Creating a Rabbit in Blender: Part 8

What You'll Be Creating

1. Rigging

Step 1

Start Maya and open the file which was saved in the last part of the tutorial. Select the bone ear.lower.L and hold down the Shift key.

Step 2

With the shift key held down, select the head bone and then go to Make Parent (Alt-P) > Keep Offset.

Step 3

Select the arm.upper.L bone and hold down the Shift key.

Step 4

With the Shift key held down, select the chest bone and then go to Make Parent (Alt-P) > Keep Offset.

Step 5

Select the leg.upper.L bone and hold down the Shift key.

Step 6

With the Shift key held down, select the torso bone shown and then go to Make Parent (Alt-P) > Keep Offset.

Step 7

Select the torso bone and hold down the Shift key.

Step 8

With the Shift key held down, select the root bone and then go to Make Parent (Alt-P) > Keep Offset.

Step 9

Select the feet.L.IK bone and in the bone tab, untick Deform.

Step 10

Select the hand.L.IK bone and in the bone tab, untick Deform.

Step 11

Switch to Pose mode.

Step 12

Select leg.lower.L and on the Bone Constraint tab, add a new Inverse Kinematics.

Step 13

Select the feet.L.IK for the Bone: slot

Step 14

Select feet.L bone and add a new Copy Rotation constraint.

Step 15

Put feet.L.IK for the Bone: slot.

Step 16

Switch to Edit mode and select the circle shown and snap Cursor to Selected (Shift-S).

Step 17

Select feet.L.IK bone and snap Selection to Cursor (Shift-S).

Step 18

Ensure the result is as shown below.

Step 19

Select the circle on hand.L bone and snap Cursor to Selected (Shift-S).

Step 20

Select hand.L.IK bone and snap Selection to Cursor (Shift-S).

Step 21

Ensure the result is as shown below.

Step 22

Switch back to Pose mode and add a new Inverse Kinematics constraint for the arm.lower.L bone.

Step 23

Select the hand.L.IK for the Bone: slot.

Step 24

Select hand.L and add a new Copy Rotation constraint.

Step 25

The bone should look as shown below.

Step 26

Select hand.L.IK  and grab it around to test. Do the same for feet.L.IK.

Step 27

Select hand.L.IK  and feet.L.IK bone (To select multiple bones, hold Shift).

Step 28

Select root bone last and go to Make Parent (Ctrl-P) > Keep Offset.

Step 29

Now the IK should work perfectly.

Step 30

Go into Edit mode. Reset the 3D Cursor (Shift-C). Box select (B) the bones as shown below.

Step 31

Set the Pivot Point to 3D Cursor.

Step 32

Duplicate (Shift-D) the bone and mirror in the X-axis (X > -1).

Step 33

Rename each bone as shown in the following image.

Step 34

Switch to Object mode and select the rabbit.

Step 35

Select the armature and Set Parent to (Ctrl+P) With Automatic Weights.

Step 36

Select Armature.

Step 37

Select the rabbit too and switch to Weight Paint (Ctrl-Tab).

Step 38

Select the paint tool and set it to Add.

Step 39

Enable X Mirror.

Step 40

Start painting weights.

Step 41

Fix the weights on each bone using the Subtract or Add.

Step 42

This is an example of how a weight should affect the mesh.

Step 43

Test the IK Bone.

Step 44

Fix the weight issues if any.

Step 45

Now the result is smoother.

Step 46

Test the leg IK.

Step 47

Select the hand IK and reset the position (Alt-G) and rotation (Alt-R).

Step 48

Select the bone and fix weights accordingly.

Step 49

Result is as shown below.

Step 50

Continue the process for each bone until you are satisfied with the result. Test this by posing the model.

Conclusion

That's all for this tutorial series, I hope you enjoyed this series and please do feedback your experiences, below.