I can't believe it was soooooo easy!!!!! Many many thanks Grimhilda!!!
in 6 min you show us what carrara or many tutorial could never make us understand their way of learning. Lot of geeks people don't want to understand that the simplicity is the start of complexity....

You make my day

Marc

Thanks GrimHilda,
I actually haven't had a chance to watch the videos as I was studying and getting nowhere fast! I was playing around with the bone tool and not having any luck as it kept drawing straight lines between the bones etc...Plus a lot of interruptions today here. I will go watch the videos as soon as I can and I appreciate the help and the time you took to make the videos.
Thanks again,
TS

I watched the videos. Good job for us noobs especially that you are using Carrara. That makes all the difference in the world. I have them bookmarked as I will be watching them again soon. When I was messing around I tried to create a skeleton with no mesh. Is that even possible? Maybe that is why I was having trouble placing the bones? Do you click and drag each bone when adding them?
Thanks,
TS

Hi Mtakerkart,

Thanks so much for your comments. Believe me, I'm not at all an expert in this - that is why I can reduce it to a simple demo

Hello theschemer,

You've caught me out! Once the bone tool is selected you move and click to place each bone. If you drag and click you can resize it before letting the mouse button go.

I took care in both videos to go into side or top views. If you try to place bones in a 3D window, you can't tell how deeply into the scene they are being placed. In my worm video it was good luck that the bones were within the object - I could have gone to a side view and found they were high above the sphere. That is why in the human mesh example I used two views - front and side.

The bone tool remains active from click to click. If you want it to stop just choose the selection pointer to interrupt the bone creation process.

My 'demo' took no account of the many, many aspects of creating characters or props fit for animation.

The mesh structure (topology) needs to lend itself to distorting in a realistic way.

The bones need to be weight-mapped in most meshes. Carrara can do this. You re-assign distorted points of the mesh to another bone. The different bones have their own areas of influence over the points of the mesh and these can be adjusted.

Joints can be given constraint values to limit their movement - you don't want a neck to rotate 180 degrees, for example.

You can build IK chains into skeletons so that, if you pull a hand, the whole arm, shoulder and upper body gets pulled also.

There is even more I'm only vaguely aware of. Swooooop IS the one to really learn from about these things.

Swoooop, if you read this, I don't have much else to say - I just wanted to help those who've just bought Carrara in a sale.

IF I ever get to make an iclone film, I'll be very happy with existing iclone characters even from generation 1. But making my own moving props is appealing.

GrimHilda,
All good info. I know some things but like to approach new software as a noob so I don''t assume they all work the same as sometimes they don't. I understand the views and how they allow the alignment to be set correctly. What I don't understand is if you can make something with just bones or not. That way I can steer clear of wasting time trying to make a skeleton out of just bones. I had lines between my bones when I was playing around. Maybe I started too many bones and had no hierarchy? I need to get past that issue so I can move on. That said, thanks for the good info and the tutorials as they really help save some time. One other thing I did notice was that the UI seemed like it could be larger on the eyes as in I can't see it so good and wish I could make it bigger. Is that possible? I was looking at the 2 monitor setup but it only works on large scenes and I guess I don't have one yet as nothing showed up on the other monitor.
Thanks,
TS

Theschemer,

I've just logged on for a quick reply then I must be gone!

When you build a skeleton as I showed in the vids, it IS being built stand-alone - with the mesh as a reference to align with. Once it's built, you select both rig and skeleton and 'attach skeleton' to make one combined object. The object has two pivot points at that stage. Then, when you make the bone hierarchy a child of the mesh, the root bone becomes the sole pivot point.

When you first build a string of bones from the root, they all look alike. But if you run more than one chain of bones from (say) the root, the joining lines display as single lines. Take a look at the vids after the 'duplicate with symmetry' command has occurred and you should see this happening.

In the figure prop video, you saw that the figure only was given bones but it was wearing clothing. That was for the demo vid. In reality, after I made the skeleton for the figure I placed the clothing on as a child of the figure parent. THEN I attached the skeleton (to the combined clothing and figure). I could detach the skeleton again, put on different clothing and attach once more.

Detaching a skeleton means that everything - constraints, weight-mapping, etc. will be lost. But a saved skeleton could be kept in Carrara's browser to call up any time as a starting point for a new figure. A skeleton in the cupboard, as it were.

I tried making an IK chain once and now have forgotten it all - except I seem to remember that straight lines appeared joining both ends of the chain (like a bowstring).

Lastly, you can quickly create a figure in Sculptris - even a gingerbread man - decimate it in Carrara and use it for rigging practice. Everything I show on the internet is poor quality because I just proceed in that way to see how things work. But I should inflict better quality work on others!

This really is about all I know of rigging! Except that trying to do it makes me much more appreciative of characters such as Chuck and Gwynn. So much has been put into them and its all been done for us

I find Carara is not a good rigging Tool . The weight brush is horrible and after bind the Bones to Mesh you can not adjust anymore . Also for adjust the weights jumping from Room to Room too cumbersome.

Put the Bones in the mesh is not very hard , but Weightpainting is the important rigging part, and for that is carrara not good.

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liebe Grüße vidi

meet us here

Thanks GrimHilda. I guess I must have been making an IK and didn't even know it when I was messing with the bone tool. Today I may have more time for study and learning. Yesterday was a bad day to quit smoking! (I don't smoke. A joke.) Thanks again for taking the time to help.
TS

Hi Vidi,
What are you using? I might have the apps to do it. I did not think the bone placing process would be too hard to learn as I have done it in 2D with Anime Studio before I switched over to 3D and iClone.
Thanks,
TS