why I do control a and then then apply all transforms so when it's time for me to add the rig the rig recognizes the adjustments that I made to the meta rig back to my character since I already did apply all transformed I'm going to click generate the rig and it's good it's almost time to weight paint I'm going to turn off the meta rig so we can see just the rig and then I'm going to parent my Grease pencil my 2D character to the rig making sure my grease pencil character is selected first and then I am going to select the rig and then I'm going to press shortcut command P to set parent and then this menu appears I'm going to go under armatur deform and you have two options for the first I'm going to click empty group empty group means I need to go in and weight paint every body part automatic weights they do it for you let me select my grease pencil which now is kind of on the side of the rig and let me move that up if I go to the data object properties Tab and scroll [Music] down to the vertex groups this is what I'm going to be weight painting if you see there's just different body parts right here I'm going to go back to the rig and I'm going to turn on show the names right there so let me zoom in a little bit so you can see the names the body is divided into different parts and when I go into the vertex group I think it's just the spine that's divided into six parts I'm going to be weight painting every part separately I'll go into more Det detail I'm going to show you in just a second what I realized is when I finished drawing my 2D character I forgot to merge the the color layer with the inking layer so I'm just going to do that right now it's going to help me when I'm weight painting I just fast forwarded but I combined all the color layers with my inking layers and the body parts so I'm going to scroll back down to vertex group cuz I'm about to start Weight painting it does take some time to go through this that's why my next experiment I'm going to try automatic weights and see if that works with a 2d character but for right now I got to do this let me go from object mode to weight paint to me the best way to describe it black means that nothing has been weight painted if I tried to move my character with the rig nothing would happen because I haven't told blender how I want the weight to be distributed when it comes to weight painting and body parts so the first thing I'm going to do is the spine right now I'm going to autolock all in active layers just to make it easier for me I'm just kind of like isolating all the other layers cuz again I just want the spine so I just want the body part to to be selected I'm going back to the rig just to turn on the names so you can see okay now I'm going to go back to the grease pencil and start Weight painting we'll go back to the data object properties and scroll back down to vertex group so the spine there's spine all the way up to spine six okay so to me the way I think about it is I need to divide the spine 1 2 3 4 five six seven times and if you can see the names there's like spine one spine two spine three so just spine there's no number I'm going to keep that at the very bottom and again you can adjust the radius the strength the weight I'm going to make it a little bit bigger a little bit smaller so the spine again I'm dividing it up into seven Parts red to me like it it's the hottest part I want that to be the most heavily weight painted and it goes from red to blue blue is like the least amount of weight looking back I probably did a little bit I should have maybe made the brush a little bit smaller blue means something is been weight paint pained not the current layer that I'm on cuz I'm right now I'm on spine1 so I'm just going to do that on top of it again like yeah looking back my brush was a little bit too small I could have done a better job dividing spine one to six now spine two again I'm just um moving up a little bit more right here I realized that there's no vertex group for the head so I'm just going to include the hair and the head as a part of the spine so I need to go back up to the layers [Music] and unlock the head layer [Music] for the last spine point6 I'm just going to make that the crown of the head and again I'm in I have the grease pencil selected and I'm in weight paint okay so I have finished spine to 0.006 spine so I just divided that up seven ways from kind of like the bottom of her jacket to the crown of her head black means it has not been weight painted blue means it has been weight painted but it's on another layer so I'm going to finish the rest of the body I did speed the rest of my process of weight painting up I believe it's just the spine that goes from spine all the way to spine 06 the rest of them I think they just have two or just one so for instance the pelvis you do pelvis left and then pelvis right but the left thigh there's just the thigh and then the thigh 01 so you just divide that by two when you're weight painting [Music] the best way to gauge if your done Weight painting when you zoom out your character should be completely [Music] blue okay I'm going to go to the rig and let's see how everything looks I'm in object mode I'm going to turn off the name since I don't need that anymore and let me go from object mode to pose mode and I'm just going to click the I'm going to click the hand first and then I'm just going to press G to grab let's see if it moves now I want to select the top half of her body and see if I can if she can bend her knees I want to see if it does that okay I'm just pressing G okay I'm going to continue to play with this but if you remember when we went to Armature deform this was empty groups and that meant I had to weight paint every single body part now I'm going to go back a couple steps and I'm going to try automatic weights I've seen it work with 3D characters I haven't seen any videos use automatic weights when it comes to the grease pencil in 2D well let's find out experiment number two so I am back with just my 2D character in The Meta rig so right now I'm just doing controll a apply all transforms and I'm making sure to do that with my meta rig control a apply all transforms with the meta rig selected I'm going to the data object properties and then under rigify click generate rig okay I'm going to turn off my meta rig so we can just see the rig okay that looks good so now I'm going to parent my grease pencil character to the rig I'm going to select the grease pencil first then the rig and I'm doing command P to parent last time I used empty groups this time I'm going to try automatic weights um with my rig selected I'm going to go to pose mode I just want to see if it's going to move no okay so my rig is moving but my grease pencil character is not so they are not connected right here I'm just playing around cuz I'm trying to figure out why it's not moving do is there a setting that I need to do do I need to go back to grease pencil and weight paint again right here I'm just trying to figure out maybe to see if I did something wrong I went from pose mode to edit mode again just playing around seeing again if I did something wrong or when it comes to automatic weights that doesn't apply to grease pencil after playing around with the rig for about an hour and testing almost all the settings I don't don't believe when it comes to Armature deform and then automatic weights I don't think that applies to 2D characters and the grease pencil in blender right here I'm like okay enough is enough I'm going to select my grease pencil and it's time to start Weight painting again again I go to data and then vertex groups now I'm going to go from object to weight paint and right before I start Weight painting I just want to do one more experiment with 3D following all the steps I just did just to again make sure that I didn't do something wrong this is my experiment I just did a simple three block mesh on top of each other and now I'm adding The Meta rig applying all transforms contr a apply all transforms and now I'm parenting my Cubes To The Meta rig to make a rig oh interesting wait no not to make a rig so a 3D when you par in it it just stays a meta rig okay this showed me I didn't do anything wrong I did the correct steps automatic weight just does not apply to 2D okay back to my 2D character and back to going from object mode to weight paint and I'm going to fast forward with this part cuz I'm just doing again what I did with the empty groups on Armature and I don't think I mentioned but if you remember last time I had multiple body part layers this time I just have it all in one layer now that the weight painting is done I am going to select my rig and go to pose mode it looked a little too bulky for me so I'm trying to figure out oh there it goes I'm turning that off I'm going to keep playing around with this rig but hopefully after watching this video you feel more comfortable rigging a 2d character in blender this is Joyce an Anthony AKA JJ until next time

Channel: Joyce-Anne Anthony

Views: 1,897

Keywords: grease pencil, Blender 4.1, learning Blender 2D, Blender 2D, 2D, Joyce-Anne Anthony, JJ, practicemakesperfect, rigging, rigging a 2D character, Empty Groups, Automatic Weights

Id: fgzkgiDOddM

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2024