How To Rig A Mech Blender 2.83 Step by Step

in this tutorial you're going to learn how to rig a mech you will learn how to build a rig from scratch you will learn how to place the rig inside of the mech you will learn how to set up inverse kinematics on a three jointed leg you will learn how to set up an advanced ankle rig you will learn how to set up an action constraint you'll learn how to make as well as use custom shapes to make your rig easier to animate as you work your way through this tutorial this tutorial is taught in a step-by-step fashion i try to not explain what i'm doing but why i'm doing what i'm doing i plan to use youtube's new chapter feature to make this tutorial easier to navigate thanks for taking the time to look at this tutorial and i hope that you enjoy it hi this is ali irango of little guy cgi today i'm going to show you how to rig a mech in blender 2.83.1 so let's get started okay the setup you see in front of you typically what i do as far as maneuvering help myself maneuver as i go to view then i go to 3d navigation to see this little 3d navigation setup you need to go to the upper left of the screen go to edit user preferences add-ons the top add-on put a check mark next to 3d navigation when i say add-on this is something that is built into the default version of blender you just need to put a check mark there to have it show up here okay what you're looking at is a mech that i showed how to make in another tutorial i'll put a link up so that you can get to that tutorial we are also currently in what's called uh perspective view if you look to the upper left you can see this user perspective this is showing the view that we're in what we want to do is go to a front orthographic view orthographic view is kind of like a blueprint view it is a view that shows 3d objects as if they were almost in 2d so i'm going to go to the right and then select front so now we're in front orthographic view also when you look to the left you can see the upper left front orthographic view okay if you're watching this video and you're totally new to uh 3d what rigging is is rigging is a way of putting in uh credit card armature bones that allow you to take a mesh like you see in front of you and then to be able to fairly easily animate that mesh there's different ways of animating meshes rigging is as far as i know the most effective way to to animate a mesh there's other things that you can use sometimes like motion capture things like that but generally if you want to animate a mesh you would use rigging which is pretty much the process of putting in a rig made of armature bones and then animating those bones and starting this process off one of the important things is you want to have the 3d cursor in the center of your scene here's the 3d cursor here i'm going to purposely move it to the side so i'm going to hold shift press right so now the 3d cursor is here right i want to move the 3d cursor so it's back to the center of the screen so i'm going to hold shift then press c uh when i did that now the 3d cursor is back in the middle of the scene okay what we're about to do is bring in our armature so i'm going to hold shift press a this brings opens up our add to menu what we're going to do is go down in this list go to armature and then we're going to single bone if if by the way you see those different things underneath my mouse those are dealing with the the rigify add-on that comes with blender we're not going to be using uh those options however if you are interested in like what those options are you would go to edit user preferences add-ons you would look down in the list and then you would put a check mark next to riggify uh we're just gonna for this tutorial we just need the single bone so i'm gonna left click on the single bone okay we brought our armature bone in however we can't see the bone if you look to the upper right you can see our uh uh collections uh display here see this at the bottom here where we see uh the armature here so the armature is currently selected we just can't see it so to be able to see we need to go down to looks like a square this is our object properties uh panel we want to go down to where we see viewport display we're going to select the uh arrow there and then we're going to see this uh option that says in front you're going to left click there once you left click there now you can see the armature bone okay so since we can see our armature bone what we want to do is move this armature bone down to about the hips area to do that we're going to look to the upper left of our screen we're going to go to the move tool to select that we're also going to go to the upper right of our screen what i'm looking at is these items so the the armature bone currently all the the properties for the uh armature bone are zeroed out with the exception scale we can see one one one so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna push this armature bone down to about here so when i did that we're currently in object mode it's very important when you're rigging to be aware of which uh mode you're in as you work in rigging so this previously was zero now this says you know uh negative four dot two one eight seven it would be better for us to have this when i push this down slightly more actually i'm looking at this right here so i'm going to move this up i'm looking at the line right here going into the leg so that should be good there we want this to be zeroed out so what we can do is that's the location right so the rotation is the same zero zero zero the scale was one one one uh this has changed what we can do to make this be zero dollars we're gonna hold ctrl press a and then we see this apply menu we want to select location so when we did that you can see that now this is zeroed out again uh issues can happen if when you move something in object mode if you don't have your location as well your your rotation zeroed out so with that being said we're going to go to the upper left and we're going to go to edit mode so here in edit mode what we would want to do is i'm going to zoom in this is the tail of the bone this is the head of the bone when i think about this it looks like it should be opposite to me however as far as i understand it that's the official way that things are explained as far as armature bones what we want to do is snap this snap this uh tail to the head right so what i'm going to do is i'm going to select the head and then i'm going to hold shift press s this brings up our snap to menu so what i'm going to do is i'm going to go to cursor to selected so i have the 3d cursor right there on the head of the bone so i'm going to select this bone now and then uh with that bone select i'm going to hold shift press s this brings the brush snap to menu and then what i'm going to choose is selection to cursor keep offset so now what it looks like is it looks like our armature bone has disappeared it didn't the reason why we did this is when you're rigging you want to be very careful about which direction your bones are facing as well as the roll so i want a bone the bone to come straight forward so that's why i snapped so it's still there it's just the way it is it doesn't look like it's there so what we're going to do is go back to our uh move tool and then we're gonna select the move tool we're gonna push straight out so now we can see our armature bone again okay this bone that we made right here this first bone uh its main function for now is going to be our handle so i selected the bone i'm gonna pull this bone back i'm gonna go to view uh so i can see these uh uh options to change the view right here i'm gonna go to right okay so uh so basically what's gonna happen is this is going to be a handle the bones that go into the leg are going to come from here as well as the bones that go into the spine so i'm going to rotate slightly okay so here we can see so we need to have this push forward somewhat like that i'm going to left click on nothingness to deselect i'm going to select here pull this back like that so this is going to control the main core of our our uh mech this is basically going to be a handle so what we're going to what we want to do now is left click here let's okay so what we're going to do is we're going to start extruding our bones so we're currently in edit mode it's very important when you're in uh when you're rigging to know which mode you're in so with this uh tail selected i'm going to press e to extrude right click so now i'm going to just extrude over like this i'm going to select front so i'm just looking at the center of the mass right here is uh yeah what i'm looking at right now okay we want to press extrude again so i'm going to press e to extrude right click and then bring this down to the knee area so i'm going to roll the mouse but i'll zoom back so i'm looking around so it's easier to adjust the bones when you're going like straight up and down as well as forward as well as back so i'm going to move this up some just want to push this like this okay i can see from the side here the legs i'm gonna just make this leg line up better so what i'm doing is i'm rotating in 3d space to uh to get a decent view at how the uh how we have the bones currently set up okay i'm going to hold down the mouse button to turn to the side actually i'm going to go to the lower right of the screen to select right i'm going to select this bone i'm going to press e to extrude right click i'm going to pull this bone straight back using the manipulator then push this down using the manipulator as i'm working with this i'm thinking of this being like the thigh bone here this being like the shin bone this being like a very long ankle bone so i'm rolling the mouse wheel to zoom back i'm going to press e to extrude right click i'm going to push this down like this then move this bone forward i'm going to hold the middle mouse button to take a look to see what's going on okay i'm going to go back to right view i want extra flexibility right here so for that what i'm going to do is i'm going to press e to extrude then right click i'm going to push this down like that push it forward some like that okay looking at the bones here i want there to be a handle to be able to control the foot so i'm going to select here i'm then going to press e to extrude right click i'm then going to use the manipulator to pull this uh bone out which is going to be a handle that we use to manipulate this area right here on our mac okay i'm going to roll the mouse will zoom back as we work our way through the rigging process the way you want to think is you want to look at the pieces of your mesh and then decide which bone is going to control which area so we have this area here towards the front this area towards the back so we're going to make one bone come out here and then one bone go out to control the uh the back part of this mesh okay i'm going to go to the upper right select hand to pan hold them in the mouse button rotate i'm going to select that part of the bone then what i'm going to do is press e to extrude right click i'm going to take the manipulator and then push this bone straight forward like that i'm going to select that piece of the bone again i'm going to press the uh e button to extrude and then uh or e key to extrude right click to deselect then i'm gonna pull a bone out for the back as well so now i'm rotating the view trying to see how the bones are placed okay so i'm holding the mini mouse button rotate so uh often you see me rotating i'm rotating so i can see how everything is placed as far as 3d space uh what we're going to do now is i'm going to roll the mouse with the zoom in i left clicked right here on the tail of the bone so what i'm going to do is press e to extrude right click and i'm going to bring that bone up okay so this bone here is going to con this bone here is going to control this base piece right here i'm going to push this here because i'm gonna have another bone that goes up so i have this bone leaning forward so it matches up with this bone here okay as i'm looking at the bone here i'm thinking do i want to have a bone just for this piece i don't think that i do because i'm thinking that this bone will control here this bone also can control this uh i don't think this is gonna i'm gonna have this moving so with that being the case i'm going to have this bone go up to here so i have the towel of the bone here even more so the plan is to have another bone come out the other bone that comes out will control the area of the mech that is above this area here when uh setting up the setting up your bones one of the things i recommend for you to do is to like the thing you could be tempted to do is like every piece did you see have a bone match up for that piece right i would recommend you avoid that because the more bones that you have uh can actually make things easier for you when you when it comes time to animate your your character so that being said when i look at this one part of my mind is like look you can make a bone that goes you know out to here and then to here and then to here that's not necessary so what we're going to do is we're going to press e to extrude we're going to right click then we're going to bring this bone out like this right and pretty much the thinking here is we're taking this bone we're ignoring this right here like this this bone here no sorry this bone right here is going to control most of this this bone right here is being set up so i can control this right here so what i'm going to do is i'm going to pull this bone back so now moving in 3d space to see if that's correct let's go to top view so this bone is setting up to have another bone come out that's going to control this piece of the mesh right here okay so i'm gonna pull this more towards the center so with this done i'm gonna press uh e to extrude right click and i'm gonna push this bone out here like that okay when we extruded this bone out the bone is rolled to the side which we need to deal with let's go to front view from front view we can see that the bone is not set on the correct height so what we'll do is we'll select the main part of the bone we'll go back to front view we selected the main part of the bone rather than just this so that the the whole bone will raise up front view again or so i'm just using the front view to position this i can select here move this up it's not totally necessary um okay so this bone is is rolled so if you're like what do you mean rolled see how this bone here is it's straight like if you look at the moan you can see it's it's there's no role so when i say roll if you look at my mouse that's what i mean by like roll like if the bone is actually turned like this is right it's how do you deal with that while you look to the lower right you can see like uh where we can where we can we can select this button right here we can work with uh this gives us different options work with our bones we want to go to viewport display we see all these different uh options here we want to select axes right so i'm going to go to the upper right go to the hand so when i zoom in here see this uh tail of the bone here this see how this x is going straight up this y is going straight out the z this is a bone this is how we want this bone to be so when i select this bone when we go to the upper right to uh items see this roll is negative 90. so that's the roll so this is the role that we want right here so when we select here we can see this is negative 71. so hold them in a mouse button rotate see how the x-axis is pointing to the side so if i left-click and drag to the side you can see the bone rolling so once we get up to about negative 90 now this bone uh the the roll is correct as far as how the bone should be as far as the axes i found that the most important thing is that your bones are consistent with each other so now the bone for the bone roll for this bone is consistent with the bone roll for this bone and both of these bones are pointed in the same direction so uh this is good for now just to be clear when i say good for now should be good period as well you know that should be this this bone should be fine okay i'm gonna hold them in a mouse button and rotate left click on nothingness d to deselect go to the hand the pan i'm gonna select this tail of the bone here i'm going to press uh e to extrude right click take the manipulator to push this bone straight forward like that so this bone is actually going to control most of the mass of the upper part of this mech i'm going to left click to deselect okay i'm holding the mouse button to take a look we have most of the bones that we need i'm going to select here press e to extrude right click i'm going to use this as the main handle for the leg bone i also want to select here hold shift press s this brings up our snap to menu and then going to choose cursor 2 selected i'm then going to hold shift press a which brought in another bone i'll select the main body of that bone i'll push this forward like this this will help to control uh the bend of this bone like i like uh how the bone i'm trying to think of how to say the rotates it's used for positioning the leg okay there is another bone that i would like so i'm going to select here hold shift press d right click and then bring this bone up like this i'm going to press s to scale this bone down some the plan is to use this to control this part as well as this part of our mech i'm gonna left click to deselect okay now that we have uh as far as i know the uh the bones that we need we want to name these bones i'm going to go to the axes and turn that off one of the important things about naming the bones is that when you are animating your in this case our mech having the bones names allows you to to use certain techniques in blender like flipping uh the pose which tends to make things like setting up walk cycles uh very much easier they they would be without using techniques like flipping poses okay now that we have our bones we need to name our bones uh the way that i name bones is i name them as if i was doing with uh a human body just because i know those general areas i think they're also you know most of us know like if you say a leg like what you're talking about with the leg or or chest so uh the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to select this bone right here you're going to go to the right you're going to select what looks just like a bone once you select there when you look to the upper right of this panel you can see here's the name of this bone now this is a center a center uh bone so this doesn't need a dot l that's going to become very important later so like these bones that are on the left hand side i actually want these to be named dot l so this actually i'm gonna name this torso so i'll name this torso then press enter so now that's its name it being the bone okay as we go through here there's a chance we might eventually get rid of this bone as well as this bone um i'm gonna add another bone i'm gonna select here i'm gonna press e to extrude right click and then bring this bone out like that i'll left click to deselect so we're going to go through and quickly name these bones so we select here this is named torso we'll select here we'll name this shoulder dot l then press enter we'll select here we'll name this arm dot l then press enter we'll select here we'll name this uh lower okay my brain is we'll name this lower underscore torso press enter to lock that in we'll select here we'll name this thigh.l then press enter to lock that in we'll select here we'll name this shin up dot l then press enter to lock that in we'll select here we'll name this shin underscore down dot l then press enter to lock that in we'll select here we'll name this leg underscore handle dot l lock that in we'll select here we'll name this ft short for foot underscore handle dot l then press enter to lock that in okay we'll select here we'll name this angle dot l then press enter to lock that in okay we'll select here we'll name this front t for front toe dot l we'll select this back piece we'll name this back t for back two dot l then press enter to lock that in we'll select here we're gonna name this ft for foot underscore control so i'm putting uh ctrl for control dot l then press enter to lock that in okay let's select here so this is torso we'll select here we'll name this mid torso we'll select here we'll name this lower okay it's already named lower torso good we'll name this main underscore handle press enter to lock that in we'll name this wait a second oh i named the wrong thing okay i didn't name the right okay so this is we'll name this hip dot l press enter to lock that in okay starting from the top just held the middle mouse button rotate uh when i select this this is named this is named this is named this is named that's named going to the hand to pan up so now we have this so this is a what's called a pull target this helps to adjust the angle of the uh the leg when you are setting up your character mesh for poses so we're going to name this p t dot l pt standing for pull target okay so now that we have our bones named what we want to do is start setting up constraints to have the mech actually work uh so we want to set up to have the mech so that it's easier to put into poses when you are rigging it's very important that you remember which mode you're in you build your armature bones in edit mode you parent or unparent in edit mode when you put constraints on you tend to do that in pose mode okay the first thing we want to set up is inverse kinematics what kinematics are are basically typically when you're dealing with kinematics you're doing with how limbs move so uh inverse kinematics deal when you have an armature that pushes against the surface so when you walk around uh your foot pushes against the ground so typically when you have something that pushes against the force like the the ground you would use inverse kinematics when you're working with characters typically your character's legs will you'll use inverse kinematics on them four kinematics are when you have a limb move without it pushing on a force so your arm for instance your arm your hand is typically in the air it's freely moving around so you would use typically forward kinematics to rig a character's arm okay and setting up these inverse kinematics before we do that we're actually gonna select this bone here we're gonna press x to bring up our delete delete bone we're gonna delete that bone we're gonna use this bone here as our main handle bone for the leg what we want to do is have this not be parented to the rest of the leg so this bone needs to be cleared of being parented uh to this leg to work as a handle for the leg so to do that we're gonna hold alt press p this brings up our clear parent menu then we're gonna select clear parent so then i'm gonna left click to deselect okay when you're working in rigging uh i'll say this again and again it's important for you to know which mode you're in the reason why i say it again and again is when i was first learning rigging i was uh it was more difficult than it should have been because i would confuse which mode i was in so you make your rig in edit mode you set up constraints in pose mode you also parent things as well as clear parents in edit mode all right so we're about to go to pose mode all right so we're gonna go to the upper left of the screen and then we're gonna go to pose mode so here in pose mode what we want to do is select on this bone that we just unparented we're going to hold shift and then left click on this bone here so i'm letting go shift we're going to do now is hold shift and then press i this brings up our add ik that ik stands for inverse kinematics we can see this says two active bone that's what we want so we're going to left click on that two active bone okay so as you can see the basic inverse kinematics are fairly easy to set up however see this line going from here to there uh to have this work correctly we need to have a proper bone chain to get to the bone chain see where it works over to the uh lower right we select on our bone constraints button you'll see a menu screen here this is i guess we call menu panel here that says chain length typically when you're working in on inverse kinematics you'll set this to two we're going to set this to two so i'm i'm hovering over the arrow so i just set that chain length to two okay so if you're totally new to rigging you might say okay that like what did that do one of the big things it does is now when we select this main handle bone and i press g you see how the uh the the rest of the armature goes down so basically to have your character bend down as well as walk this is huge to be able to pull and then uh have the character bend down just from using this main bone now there is an issue you can see look at the uh the foot there how it's rotating around we need to deal with that so we're gonna left click to deselect okay to deal with that uh it's a fairly easy process what we need to do is go to the upper left go back to edit mode remember we set up constraints in pose mode for bones we set up parenting for bones in edit mode so what we want to do is select this bone and then parent it to our handle bones we'll select the bone first that we want to be paranoid to another bone we'll hold shift select the bone last that we want it to be parented to and then we're going to do is we're going to hold ctrl press p we have this make parent menu pop up then we want to select keep offset so i'm going to left click on keep all set okay i'm going to left click on nothingness to deselect so to be able to move our bones we go back to pose modes we're going to upper left go into pose mode i'm going to select this main bone so now when i press g you can see that that leg now is stable that foot on the bottom there is stable so i'm going to right click now what we also can do is select this main handle bone press g so we now can move this uh around as well so i'm gonna right click to get that to go back to its original position then i'm gonna left click to deselect one of the things with this uh leg setup is if this leg setup had uh basically uh two main parts to make up the leg the way we have this setup is fine however there's three main parts so when i select here and then press g to move the leg when i move the leg you'll notice this part of the leg does not move uh so what we need to do is set this up so that this leg will work where this part of the bone uh this part of the leg moves as well okay this actually isn't uh that difficult to set up i learned how to do this technique from a youtube channel called hyden that's hyden so you want to learn more about it i uh recommend you go check out his channel the way we're going to do this is we're going to add another ik to this bone right here uh before we do that what we want to do is we want to have another handle coming out so what we're going to do is we're going to uh currently we're in pose mode we're going to get the upper left left click go to edit mode i'm going to select the head of the bone right here with this selected i'm going to hold shift then press s this brings up our snap to menu i'm then going to select cursor to selected so with the cursor here the reason why we put the cursor here is because in blender where the 3d cursor is at is where objects tend to come into blender at okay so we're going to bring a bone right to here so we're going to hold shift press a so when we press shift a because we're in edit mode working with bones we automatically brought in an armature bone so i'll zoom in so you can see this i'll go to the upper right hand and pan up to here is the uh the bone that we brought in we're currently selected on the tail of the bone what we want to do now is have this tail of the bone go right to where that 3d cursor is at right so the way that we're going to do this is we're going to hold shift press s to bring up our snap to menu again and then what we're going to do is go to selection to cursor keep offset so when we did that it looks like uh the bone disappeared the bone didn't disappear it's just totally snapped to the 3d cursor that's good because we want the bone to go straight out from where the 3d cursor is at so we'll take this manipulator and then just push straight out like that okay so now with this bone set up so this bone is we brought the bone and the bone isn't parented to anything which is good i'm gonna left click on nothingness to deselect it but actually i'm gonna select the bone let's give the bone a name uh we'll go to the lower right select the uh looks like a bone uh menu and we're gonna change the name of this bone so we'll name this second ik dot l yeah that's i'm fine with that press enter so now i'll left click to deselect we're going to go to the upper left we're now going to go to pose mode so remember when you work with uh rigging it's very important to remember where you're at that's why i'm repeating this numerous times uh we make bones as far as like bring them into blender we parent bones in edit mode we set up constraints in pose mode so here we are in pose mode because we want to set up a new ik constraint okay so what we want to do is first select this new bone that we brought in hold shift and then select this bone this is the bone that we want to have the new ik on so what we're going to do now is hold shift and then press i this brings up our add ik menu we're going to select two active bone okay now with that done i'm going to left click on nothingness to deselect i'm going to select this new ik bone so it's not a new bone it's it's a bone that has a new you know it has a ik on it now so what we want to do is we want to go to the lower right we want to go to our bone constraints tab we want to look to the chain length we want to set this to 2. so with that set up now we can select this bone to move the bottom part of the leg we then can select this bone this bone will select this as well as control this however what we want is we want to be able to select one bone that will control the entire leg and that's what we're about to set up now okay i'm going to zoom back by rolling the mouse button i'm going to left click to deselect so we're going to bring in yet another bone so we're in pose mode we want to bring in another bone where do we go to when we want to bring in another bone we go to edit mode so we're going to go to the upper left then we're going gonna go to edit mode okay we're going to select this bone the reason why we're selecting uh the tail of this bone is because we're just going to make room because the other bone is going to go right here that's the plan anyway so we're going to push this in some so we're going to select here so with this tail of this bone selected we're going to hold shift press s uh which brings up our snap to menu we're then gonna go to cursor to select it so now the 3d cursor is right here why don't we bring the put the 3d cursor there put the 3d cursor there because in blender wherever the 3d cursor is at is where objects tend to come into blender at okay what we're going to do is hold shift then press a so now we have this new bone we have the tail selected i'm gonna use the manipulator to pull up just to make that tail bigger so we're gonna select this bone we're gonna go to the bottom right to give this bone a name and we're gonna name this is main dot leg dot ctrl standing for a control dot l then press enter to lock that in okay the reason why we brought this bone in is this is going to control the other ik bones so i'm going to left click to deselect so first we're going to select this uh bone which is the control for this bone that has an ik constraint on it we're going to hold shift and then select this bone second order is important i'm letting go of shift now i'm going to hold ctrl press p this brings up our make parent menu i'm going to select keep offset i'm going to left click to deselect and go to the second uh control that we have for the second ik constraint which is on this bone we're going to select this first hold shift select this second i'm letting go of shift and now i'm going to hold ctrl press p this brings up our make parent menu we're going to select keep offset i'm going to left click to deselect okay now with those bones parented we can go to the upper left to change from edit mode which we're currently in to pose mode okay remember when we selected this control to move the leg before this part of the leg moved as well as this part this part was stationary now when we select this bone then press g you can see that the entire leg moves and this is just what we want and the reason why this is working is because this control that controls this as well as this control that controls this are both connected to here to this main control bone like i said i learned how to do that setup from the youtube channel haydn i was very happy to find that out because i wasn't sure you know how to get this to work so this works very well it's a nice uh you know nice to have the leg uh set up work correctly so when we select here then we press g we can see that this still works uh as it should as well we also if we need to right click to get that to go back to the regular position we still can select here and press g to move just this here we also can select here then press g to control from here so when we control from here you can see we don't have that top leg moving when we select here and then press g we have the top leg moving as well so gives us other options i'm going to left click to deselect okay another thing we want to have with this setup is we want to be able to easily control the angle so we're currently in pose mode we want to bring in another bone as a pole target we have this one pull target here so to bring in a bone we're going to go to edit mode what we're going to do is we're going to select here there we go okay with the 3d cursor there we're going to hold shift press s this brings up our snap to menu we're going to select cursor to selected we're going to hold shift press a that let us bring in this bone here we're gonna pull this bone back we're gonna push this bone down we're gonna use this bone to help control the angle of this uh bone here this bone right here we're going to push that down this is going to help control the angle of that bone let's give some more distance for those bones there so when we select this bone we already named this pt dot l right so we'll select this bone we're gonna name this p t dot b for back dot l and then press enter to lock that in okay what we need to do now is to set up these uh pull targets to work so to do that we need to go to our upper left so we are now going into pose mode so what we want to do is select the ik once we select the ik what we're going to do is go to our phone constraints uh button which takes us you know we can see our bunker streets menu this pull target right here what you want to do is left click right where this is armature that's the generic name of the armature uh the reason why this is important and sometimes you'll have more than one armature for now we have one armature that is named armature so we'll select armature okay so since we have the armature selected now blender is like okay which bone do you want to work as a pull target so we're going to select here we're going to put in p that shows us uh the bone that we want which is p t dot b l dot l so before this happens i'm going to prepare you i didn't click anything as far as selecting the bone yet when i do select that bone you're going to see the ik bone you know change into a strange position are you prepared okay here we go so i selected the uh the bones and now this is the pull target what we need to do to fix this is you see this pull angle here i'm going to change this to 180 then press enter to lock that in so now the uh pull angle has been adjusted so this should work correctly okay now we need to do the same thing for the other bone so we're going to select this ik selecting this ik because this pull target is set up to control this ik so with this selected we need to go to pull target select the armature that's named armature so then we're going to select here we're going to press p so we want this pt.l so i selected that so we didn't see the uh bone angle change in a strange way uh the pull target is fine if you did see the bone angle change in strange way you would go to pull angle to adjust that typically 90 or negative 90 or 180 or negative 180 seems to be the way that the bones the pull target angle typically needs to be adjusted okay the reason why we set up the pull targets is i'm holding the middle mouse button to rotate to the left or rotate whatever i'm going to select here press j see how i can have this slight angle change notice that when i change the angle this bone here is uh left floating in the error this should be fine since we're using the main control of this uh once you adjust the pull target which the pull targets help a lot this is when it comes to getting the exact angles that you often need when you're animating what you can do is press a to select everything hold alt press r i'm still holding alt then press g and what that does is that resets your bones uh when we select this pull target here we press g we can see that we have again the ability to uh change the angle this tends to be very useful when you're animating i'm going to press a to select everything hold alt press r i'm still holding alt then press g just to make sure those bones are reset i'm going to left click to deselect you should be aware that when it comes to setting up poses sometimes you can press r to rotate on the z axis you can also change your angle just by selecting the actual ik so i'm selecting ik and i press r then z to rotate it's nice to have the options uh i like the to have the pull targets they seem to work best as far as adjusting the uh the leg angle particularly when it comes to rotating the uh the bones okay one thing i want you to take notice of i'm going to hold the middle mouse button routine select here press g see how when i move the leg the pull targets uh don't move that's not good because you want to be able to move the leg and then have the pull targets in position to adjust the angle when you are setting up animations i'm going to left click to deselect i'm going to hold down the mouse button to rotate by the way when i uh try to say like the shortcut keys that i i say uh i like saying i'm used to saying them uh it's it's funny though sometimes like i'll try to say what i'm pressing even as far as panning as well as rotation some comments people will say you don't have to say that then other people would say you know you say you try to say all those shortcut keys but you don't say it all the time so anyway i thought went through my mind when i rotated the screen anyway we need to what we need to do is we need to parent these poll targets to this bone we're currently in pose mode to uh parent bones we need to go to edit modes we're going to go to the upper left to go to edit mode okay to parent these bones the order is important first i select the pull target i hold shift then i select the bone that i want it to be parented to i let go of shift and then hold ctrl press p this brings up our make parent menu and then select keep offset i left click to deselect i'm going to select the other pole target bone hold shift then select the bone that i want it to be parented to which is this main leg control bone let go of shift i hold ctrl press p this brings up our make parent menu and then going to select keep offset i'm going to left click to deselect i'm going to go to the upper left to go to pose mode so now when we select this bone here when we press g we can see that the pull targets move with the rest of the leg which is very useful for when we animate okay when you're working particularly with uh mechs i find that it's very useful to have a good control over the the legs of the mech particularly as well as the foot so it's very useful to be able to bend your mixed leg forward while having the the foot flex this helps a lot with the animation of the mech so we're gonna set it up so that it's easy for us to bend the leg forward while having the the foot of the mech animate okay to set this up we need to go back to edit mode uh so we're gonna left click to deselect we're gonna go to the upper left then go to edit mode we're going to need to bring in another bone so we're gonna let's select here hold shift press s this brings up our snap to menu we're gonna choose cursor two selected we put our 3d cursor here because we want to bring in a new bone where the 3d cursor is at in blenders where bones tend to come into blender at we're going to hold shift press a that brought in a new bone use the hand to pan up so i want to have this bone go straight forward so what i'm going to do is we have the tail of the bone selected i'm about to snap it to the cursor there so we're going to hold shift press s and then we're going to choose selection to cursor offset so now it looks like the bone disappeared we push the bone out like this push it out further my manipulator is in the way so i'm going to go to the select box just so i can select the whole bone i'll go back to the move tool this is going on towards the upper left i'll push this bone down i'm going to go to view right view so i can see the bone so pretty much the way what i'm doing here is you want this bone to be for the most part where the bottom of the the leg is hitting all right so this bone is like lined up towards the the bottom of the foot doesn't have to be exact so now that the bone is positioned i'm holding the middle mouse button rotating the left click to deselect we need to pair it this bone to here as well as this bone to here okay so we're gonna select this bone hold shift then select this bone second i let go of shift the order is important i'm gonna hold ctrl press p this brings up our make parent menu i'm gonna select keep offset i'm then gonna select this bone i'm not holding shift i am now holding shift i'm going to left click this bone and letting go of shift i'm going to hold ctrl press p this brings up our make parent menu i'm going to select keep offset okay i'm going to left click to deselect we need to make things so that when we animate this bone doesn't pull away from this bone to do that we're going to go to our upper left we're then going to go to pose mode here in pose mode first we're going to select this bone we're going to hold shift select this bone second the order is important i let go of shift now i'm going to hold shift ctrl c that made our ad constraints with targets menu pop up i'm going to hover over this copy selection once i press this our button is going to jump up prepare yourself the bones jumped up now i want to go to the lower right go to constraints and then go to this head tail menu and then select that and change that to one so now our bones are back to the position that they should be in i'm going to left click to deselect okay now i'm going to go to the upper left to go back to edit mode okay here in edit mode we want to select here hold shift then select here let go of shift we're going to hold shift press d i move my mouse up just to make sure i duplicated those bones i'm going to right click to get those bones to jump right back into their original position okay so we have these two new bones the two new bones are right on top of the old bones it looks like we didn't know anything but there's two new bones on top of the old bones so what we're going to do is go to the bottom right select this bone i'm going to select here ankle manipulate my manipulators in the way so i'm going to go to the select box i'm going to select here again i'll select here there we go uh blender tends to use dot zero zero one we have a duplicate of a bone that's what we have here we want the duplicate bone so we're gonna do is select here we're gonna change this to ankle dot roll dot l and then press enter to lock that in okay now we want the same thing here so when i select there there we go there's that uh dot zero zero one okay we're going to name this bone toe dot ctr l standing for control dot l and then press enter to lock that in okay what we're going to do now is go to our upper left we're going to go to pose mode i'm going to select this bone here the bone that i want is the ankle dot roll dot l bone i'm going to press r to rotate on the x axis to rotate this up when i left click main reason i'm rotating this up so i can see the difference between uh the new bones compared to the old bones i have this copy location constraint on this bone this is a result of this bone being a duplicate of this bone however i do not want the copy location constraint on the ankle.roll.l bone so what i'm going to do is go to the constraint button towards the lower right of the screen then i'm going to select the x to take that constraint off now i'm gonna select the uh this bone here i'm gonna go to the bone to the uh lower right when i say bone i mean the bone menu i want the toe dot control dot l which is what i have selected what we want to do now is go to the upper left go to edit mode with that bone select i'm going to hold the mouse button rotate i'm going to hold shift and then left click on the bone underneath of it i'm going to hold ctrl then press p this brings up our make parent menu and then going to select keep offset then i'm going to left click to deselect okay we're going to go back to the upper left we're going to go back to pose mode we're going to select this bone which is the ankle dot roll dot l bone with that bone selected we're going to go back to edit mode the reason why we went to pose mode just so we know we could know for sure that we were selecting the correct the correct bone with this bone selected i'm going to press r to rotate on the x axis 1 8 0 and then press enter to lock that rotation in okay what we need to do is to parent this bone to this bone so we're gonna select this bone hold shift then select that bone i'll let go of shift i'm gonna hold ctrl press p this brings up our make parent menu i'm going to select keep offset i'm going to left click to deselect now we're going to go to the upper left we're going to go back to pose mode i'm going to select this should be fine when we reset the bones looks kind of strange there uh what you want to do now is select this toe dot control dot l bone which we currently have selected you then want to hold shift and select this bone which is the uh foot.l bone the order is important you're then gonna hold shift press i this brings up your add ik menu i'm about to click to active bone when i click that the bones are going to jump so i'm going to left click the bones jumped now what i want to do is i'm going to go to the constraint menu set the chain length to 1 and then i want to take away this check mark next to use tail okay with the bone still selected in the order that they were selected in i'm gonna hold shift hold control then press c this brings up our add constraints with targets menu i'm going to select copy rotation now with all that done i'm going to left click to deselect okay what we want to do now is press a to select everything we're going to hold alt while holding alt press r still i'm still holding all we're also going to press g that just resets the position of all of our bones i'm going to left click to deselect okay one other thing we want to do is go to the upper left go to edit mode we're going to select this bone hold shift then select that bone we're going to hold ctrl press p to bring up our make parent menu we're then going to select keep offset we're going to left click to deselect go to our upper left then go back to pose mode okay now when we select here i'm going to roll the mouse wheel to zoom back hold the mouse button to rotate i press g you can see the entire leg moves i'm gonna right click to get that bone to go back to its original position i press r to rotate on the x-axis we can see the foot can angle uh forward as well as back when we select here i'm going to move the mouse when you have the mouse here and you press r to rotate on the x-axis you'll get like very strong movements if you position your mouse back here before you press r rotate on the x-axis you'll have smoother rotation so i'm going to press r-rotate on the x-axis here so you can see that our leg can go forward while the uh the foot stays in place of our mech which is good so i'm going to right click to deselect then left-click right-click did get that to go back to its original position then i left click to deselect typically i deselect by left clicking on nothingness you should be aware that when you press alt a you can deselect us by using key presses okay what we want to do now is give the foot the ability to flex so when the leg lifts up i would like for the this part of the foot as well as this part of the foot to be able to flex kind of like towards the ground so uh that's what we're about to do now okay to do that what we're going to do is we're going to go to the upper middle part of our screen we're going to select animation the reason why we came here into the animation tab and these tabs by the way are they are not necessary to to do the work like we're about to put some key frames in for this constraint however these tabs help you to to work if you're wondering why there's no color it's because we're in solid mode i'll just select there okay so we're gonna use uh an action constraint to set up the movement that i just mentioned so what we want to do is we're going to look towards our lower left see this keying we're going to left click here and we're going to look to where we see active keying set we're going gonna select these keys basically what this is is when we press i we can automatically have keys put in for what you you see here so i want the uh location as well as the rotation put in for bone when i press i so i'm gonna left click lock rot so you can see active keying set now says lock rot okay so the way this action constraint works is we need to do an animation and then we actually use a bone to control that animation sometimes the animation that you set up could be a step-by-step animation i've used action constraints in the past to have robots transform into vehicles or you can also just have an animation be what we're going to do here which is just the first frame being the foot unflexed the second uh frame being the foot being flexed if you're wondering why we would use something like an action constraint instead of just a type of rotation constraint the reason why is we have a bunch of things set up already with rotations so we're kind of using the action constraint to get around having to use a rotation constraint okay to set up this action constraint we're going to select right here and i'm saying here instead of the bone because we need to have this be the toe dot control dot l bone not the other bone this bone is right on top of the other bone i can see from here that uh we're selected on a two dot control dot elbow which is the bone that we want so with that selected i'm going to hold shift and then select this bone as well i'm then going to i'm going to make sure that my mouse is over top of this viewport your keyboard your your keyboard shortcuts and blender depending dependent on where your mouse is at so with the mouse being here as well as our active king being set to lock rock which stands for location rotation we're going to press i so when we did that we have these keyframes now in our first frame on our timeline okay what we want to do is move to frame 11 you can left click and drag along this top bar to move your timeline indicator to frame 11 that's where we want to go if you look to the lower right see this one you could select here enter in 11 to go to frame 11 as well i'm going to select the top i'm left clicking and dragging to frame 11 i'm going to select here when i select there i have ft.l i don't want that so i'll select again in the same looks like the same uh place when you have two bones they're on top of each other blender will typically select one then go to the other bone so with that bone selected i'm going to press r to rotate on the x axis down like that i'll left click to lock in i'm going to select here press r to rotate on the x axis like that left click to lock that in then i'm going to left click here it's important that this is still when i select again control i mean sorry told dot control dot l i'm going to hold shift then select here with those two bones selected i'm going to press i to put a keyframe in on frame 11 for that pose okay with that keyframe in when i left click as well as drag back to frame one you can see that the uh you know there's the animation that we just made okay what i'm going to do is i'm going to hold alt press r to reset those bones to set up this action constraint what we're going to do is go to the lower left we're currently looking at the dope sheet you're going to select the arrow then select action editor in the action editor the animation that we named by default is called the armature action we're going to select here change the name to foot when i do capital f flex then press enter so uh this is what this animation is now named so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to select this x so you can see like the uh you know now the we don't see the uh the animation right however we can select this arrow and then if i selected this this would give us the animation right back again uh there is something i should point out i'm gonna select here go back to uh back to this animation the way that this is there was a a message that popped up that said gave a warning if you don't assign what's called a fake user to in action like you see here sometimes you'll lose that action when you shut down blender then open it up again so i'm gonna left click looks like a shield on that fake user so that we know that this uh action will stay i'm then going to select the x button to get rid of that action again when i say get rid of i mean from what we're watching here that action is still there okay what we're going to do now is we want to select that uh tow toad.control this is not it so we'll select again so now this is it total.control.l so with that selected what we want to do is select the constraints menu this we can see add loan constraint we're going to select here we're then going to select action i've done action constraints in the past in blender 2.8 just seeing how it was in 2.8 i looked at a youtube channel called level pixel level if you want to know more about setting up action constraints the youtube channel level pixel level did an excellent job going over it i recommend you go check out that youtube channel if you want to know more about setting up action constraints okay to set up the action constraint we want to look to this action constraint menu we want to select this button here we're over to the right of the screen mid-right of the screen we're going to left-click select our action which is foot flex i want this bone to when we scale to control this action so i'm going to select here then select y scale the world space you see right here level pixel level did a good job describing this when you move a bone anywhere that's world space as far as like activating the bone when you move like the whole armature this would activate right to only have the uh action constraint activate when we move this particular bone we need to set this to local space so we select here go to local space the action rain range right here is the animation frames when i go to frame one this shouldn't matter as far as the action constraint i just wanted to set this to frame one but this doesn't matter as far as the action constraint here the uh action started on frame one i'm going to press enter to lock that in it ends on frame 11. i'm going to put in frame 11. for this minimum i'm going to set this to 1 for the maximum i'm going to set this to 0.5 and then press enter to lock that in okay so now we need to have uh tell you know which tell blender that this bonus but we want to control it so this target is going to be looking for the total armature so we'll select here we'll select armature now we need to select this bone so when we select here go to this bone towards the middle lower right you can see that this is foot underscore control dot l bone right so we're gonna select here back on that toe dot control l bone we'll go back to the action constraint so now for the bone we'll select here if you didn't see the bone you could just put it put an f but here's the bone right here so we'll left click to select that bone okay now when that with this setup we should be able to select here press s to scale you can see that that first bone there is uh activating which is what we want so i'm going to right click to get this to go back to its original position i'm going to left click to deselect okay what we want to do is copy this constraint to this bone we can do this fairly easily first we want to select this bone hold shift then select this bone the order is important then we'll go to the upper part of the middle of the screen we'll select pose we'll go down to constraints and then we're going to look to where we see copy constraints to selected bones we'll left click so now this bone has this same constraint okay i'm going to left click to deselect roll the mouse to zoom back i'm going to select this bone so now when i press s to scale you can see that those bones uh you know flex like i wanted them to flex so i'll right click to get this bone to go back to its original scale i'm gonna select the hand to the upper right so when we select this bone here when we press g we can see that uh we're able to uh move this bone i mean move this leg around right we also can press r to rotate on the x-axis to have the leg go like that we also can select this bone press r to rotate on the x-axis to have the bone flex when we flex the leg in we can select this bone press s to scale so that we can flex the foot like that so we'll right click we'll press a to select everything we'll hold alt press r still holding alt then i'll press g then i'll left click on nothingness to deselect okay what we're going to do now is we're going to go to the upper towards the upper left we're going to go to layout we're through the uh most of the uh the bulk of setting up the rig dart some more things we need to do we're going to go to the upper left here in layout then go to edit it's very important that this bone here be named correctly currently when i go to the bottom right that's like bone this is called bone we're going to select here we're going to name this b f for bottom foot t dot r l dot l and then press enter to lock that that in this is important because we're going to use uh symmetra size to copy this side of the uh rig over to the other side this needs to be named correctly for that to work okay i'm gonna left click to deselect we're gonna select this bone here we're going to name this lc dot l then press enter short for left control dot l okay now left click to deselect i'm gonna hold down the mouse button to rotate the view i'm gonna select the hand uh this bone we're actually not going to need so we're going to with that bone selected we're going to press x to bring up our delete menu then choose delete we're going to select this bone right click select subdivide we're doing that so that we have uh this right here the ability to uh move here so i'm just pushing that down some i'm gonna left click to deselect okay i'm going to take the hand to pan i want there to be a shoulder joint so i'm going to select here right click select subdivide i'm going to left click off select here i'm pulling this out to basically that shoulder joint that you see there i'm moving in 3d space to make sure it's actually there around that area now left left-click to deselect when you're setting up your rig you want to have enough bones so that your rig can be maneuverable so it can move how you want it to to move however you don't want to put in unnecessary bones that can make rigging more complicated okay i said to you don't want to put in bones and make rigging more complicated i meant you don't want to put in more bones so that uh you make animating your your rig more complicated okay so this right here we're going to select this bone we're going to right click select subdivide then we're going to go to the subdivide menu we're going to take this up to 2. i'm going to left click to deselect and the reason why we separated this up is i find that it's useful to have the gun have some kind of reloading ability separate from the rest of the uh the mech so i'm gonna push this up that tail when i take the head then make that closer to this section right here this section right here we actually don't need so with that selected i'm going to press x to bring up the delete menu then choose bones to delete i'm going to hold down the mouse button to rotate the view i think we're done as far as the arms we need to do something with the hips here and what that is is just trying to get a look at the hip so we're gonna select this here hold shift press d pull to the side just so i know i have to duplicate i'm going to right click then with that bone selected i'm going to press r to rotate on the x axis 1 8 0 and then press enter to lock that in and then gonna left click to deselect okay this bone right here this was the original bone we actually don't need this anymore so we're going to select that or we have it selected we're going to press x to bring up delete delete menu then we're going to choose bones to delete then what we want to do is we want to select this bone so this is the the main bone that makes the mech duct down all of this is uh parented to this we want to switch the parenting of this to this bone the way we can do that is with this bone selected we'll hold shift select that bone let go of shift and i'm going to hold ctrl press p this brings up our make parent menu i'm then going to select keep offset now with that done we'll select this bone we don't need this bone anymore we'll press x to bring up our delete menu and then choose bones to delete i'll then left click to deselect okay as far as the the bones being divided uh new bones coming in from being subdivided or as well as being duplicated those bones should be fine because their names we already named them originally so when they're subdivided or duplicated they'll still keep their original name they'll just have like a additional numbers but they should work as far as using our mech okay what we want to do now is select this bone go to pose mode here in pose mode we're going to look for relations so this is the bottom right looks like a regular bone button we're going to select relations we're going to scroll down then we have this inherit rotation on this bone what we want to do is take away the check mark for that inherit rotation i'll left click now to deselect okay here in pose mode when i select this bone now then press g you can see that this moves the body of the mech for what we did with the work between these two bones now now when we press r to rotate on the y axis we can adjust how the the bottom part of the mech move so this is a very nice for working uh particularly with mech animations i'm gonna left click to deselect okay what we're gonna do now is we're gonna go to edit mode we're going to zoom back so we can see our entire mesh we have most of the rigging done so what we're going to do is press a to select the entire rig then we're going to go up to the upper left select armature go down to symmetra size then we're going to left click on symmetra size you can see that symmetra size duplicated this part of the uh the rig over to the other side we had all of the bones duplicated even the center part of the bones however blender was able to tell like this is what we wanted uh duplicated now this symmetricized menu that popped up it says minus x to plus x this uh typically this minus x to plus x works from whatever is on this side is copied to the other side if you for some reason had this side or you didn't have like like blender knows when you have one side to do the other however if you made changes and you wanted to use some exercise again you could do them however to have how we have set up here where this side is copied to that side you would select that arrow you would go to have this be plus x to minus x would make this side be copied to that side uh where the minus x 2 plus x is this side copied to that side i'm going to left click to deselect okay what we want to do is make sure that the bones were copied over fine if you have issues with uh symmetra size most most of the time it's probably going to be that one of your bones did not have a dot l like if you followed along with tutorial where you did this side if you didn't have a dot l that probably would be your issue there's also uh if you have a name that is particularly long with that might also be an issue you had the bone that i changed here actually because of uh it seemed to have given me issues when the name was different when i shortened the name like you saw me do things were fine so what we want to do is go to the upper left go to pose mode just to make sure that things are right i'm going to go to the hand towards the upper right we'll select here press g when i'm testing rigs most of the time this is like one of the first things i do is to make sure like that basic part works and then of course the legs that works that works i want to make sure that this steel works excellent this is here as well little small bone that works or to rotate on the x-axis when i put that one everything looks good so i'll select everything hold alt then press r hold alt then press g for this right here this actually needs to be alt s to reset the scale to get that back to its original position i'll select this hold up press s just to make sure that i'll left click to deselect okay what we're going to do now is we're going to actually change our mesh sum this is going to allow us to have the ability to give you that uh gun reload uh movement that i talked about so what we're going to do is go to the upper left we're going to go to object mode we're going to select this gun right here right currently we're in global mode when we look to the lower right of our screen we can see this view global slash local when i select this we see just this gun here when you look to your upper left you can see that this is the user perspective local so if you are in a situation where you save blender and you open it up you only see one piece of your mesh you might want to look to the upper left to check to see if you're in local mode anyway here in local mode we came here so it we could make things easier to work we're going to go to uh edit mode here in edit mode we're going to go to edge select we have vertex edge as well as face select up here to the top what we're going to do is hold the alt key we're gonna left click on this edge right here we're about to rip this edge which means we're about to separate this edge now what's important is which side that our mouse is on if our mouse is on this side we don't want it on this side because it will make this edge be connected to this part of the mesh we want the edge to be connected to this part of the mesh because we want to take this edge and then slide it in and that's going to allow us to have the ability to kind of like make this uh part go in as well as out like it's doing some kind of reloading action so with my mouse on this side i'm going to press v then i'm going to right click to get that ripped geometry back to its original or to stay in its original position i'm going to go to the upper left we have a wireframe solid view we have uh viewport shading as well as rendered here is this other view that we have called x-ray views when i select this we're going to be able to see inside of our mesh so this is useful because we have this edge selected i want to pull this edge in so i'm going to first hold ctrl then i'm going to left click and drag so there's one there's two now i let go of left click i held control so i could have these snapping movements so i would be easily able to do this to the other gun to have uh basically the same distance for the inside so we're gonna left click to deselect we're gonna go back to the upper right turn off that x-ray mode we're gonna go back to the upper left go back to object mode then we're going to go to the lower right select view global slash local to go back to global view okay we're going to do now is pretty much repeat we're going to select the gun on that side go to the lower right of our screen it's like view global slash local we're going to go to the upper left go to edit mode make sure one edge select which we are that's in the top left of our screen we're going to hold alt we're going to left click on this edge let go of alt we're going to press make sure our mouse is on this side we're going to press v right click we're going to go to the upper right we're going to turn on x-ray so we can see what's going on we're going to hold ctrl left click and drag once and then a second time let go of left click let go control left click to deselect go to the upper right turn off the x-ray go to the upper left go back to uh object mode go to our lower right select view global slash local and then left click on nothingness to deselect okay we have one other bone to add i believe our rig is actually complete held them in the mouth but rotate taking the hand to pan what we want to do is uh let's select this bottom bone here hold shift select the bottom bone here and then with those two bones selected we're going to hold shift press s to bring up our snap to menu we're then going to choose cursor to select it what happens is because we have two separate objects the 3d cursor goes directly in the center that's what we want i'm going to left click to deselect the reason why we want that is because where the 3d cursor is at blenders where object's going to come in to blender at so what we're going to do is hold shift we're going to press a that brought up uh brought in this bone the 3d cursor is here the tail was here we're going to snap the tail to the 3d cursor just so we can push it straight out so we're going to hold shift press s then we're going to select uh this brought up our snap to menu we're going to select select your selection to cursor keep offset it looks like the building disappeared it didn't we just need to push this out like that well then left click to deselect okay the reason why we brought this bone in is this bone is going to allow us to move the entire rig just by grabbing this bone so we're going to select this bone go to the lower right select this bone we're going to name this main root and we'll we'll leave it named main root so we need to parent all of our control well we need to parent our control bones uh to here so that when we move this the entire armature moves okay this is fairly easy to set up i'm going to left click on nothingness to deselect hold them in the mouse button rotate i'm going to select this bone i'm holding shift now i'm going to select this bone still holding shift i'm going to select this bone i'm going to select this bone last i'm letting go of shift i'm now going to hold ctrl press p this brings up our make parent menu and then going to select keep offset then left click on nothingness to deselect okay the reason why we did that is now i'm going to hold them in the mouse button to rotate now when we go to the upper left go to pose mode when we select just this bone we can press g we can see that our entire mech moves that's what we want so we're not left-click to deselect okay what we're going to do is go to the upper left we're going to go to edit mode make a slight adjustment uh wait hold the middle mouse button look to the side see how this is almost out of this piece here i don't like that so what i'm going to do is hold shift select the bones that you see me selecting my manipulators in the way so i'm going to go to the left upper left select the select box i'm going to use the hand to pan down i'm going to hold shift i'm selecting all of these bones here because i want to push forward not a lot i just i don't like this being back that far so i'm gonna go to the uh move tool i'm gonna push forward slightly so our legs and everything else still should be in line so we should be good so i'm gonna left click to deselect i'm gonna roll them in the mouse what button to zoom back when we are dealing with rigging in blender we have two types of bones we have to form bones as well as control bones the control bones we don't want to have trying we we don't have one of the the control bones trying to deform our mesh so what we want to do is set things up so the so that blender knows that we don't want the control bones to try to deform our mesh so what we want to do is we want to select the different control bones so we're gonna select here hold shift select here select there holding the minimus button to rotate the view we'll select here as well as here as well as here as well as here holding the mouse button rotate holding shift again i want a mouse we'll zoom back hold the middle mouse button rotate holding shift again holding shift because shift allows you to select more than one uh object at a time in blender okay i'm holding them in a mouse but i take a look okay we have these bones here as well so we'll hold shift select there holding shift still selecting there we'll hold shift we'll select here as well as here these aren't control bones however they won't be we don't want them to form anything so with all of those bones selected we'll hold shift press w and then we have this toggle bones options that uh pops up then we're going to select the form so with that selected all of these bones should no longer be set to deform anything in blender okay we look to the right roar mouse see this deform right here how this doesn't have a check mark there so when i select on this bone this doesn't have a the form there however when i select the thigh bone we can see there is the deform check mark we can also add bones uh that we also don't other bones that we don't want to deform for instance these bones right here uh i'm going to go to my manipulator my manipulator is in the way so i'm going to select here to move that out of the way i'm going to hold shift i'm going to select these two bones on uh you know both sides of the mac i'm going to roll the mouse width back i'm going to hold shift press w this brings up our toggle bone options and then i'm going to select the form and then we'll not left click to deselect okay now with all the other work done we're ready to connect the pieces of mesh to the armature we're going to go to the upper left go to object mode there's three pieces of masters this gun the main body as well as the other gun the reason why we have the guns being separated so you could easily the idea is so you could easily change them out with other pieces that can connect onto the mesh so i'm going to hold shift select the first object select the main body then select last object i'm actually going to left click to deselect so i could see that armature was selected so i'm going to first left click now i'm holding shift now i'm selecting the body now i'm selecting the other piece of the mesh the last piece of the mesh now lastly i am while still holding shift selecting the armature so now i'm letting go of shift so with the uh object selected in that order i'm going to hold ctrl press p this brings up our set parent to menu what we want to select since we're dealing with hard surface objects is armature with empty groups okay i'm going to left-click to deselect so now what we want to do is set up each bone to be parented so we made a bunch of groups we're going to use those groups to parent our bones so what we're going to do is we're going to select the armature first hold shift and then select the mesh second so with things done in that order we're going to go to the upper left then we're going to go to weight paint mode currently the way things uh look blue basically means no weight is applied uh however that blue steel kind of makes me think of like as if something was applied so what i'm going to do is go to our overlays menu go to where we see zero weights so there's where there's none i'm going to select this to active so basically this black lets us know that there's absolutely no weights applied to what you see on the mesh right now okay what we want to do now is we want to look to the lower right select the looks like a green triangle these are our different weights our different vertex groups were made when we selected uh empty groups so these names here are the bones that are in the rig so currently this is set for 2.control.r the way we want to change the bone so we're going to the first thing we're going to select is this torso bone so we're going to hold shift first this is very important and then left click so when i did that i let go of shift now you can see that this mid torso bone mid torso bone is selected that's what we want okay what we're going to do now is go to the upper left we're going to go right to edit mode so here in edit mode we're going to go to we have our you know vertex edge as well as face select we're going to vertex select we're going to go to the upper right we're going to turn on x-ray we're going to press c for paint select and this main body right here is what we want we want to be i'm going to double click on nothingness to deselect we want to select this area here this area here of this we don't want the guns we don't want this uh actually yeah we do want this uh middle piece so we want all of this what we're gonna do is press c for paint select so we just need to select we want those back pieces to pieces of what you see here as long as we have a little piece we should be able to right click out of paint select then hold ctrl then press l to select all of those pieces i'm going to press c for paint select to deselect there so it looks like we have what we need so see this weight that says one think of this one as being a hundred percent weight or a hundred percent movement with the bone that we currently have selected so the mid torso bone is the one highlighted uh if if and when we select assign this weight of 100 will be selected uh this uh message you see will be assigned to this mid torso so we're going to select assign i'm going to left click to deselect i'm going to go to object mode i'm going to select the armature i'm going to go to pose mode so here in pose mode i'm going to press uh i'm going to hold them in a mouse button press r twice so we can see that entire piece of the mesh is moving and that is what we want so i'm gonna right click to deselect yeah that's what we want okay so i'm gonna left click to deselect i'm gonna go to the upper left and go back to object mode left click to deselect okay i'm going to select the armature hold shift select the mesh then i'm going to go to the upper left go to weight paint mode so we can see there's the weight right there so now i'm going to hold shift left click on this bone i'm then going to go to edit mode i'm going to press c for paint select i can make my brush bigger or smaller and i want to select this piece right here so i'm going to right click to get out of paint select i'm going to hold ctrl press l that makes me select this entire piece right here i don't want i don't think i want that piece i just want this piece let's see i'm going to press c for paint select select there right click pull control press l excellent so uh now we have this shoulder so i'll select assign so then i'll left click to deselect so i'm going to go to back to object mode i'll select the armature hold shift then i'll select this mesh right here i'll then go to the upper left go to wait paint mode i'm going to hold shift then left click here so even though this looks like this is selected there we go so now this is selected so what i'm going to do is go to the upper left go to edit mode here in edit mode i'm going to left click on nothingness to deselect i'm going to press c for paint select i'm going to select here right click i'm going to hold ctrl press l to select all of the piece of this then i'm going to press h to hide just to make sure i don't select that so here what i'm going to do is press c select here i want to be careful about there select here press c it's like there right click holding the minimize button to rotate or what's holding the minimize button rotate the whole control press l so now i have all of this selected so i'm going to select assign then i'll left click to deselect okay what we'll do is we'll go to the upper left we'll go to object mode we'll select our armature we'll go to pose mode so we'll select with this bone selected we'll press r to rotate so that bone is rotating like we want let's see how this bone rotates that bone is rotating like a one as well i'm going to right click to deselect then left click on nothingness to deselect or try to deselect everything okay these next couple parts we're going to go through this uh trying to go through this fairly quickly i'll explain as we go but be prepared i'm going to speak a little faster since we're going to be pretty much repeating the same thing over and over again so we go to the upper left go to object mode left click on nothingness select the armature i'm going to hold shift left click go to the upper left go to weight paint mode i'm going to hold shift i'm going to go to the upper left go to edit mode i'm going to hold alt press h to bring back that geometry that was previously hidden the geometry is already selected however i'll come out i'll select part of it again just so it's similar to the way i did the other uh piece of mesh with the whole control whoa okay it's interesting so let's press c select right click pull control press l there we go so then i'll select assign then left click to deselect go to the upper left then go to object mode i'm going to left click on nothingness to deselect i'll select the armature there we go go to the upper left go to pose mode so i'll select here i'll go to the move tool so now you can kind of see what i was talking about with that but uh reloading motion so uh if i want this to go right back to its original position what i can do is hold alt then press g so that goes right back to its original position so this is uh rigged uh correctly i'm gonna left click to deselect i'm gonna go to the upper left then go to object mode then i'll left click on nothingness to deselect okay i'm going to roll the mouse wheel to zoom back but to do the same thing for the other side so we'll select the armature or hold shift will select here actually we okay so we'll go to weight paint mode okay because i want that bone so let me go back to object mode we'll select armature hold shift select here go to the upper left go to weight paint mode we'll hold shift select that bone go to edit mode we'll zoom in we'll go to the right to use the hand we'll press c for paint select i grab just a few pieces of the mesh i think hold ctrl press l excellent so there's the shoulder so we'll select i get i got too much did i did i get too much no i'm right so i'll select sign so now left click to deselect so now we'll go to the upper left go to object mode left click on nothingness to deselect i'm going to zoom back i'm going to select the uh armature hold shift select the mesh go to the upper left go to weight paint mode hold shift select here i'll hold shift to deselect this bone here hold shift again when you look here in this vertex group you can see you can check to see you know if you're on the correct bone so with that bone selected we'll go to the upper left we'll go to edit mode here in edit mode we'll press i wrote the mouse will zoom back c to select some of this here uh right click give paint select hold ctrl press l press h to hide that geometry now i'm going to press c to select pieces of the geometry here when i'm looking here i'm thinking of like the screws here trying to make sure that uh i'll right click to get out that so i could rotate i right clicked and held the middle mouse by the rotate and then press c so we select here i'll right click yellow paint select hold ctrl press l so now we have all that geometry so then we'll select assign so then we'll left click to deselect we'll go to the upper left to go to object mode then we'll left click to deselect okay what i'm going to do is select the armature hold shift select the mesh go to the upper left i'm going to go to weight paint mode i'm going to hold shift to select this bone i don't want this bone being selected at all so i select that again while holding shift and i'm still holding shift i select here we can tell we're on the right bone by looking to the right i'm going to go to the upper left go to edit mode here in edit mode i'll hold alt press h to bring back the hidden geometry i'll left click to deselect hold the middle mouse button rotate press c for paint select select some of the vertices here on the edge i'll right click to deselect hold ctrl press l to select that geometry and then i'll select sign then i'll left click on nothingness to deselect go to the upper left go to object mode and then left click to deselect okay what we're going to do now is select the armature go to the upper left we're going to go to pose mode we'll select this bone here roll the mouse will zoom back we'll press r twice which allows us to freely rotate and we can see that the right gun as well as the left gun there's a piece that we didn't get so we're going to left click to deselect go to the upper left go to object mode well if we have the i left clicked of the armature i click back on okay we're gonna hold shift we're gonna select this gun and let go of shift we're going to the upper left we're gonna go to weight paint mode so we're going to hold shift to select that bone i'm letting go of shift we'll go to the upper left now we're going to go to edit mode so here in edit mode what we can do is i'll select this one vertex i'll hold ctrl press l then i'll press h to hide i'll hold the mouse button rotate okay actually i think it's the piece that we want okay i'm gonna hold all press h i'm going to turn okay x-rays on i'm going to press c for paint select so we'll make sure we get all of this here i'll right click to get out of paint select pull control press l this is an issue should have did this hit this select there we'll hold ctrl press l press h to hide that now we'll press c select all of this not all of it decent amount of it well hold ctrl press l appears like we have everything we can see that i'm rolling the mouse will zoom back we can see that our proper arm is selected so we'll select sign so i'm going to left click deselect i'm going to turn off x-ray i'm going to hold alt press h to bring back the hidden geometry left click deselect then i'll go to the upper left and go to object mode then i'm going to left click to deselect okay we're going to go we're going to select the armature hold shift select this gun let go of shift now we're gonna go to the upper left we're gonna go to weight paint mode we're gonna hold shift select that bow and i'm letting go of shift now we're gonna go to the upper left we're gonna go to edit mode here in edit mode we're going to i'm going to hold alt press a to make sure i have nothing selected i'm going to press c to select here right click hold ctrl press l press h to hide that geometry then i'm going to press c actually i'm going to go to uh x-ray press c select all of this here right click to get out of uh paint select i'm gonna hold ctrl press l so now we can see from the right our we have the right arm we're gonna select assign so we're gonna uh left click on nothingness to deselect go to the upper left and go back to object mode then i'm going to left click to deselect and now we'll test it out so we'll select our armature we'll go to the upper left go to pose mode we'll select this torso bone we'll press r twice so we can see that our we're connected now so we'll right click to come out of there left click to deselect go to the upper left go to object mode left click to deselect holding the middle mouse button to take a look okay we're gonna select the armature we're gonna hold shift we're gonna select the main body go to the upper left go to weight paint i'm going to hold shift select this bone here let go of shift go to the upper left go to edit mode you still have the x-ray on which is good i'm going to press c for paint select roll my i wrote the mouse to shrink my uh paint area of influence i'm gonna right click i'm gonna pull control press l so now with that selected i'm going to select assign i'll left click to deselect i'll leave that on i'll go to uh the upper left and go to object mode left click to deselect okay so now we're going to go to the armature go to the upper left go to pose mode so with this bone selected we'll press r to rotate on the y-axis so this looks good however i do want this attached here as well so we're gonna left click go to the upper left go to object mode we're going to hold shift left click on the main body go to the upper left go to wait paint we're still selected on that bone we can see from over here we can also see the area that i it's like i'll hold shift just to highlight it so it's the same as before we're going to go to the upper left we're going to go to edit mode here in edit mode i'm going to zoom in press c i'm shrinking my mouse because i don't want to select the light area i just want but you know it doesn't matter if we select this area here though i don't i'm holding the middle mouse button to deselect i don't want this and maybe i do now i don't think i want that area holding the middle mouse button to get rid of that selecting over here yeah see i'm holding the middle mouse button get rid of that just select in here i'll right click to deselect i'm gonna hold control then press l excellent that's what i wanted so i'll select assign i'm going to uh left click to deselect i'm going to go to the upper left go to object mode zoom back select the armature go to the upper left go to pose mode then i'll press or rotate on the y-axis i think that that'll work uh okay i'm gonna left click to deselect i'm gonna go to the upper left go to object mode now left click to deselect okay i'm going to select the armature oops hold shift hold shift there we go go to weight paint mode i'll hold shift here let go of shift go to the upper left go to edit mode so for this probably the easiest way to do this is to press c for paint select select here select here of this right here as much as i can grab right click hold ctrl press l press h to hide that probably press c select that hold ctrl press l press h to hide that press c just select this right click you know paint select hold ctrl press l press h to hide that uh press c so now we should be able to select stuff here i don't need to select all of it because when we can press press and hold ctrl then l we can select the geometry that's you know connected to the other geometry that we selected so now we're going to select assign so i'm going to left click to deselect total press h to bring back the other geometry i'll left click to deselect i'll go to the upper left go to object mode then left click to deselect okay i'm going to select the armature go to the upper left go to pose mode roll the mouse to zoom back select the handle here go into the mouse towards the right there we go press g it looks good so we have the leg is moving like it should good so left click to deselect i'll go to the upper left then go to object mode okay what we're going to do now is we're going to hold shift select the mesh go to the upper left go to weight paint mode hold shift select here you can see we have the correct bone we'll go to the upper left go to edit mode we'll press c for paint select select around here here here well hold ctrl press l press h to hide that we'll press c for paint selects like this select that right click hold ctrl press l press h to hide that so basically as i'm looking at this i'm thinking how this would look is this is animated if i leave this connected to this so basically in my mind right now i'm like imagining it's walking and i'm like if this piece is moving with this independently of the rest of the leg how would that look probably is not the right way to go so i'm going to press c to paint select that right click hold ctrl press l press h to hide that c for paint select right click hold ctrl then press l press h to hide that so now with all that done i'm going to press c for paint select select this piece right here right click pull control press l go to the lower right of the screen then select assign i'll left click hold alt press h to bring back the previously hidden geometry left click to deselect now i'll go to the upper left go to object mode left click to deselect okay what we're gonna do now is we're gonna select the armature we're gonna hold shift we're gonna select the mesh we're gonna go to the upper left we're gonna go to weight paint mode we want to make sure that we hold shift select this bone we don't want this i'm going to select this bone select it again it's still selected be very careful that you have the right bone selected i'm letting go of shift i can see that this is shin down dot l it's very important that you have this bone selected when you're selecting your bones make sure that you check your bones to make sure you have the right one uh selected without any other bones that you don't want connected so with this done we're going to go to the upper left we're going to go to edit mode here in edit mode what we want to do is uh we're going to press c for paint select we're going to select this here right click we're going to press c to select this here right click roll the mouse wheel to zoom back we're going to press c here to select here we'll press right click we're going to uh hold ctrl press l we'll press h to hide all of that that's excellent because we want to select all of this we don't want not all of this sorry we don't want this nor do we want that right click so i'm going to uh pull control press l press h to hide all of that now i'm going to press c for paint select we want to select all of this this bottom piece right here is important for when the foot like rotates rotates forward so we're going to select assign we'll left click to deselect we'll hold alt we'll press h to bring back the hidden geometry we'll left click to deselect we'll go to the upper left we'll go to object mode then left click to deselect okay the good news is we're almost through this originally i thought we're gonna have to go through this process for the other leg once we finish this leg there's a way where we will have the work in a sense done for this leg i'm going to show you how to do that uh so hopefully in a little bit we'll be through this uh this tutorial and a little more okay be prepared i'm excited that we're through most of this i'm going to be speaking fast so we go through this it's pretty much going to be the same thing that we have been doing so prepare yourself because we're going to go through this quick are you prepared all right so we're gonna select the armature hold shift we select the mesh go to the upper left we go to weight paint mode this mesh this bone is currently selected going to zoom in by rolling the mouse take the hand and pen up to the upper right hold shift we want the toe control dot l we have that bone i don't want this selected i'm going to left click it's still it's selected again now i'm going to select it again still select i'm going to select again i'm holding shift the whole time right uh when i select this we're going to not have this bone select even though it's not highlighted it's still selected right so now i select here we have the wrong bone this is ft.l i can tell because i'm looking at it it's left click now we have the correct bone i'm letting go of shift i'm going to go to the upper left go to edit mode i'm going to press c for paint select painting all the areas or most of the areas that i don't want that will make it harder for me to select i'm going to right click hold ctrl press l press h to hide that geometry press c i'm going to select there right click hold ctrl press l press h to hide the geometry i'm going to press c to select this geometry i'm going to right click to get out of paint select hold ctrl press l the toe dot control dot l is selected so i'm going to select assign left click i'm going to hold alt press h to bring back the previously hidden geometry left click to deselect go to the upper left go to object mode and then left click to deselect okay i'm going to select the armature hold shift select the mesh go to the upper left go to weight paint mode hold the mouse button to rotate i'm going to hold actually i'm going to while i'm holding shift i'm going to left click here to deselect then i'm i'm still holding shift i'm left clicking here so now i have the bone that i want i let go of shift i'm going to go to the upper left go to edit mode i'm holding the middle mouse button rotate i'm pressing c to paint select the uh pieces that could get in the way press c for paint select again i came out of paint so i like to rotate the view how to paint select again by right clicking i'm going to hold ctrl press l press h to hide of that geometry i'm going to press c select this geometry here right click hold ctrl press l select assign left click hold alt press h to bring back the previously hidden geometry left click to deselect i'm going to go to the upper left go to object mode and then i'm going gonna left click to deselect we should hopefully be finished with this leg so uh we're gonna select the armature go to the upper left we're going to go to pose mode here in pose mode we want to grab the bottom bone here press g it looks good we're going to select we can see the bone here to ankle roll we're going to press r to rotate on the x-axis that looks good we'll select this bone we'll press s to scale excellent we'll right click deselect left click to deselect we'll go to the upper left go to object mode and then we'll left click to deselect okay i told you i was going to show you a way where we weren't going to have to go through what we went through on this leg for this leg and the way we're going to do that we're going to use the mirror modifier now this doesn't have a mirror modifier on here when we look at this uh mech it's symmetrical because it's a magical we can split this in half and then put a mirror modifier on it blender will know to set up the bone so that this leg controls this part of the mesh this leg would control that part of the mesh so that's what we're going to do now so we're going to get a front view here in front of you i've rolled the mouse on it select the hand i'm going to select the mesh i'm going to go to the upper left i'm going to go to edit mode here in edit mode we still have this x-ray turned on because we have the x-ray turned on we can select from the front you know through the front as well as the back so what we're going to do is we're going to go to box select we're going to press b for box select we're going to select all of this part of the mesh we're going slightly past the halfway point so we have all of this part of the mesh selected right so what we're going to do is press x to bring up our delete menu and then choose faces to delete so with that done we're going to go to the upper left we're going to go to object mode with this part of the mesh still here we're going to go to the wrench we're going to the wrench to it you know it's our modifier menu we're going to select the arrow we're going to put a mirror modifier on so uh with this mirror modifier on remember my fire that the mirror modifier came in it's underneath the armature we need to select the arrow to move it above the uh armature modifier so now with this done i don't particularly want the mirror modifier on here so i'm going to select apply so with all that done our this leg here should be set up just like this leg i'm going to left click to deselect hold the mouse button rotate i'm going to select the armature go to pose mode so we'll select here we'll press g we can see that this leg moves we select here we can see that this leg moves as well which is excellent i'm going to left click to deselect i'm going to go to the upper left go to object mode then i'm going to left click to deselect i'm going to hold the middle mouse button this is not currently attached so what we're going to do is select the mesh hold shift select here go to the upper left we'll go to weight paint mode hold shift left click let go of shift we'll go to the upper left we'll go to edit mode here in edit mode we'll press c for paint select select part of that right click hold ctrl press l we still need more select here right click hold control press l we'll go to the green triangle the correct bone is that the shin underscore down dot l will select assign left click deselect then we'll go to the upper left go to object mode then left click to deselect okay we need to do the same thing for the other side so we'll select the armature hold shift select the mesh go to the upper left go to weight weight paint mode we'll uh hold shift left click we have shift underscore down dot r we'll go to the upper left we'll go to edit mode we'll press c for paint select select here right click hold ctrl press l select assign left click to deselect go to the upper left go to object mode left click to deselect hold the middle mouse button to rotate the ideal thing to do would have been to uh yeah before we did the mirror so we would have only had to do one side however it wasn't that difficult to do what we're going to do now is we're going to set up a few shape keys to make this mech easier to when i say shape key sorry i mean custom custom shapes not shape keys we're doing not shape keys custom shapes actually before we do that what we're going to do is make sure that this entire piece is uh set up correctly so to do that we're gonna select our armature we're gonna go to pose mode so we're going to select here press g so when we do that we can see that this is not correct so we'll select here we'll press g same thing on the other side so i'm going to show you how to fix this so this piece right here is not uh set up so what we can do is we'll left click to deselect go to object mode we'll select the mesh we'll go to our modifiers we'll make sure we have these buttons here selected we'll select our armature we'll hold shift just like we normally would do we'll go to the upper left we'll go to weight paint mode this is dealing with uh this bone right here so we'll hold shift okay i see so i'll go out here select the wrong thing i'll select the armature hold shift select the main body now we'll go to weight paint mode i'll hold shift select here okay it's this bone so we'll select here so with this selected go to object mode i'm going to make sure i have these buttons here selected i want this piece stretched out so i can clearly see that so i'm going to select the armature again hold shift select the main body then i'm going to go to the upper left go to weight paint mode i have the correct bone selected so now i'm going to go to the upper left i'm going to go to edit mode here in edit mode i'm going to go to vertex select i'm going to press c to paint select all of this right here right click to get out of paint select hold control press l so now i'm going to go to the green triangle you can see we have the correct bone i'm going to select assign so now that is fixed i'm going to go to the upper left i'm going to go to object mode select armature select the main mesh go to weight paint mode i'm going to hold shift select this bone i'll take the hand to pan over hold the mouse button to rotate i'm going to go to edit mode here in edit mode i'm going to press c for paint select select this geometry right here right click pull control press l so we can see we have that geometry uh that's you know not quite right we have the correct bone selected then we select assign so now with that we can see that uh our geometry is correct so we'll go back to object mode we'll select our armature go to pose mode i'll zoom back i'm gonna press a hold alt still holding off press g so now when i select here i'll press g so now we can see that that is correct so right click to deselect left click on nothingness to deselect i'll go to the upper left go to object mode then left click on nothingness to deselect i'll hold the middle mouse button to rotate okay when we set up these custom shapes i'm going to here i'm just selecting these arrows i'm going to right click select new collection it's collection for we'll double click here we're going to name this custom shapes and then press enter to lock that in okay okay these custom shapes are going to be made out of a simple mesh so what a custom shape is it is when we want to uh flex the foot as well as move the ankle see how particularly the ankle bone see how small it is so to animate this you have to grab that very small bone to rotate it is difficult with the custom shape instead of having this small bone we can have a big shape that's very easy for us to select so custom shapes are nice visually they're also actually nice to make things easier to animate you can get very elaborate in making custom shapes we're going to keep it fairly basic here what we're going to do the first thing we're going to do is we're going to make a base bone so we're going to hold shift press a go to mesh we're going to bring in a mesh circle we're going to go to edit mode zoom in i'm going to go to vertex select i'm going to go to the hand i'm going to press e to extrude right click press s to scale that up left click to deselect then i'm going to go to the upper left go to object mode so we can use this a bunch of times uh this tends to be very useful uh these uh mesh circles so i'm gonna left click deselect zoom back hold them in a mouse button taking a look at what we have okay i'm going to select that shape key this is going to control the root we'll hold shift press d right click this will control the waist hold shift press d right click this will control the torso well hold shift press d right click this will be the uh right ankle control hold shift press d right click this will be the left ankle control okay so we're gonna zoom in we'll select the hand we'll select here we can see the name here which is good so we're going to name this cs for custom shape root control where ctrl for control will press enter we'll select here we'll name this cest cs uh waste control let's select here name this cs torso control press enter to lock that in select there we'll name this cest ankle control right we'll select actually we'll select this hold ctrl press c to copy that we'll select here select here control v we'll name this uh left and press enter to lock that in okay i've made custom shapes in the past i've done tutorials on them for learning how to do this in blender 2.8 i went to a youtube channel called the lewis art youtube channel uh the guy in there does blender tutorials he does a good job on most of the tutorials he does a particularly excellent job uh when it comes to rigging tutorials so if you want to learn more about making custom shapes i recommend you go to the lewis art youtube channel to check out his videos okay let's apply here so when i say apply right uh if when you i have this shape selected right when you look when you look here see this location here this rotation the scale when these are typically when when when i apply this right blender will have this as being 0 zero zero you know this is being zero zero zero this being one one one uh when you don't have your your location your rotation your scale applied in object mode tends to cause issues in the in uh the future so with this selected see how these numbers are different watch this control a our apply menu pops up i select location and now this is zero zero zero so this is good to do to keep you from having issues in the future i'll select here same thing control press a select location select here control press a select location select here control a select location i select here ctrl a select location if you're wondering why these numbers got changed it's because when you typically when you make a shape when you move the shape these numbers will be changed and then you know to work with that you would press ctrl a apply the location okay these shape keys are ready to go except for these ones so i'll select here go to edit mode i want to select half of this geometry we're in edit mode we can see this this isn't in the same edit so we can ignore this even though we can see it i'm going to face select press c select half of this that selected i'll press x to bring up delete menu and then choose faces to delete i'll go back to object mode select this go to edit mode i'll press c select half of this right click then press x to bring up a delete menu then choose faces to delete i'll go back to the upper left go back to object mode okay i'm gonna hold the mouse button to rotate the view i'm going to select the armature go to the upper left we want to go to pose mode we want to select on the bone towards the lower right of the screen when i go down to where we see viewport display we'll left-click to open this up okay what we want to do now is we want to select the the bone so once we have the bone selected what we want to do is look to where we see this custom object we can select the eyedropper and then actually select the object then what we can do is select wireframe okay i'm like where's it at it's all the way down there which is kind of interesting um so what we can do uh is not sure why it's all the way down there i guess probably because i when i applied the uh this one uh so i was like it looked different but it didn't look like it was moved anyway it's not a big deal uh what you want to do is select the shape and when i say the shape i mean the shape that we made it's an actual mesh right then you'll go to the edit mode for that shape right so we'll press a to select the shape so now when we move this we move the the shape and edit move now we can see uh the shape moving so by moving in edit mode you can adjust the shape to be how you want it to be same thing with the scale so i'll press s to increase the scale you kind of like look to see where when you push you know how how the the sheep moves so i'm gonna make this bigger so i'll left click to deselect then i'll go to object mode okay with this shape selected i'll press m and then we'll look to our custom shapes collection we'll select the box okay so it's in the custom shapes collection so what we can do is we'll select i to turn that off okay so uh this one here is going to be the waist so what we're going to do is we'll select the armature we'll go to pose mode uh we'll select the waste and then we can see the there we go there's the custom shape we'll select the eyedropper select that shape select wireframe okay in this time it's over here kind of strange i'll go to object mode select this shape and then we'll go to edit mode somebody said that uh i think lose the lose wizard said bones and blender is seen as being uh on the the y's up and down where the objects are are z's up and down like regular objects and that's why he thinks that the shapes do like this it's not that big of a deal it's you know does make you wonder so i want this shape to be flipped over so i'm going to press r to rotate on the y axis nine zero and i'll press enter then i press r to rotate on x axis nine zero what are the rotate on there is it y there we go it's still not what i want i'm going to retain x x axis nine zero there we go so you kind of you know i rotate on the y-axis x-axis z-axis there we go kind of like look to move this into place it's definitely interesting not that difficult so now we have it barely basically in place now we need to see which side the side so now we'll press s to scale this up well left click to deselect go to object mode so then we can go to the right press the i to hide that okay now we're going to do the torso bone so we'll select the armature go to pose mode we'll select that torso bone we scroll down the custom shape is here it's going to be this we'll select wireframe so very similar to before we'll go to object mode we'll select here go to the upper left we'll go to edit mode i'm going to right click what i do is i just move to see the basic area i'll press r to rotate on x axis nine zero press r to rotate on the x-axis there we go i think uh i want this actually in front it doesn't look quite right it like uh going through i'm to object mode okay i'll go back to select this bone a bit of pose mode so this object is there this object the white object there is what i'm talking about so i'm going to go to object mode select that object i'm gonna go to edit mode i'm pretty sure that what i'm gonna do here is i'm gonna press c for paint select right click press x to bring up the delete menu choose faces to delete you know there's a there's order routine on the y-axis are a routine on the z-axis the x-axis y-axis so one is this to go forward there we go then i'll press r rotate on the x-axis or rotate on the x-axis or to rotate on the the y interesting it's going to bother me i apologize why where to rotate on the z okay i'm not left click to deselect go to uh back to object mode i'm going to take the hand zoom in select the armature go to pose mode we want the roll so this is ankle roll dot r so we scroll down we select the eyedropper select here we'll select wireframe we'll go to object mode select here go to edit mode press a to select there we go okay let's press r to rotate on the y axis nine zero or rotate on the x-axis there we go higher okay i'm gonna left click to deselect go to object mode so now we're gonna select the mesh go to the upper left go to pose i want this uh ankle dot ankle.roll.l go here we scroll down select here we select that object select wireframe we'll go to uh come out there i'll go to object mode i'll select here i'll go to edit mode press a i think it's already rotated on y axis nine zero and press enter move this forward i think it's hard to rotate on the x-axis okay left-click to deselect i'm going to go to the upper left go to object mode and left click to deselect okay we're going to make a few more shape keys we're going to hold shift press a go to mesh select cube i'm gonna go to edit mode i'm gonna press that's the scale and the y axis like this that's the skill on the y axis i'm going to press uh that's the scale on the x-axis like that i'm gonna hold shift press d right click bring that over there hold shift press a don't want that hold shift press a mesh cube bring this up by positioning the cube actually where it's like inside of the uh the mesh we still have to you know most likely have to adjust it however it lets me place the cube without having to rotate around so much in uh 3d so hold shift select that hold shift press d right click bring this over to the other side we'll select here oops hold shift shift d right click i'll left click to deselect okay i'm going to take the hand to pan hold the mouse button rotate i'm going to select the armature go to the upper left go to pose mode i want to select this bottom foot bone select the green bone towards the right scroll down it's like the custom object i'll select here i'm going to select the other bone custom object i'll select here i'll select here select wireframe select there select wireframe i'll left click to deselect okay i'm going to go to the upper left i'm going to get it to object mode select that object go to edit mode i'm gonna hold control okay push forward when i press s point eight left click okay that's not enough so i'll just scale down press as the skill now left click to deselect i'll go to left go to object mode select the eye to hide that object i'll select here go to edit mode i'll press the scale down push this forward to go back make it bigger and up some left click to deselect object mode select there just like this one and bring it back it's like this one i'm selecting this one again because it shouldn't be uh going into the ground okay all right that one look at the upper left i'll go to object mode okay i'll select the armature go to the upper left go to pose mode oh select here scroll down go to custom object select here look at that it's like very close to where it should be that's interesting i'll go to the object mode select this okay so i'll select the armature go to the upper left go to pose mode select here that bone scroll down select the custom object it's like wireframe go to the upper left go to object mode i'll select that object and i'll hide that okay we're gonna select the armature go to the upper left go to pose mode select this bone go to the green bone to the right scroll down select the object select wireframe we'll select this bone select the eyedropper select the object select wireframe we'll select this bone select the object select wireframe we'll select this bone select the eyedropper select the object select wireframe i'll left click to deselect i'll go to the upper left go to object mode i'll select here go to edit mode press s to scale this down like that i'll left click go to the upper left go to object mode select this object go to edit mode i'll press s to scale this down left click left click on nothingness deselect go to the upper left go to object mode then with this custom shapes we'll select this you know we'll bring these objects back but then we'll select this eye to hide off the objects we'll left click to try to select to make sure we have nothing selected okay there's two more custom shapes that we're going to want to bring in i'm going to hold shift press a we're going to select a cube we'll move this cube over into position like that we'll hold shift press d right click we'll make the other another cube go here we'll left click deselect select the armature go to the upper left go to pose mode here in pose mode we'll select this boom zoom in so you can see what's going on we'll select the green bone to the lower right we'll scroll down we'll select the eyedropper select our shape select wireframe we'll left click to deselect uh we'll go to the upper left go to object mode we'll select our object we'll go to edit mode here in edit mode we're gonna press s point five and then press enter to lock that in so we scaled this to 50 percent of what it was move that up some move it forward for some we'll left click to deselect we'll go to the upper left go to object mode we'll select our armature we'll go to the upper left we'll go to pose mode we'll select this bone scroll down select the eyedropper we'll select the shape we'll select wireframe we'll go to we'll left click to d select go to the upper left go to object mode we'll select that shape go to the upper left go to edit mode we'll press uh s the scale point five then press enter so we scaled that to fifty percent of what it was raise this up forward slightly more we'll left click to deselect we'll go to the upper left we'll select the shape well hide i just unhid the other shapes didn't need to do i saw that this was hidden so i unhid it so now i'm hiding them which i really don't have to do because i can just hide off the custom shapes okay so now we have these custom shapes that uh we'll find useful in the future okay there's going to be something we're going to want to fix see the space right here that's not good so what we're going to do is select our mesh go to the upper left go to edit mode we're going to turn off x-ray zoom in take the mouse to pan or press c for paint select right click see for paint select select the hand see for paint select right click so the thing that sometimes is difficult is making sure you get all the faces so what we're going to do is hold ctrl press l think yep the faces i'm gonna over here press l you can see there is that little line that's an area that's missed same here or hold ctrl press l shift ctrl l hold shift i think that's all we'll hold control press l again okay so with that selected i'll zoom back we're gonna hold shift press d right click and then what we're gonna do is take these duplicates duplicates push them down move them back some we're using this to fill in the space and the reason why we're doing this is because this geometry is set up to move with this bone this should uh we shouldn't have to go in go into weight paint this again so we're going to put this slightly lower so when this folds down there's not that space so i'm going to zoom back left click to deselect then i go to the upper left go to object mode i'm going to select the armature zoom in go to the upper left go to pose mode we'll select here pay attention to like the space we'll press s to scale okay so hold the mouse wheel to zoom in 2 4 by accident press a i pressed a to select everything i'll hold alt press s left click to deselect hold the middle mouse button to rotate i'll go up to upper left go to object mode zoom back left click to deselect okay what we're going to do now is we're going to select our armature we're going to go to the upper left we're going to go to pose mode we're going to select the bones that we want i'm going to hold shift we're going to press i let go of shift we're going to press h to hide them when i say the bones that we want these are the bones that we're going to be using to control the rig we'll press h to hide them these pull targets are bones that we want shoulder joints are bones that we want so we'll press h to hide them so all of these other bones we actually don't need so what we're going to do is look towards the lower right to this running man guy this is uh layers this this is set up specifically for bones this is where our bones are currently at what we're going to do now is we're going to press a to select all of our bones and we're going to press the m key so now we're going to when i left click here we're going to move all of the currently selected we don't we want this definitely let me hide that i'm going to press a again okay so i'm going to press m when i left click we're going to move all the bones that are currently selected to here so now they're all moved to there so now what i'm going to do is i'm going to hold all press h so now these are the bones that we use to actually control our rig so i'll left click to deselect okay we'll take a quick look our mech is ready to be used the rig is done it is set up now for animation since you've taken a time to make this rig up realize that you can uh disconnect this rig to move this to other mechs that you might use uh yeah just something that i want you to be aware of that you can do congratulations you've reached the end of the tutorial okay guys uh for all those of you out there who like the videos on this channel we share them thank you very much i really appreciate that and for those of you who are new to this channel if you like the videos on this channel you would like to see more please subscribe and thank you for viewing

Channel: Alimayo Arango

Views: 19,930

Keywords: How To Rig A Mech Blender 2.83 Step by Step, robot, custom shapes, advanced ankle rig, mechanical, hard surface rigging

Id: hDByeNkb2pE

Length: 190min 10sec (11410 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 13 2020