WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.010 --> 00:00:04.000 Armatures are the foundation of what animators use to animate their characters. 2 00:00:04.640 --> 00:00:11.280 They are also known as rigs or skeletons, and like skeletons, armature objects are made up of bones. 3 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:17.040 Bones are the individually moving parts of a skeleton or armature that dictate where and how 4 00:00:17.040 --> 00:00:22.880 the skeleton can move, just like real bones in a real skeleton. With armature objects, 5 00:00:22.880 --> 00:00:26.640 we can create and edit bones and then transform these bones to animate them. 6 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:29.600 Let's see how that works. 7 00:00:30.080 --> 00:00:35.640 First things first, you can add armatures to your scene by going to the Add menu and selecting Armature. 8 00:00:35.800 --> 00:00:38.120 This will add an armature with a single bone. 9 00:00:38.920 --> 00:00:42.720 The cube is a bit in the way, so let's hide it for now in our Outliner. 10 00:00:43.400 --> 00:00:47.560 For hotkey users, you can also select the cube and press H as in Hide. 11 00:00:48.440 --> 00:00:53.240 With this armature object, we have two modes other than Object Mode that we can go into. 12 00:00:53.600 --> 00:00:56.560 We can edit the bones by going into Edit Mode and 13 00:00:57.200 --> 00:00:59.560 we can Pose Bones in Pose Mode. 14 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:03.280 Posing is where you'll be doing most of your bone animation as well. 15 00:01:03.400 --> 00:01:06.880 You can enter both of these modes by going to the top left hand corner, 16 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:11.920 but for hotkey users, you can also press Tab to toggle in and out of Edit Mode and 17 00:01:12.320 --> 00:01:15.240 Ctrl-Tab to toggle in and out of Pose Mode. 18 00:01:15.960 --> 00:01:20.920 But right now we only have one bone, so let's go into Edit Mode and change that. 19 00:01:21.400 --> 00:01:26.160 Once we're in Edit Mode, the bones that make up our armature object can now be edited. 20 00:01:26.360 --> 00:01:31.280 This is very similar to how we edit vertices, edges, and faces for a mesh in Edit Mode. 21 00:01:31.840 --> 00:01:34.600 Now a bone is made up of three parts. 22 00:01:35.080 --> 00:01:37.600 The head, the body, and the tail. 23 00:01:38.440 --> 00:01:42.280 The head is the base of the bone and also its pivot point. 24 00:01:42.840 --> 00:01:47.280 The tail is the narrower end of the bone and the body is the main body. 25 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:50.160 You can edit bones in three ways. 26 00:01:50.160 --> 00:01:54.320 You can select and move both the head and tail of the bone individually, 27 00:01:54.320 --> 00:01:59.480 or you can select the middle of the bone and move, rotate, or scale the bone as a whole. 28 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:05.680 Now that we know that, I'm going to very quickly try to rig the spine of this character. 29 00:02:06.080 --> 00:02:09.080 You can download this character in the description down below. 30 00:02:09.720 --> 00:02:15.160 Let's go ahead and add an armature object like we did before and then go into Edit Mode and 31 00:02:15.280 --> 00:02:19.280 drag the tail of our bone all the way up to the top of his head. 32 00:02:19.880 --> 00:02:23.680 If we want to add more bones, we can also do that in a number of ways. 33 00:02:24.200 --> 00:02:30.480 Using the Add menu at the top, we'll add a new single bone, not parented to any existing bones, 34 00:02:30.480 --> 00:02:32.880 which you can then move wherever you want. 35 00:02:33.400 --> 00:02:38.240 But if we want to attach it to our existing bone, we'll have to parent one to the other. 36 00:02:38.760 --> 00:02:42.440 Parenting plays a huge role in armatures and bone relationships, 37 00:02:42.520 --> 00:02:45.720 as it drives the foundation of how a rig moves. 38 00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:49.880 When we select our new bone and parent it to our existing bone in Edit Mode, 39 00:02:50.400 --> 00:02:52.440 you'll find a few different options. 40 00:02:52.920 --> 00:02:55.040 Connected and Keep Offset. 41 00:02:55.800 --> 00:03:01.480 Connected will automatically move the entire child bone to the location of the tail of the parent bone. 42 00:03:02.160 --> 00:03:05.920 This is because connected bones must share a head and a tail. 43 00:03:06.760 --> 00:03:11.360 This is great for bone chains like spines, where the joints are perfectly shared. 44 00:03:12.160 --> 00:03:18.400 However, Keep Offset will ignore this requirement and act similarly to how object parenting works, 45 00:03:18.400 --> 00:03:23.200 where transformation is inherited regardless of the child's relative position to the parent. 46 00:03:23.840 --> 00:03:29.560 This is great for ears or eyes, where the pivot of the deformation doesn't relate to the parent's tail position. 47 00:03:30.120 --> 00:03:34.040 Another way to create bones is to simply select a bone and subdivide it. 48 00:03:34.760 --> 00:03:38.400 This is done by using the right-click context menu and selecting Subdivide. 49 00:03:39.040 --> 00:03:42.320 This will turn your selection into a chain of connected bones. 50 00:03:42.960 --> 00:03:48.960 As usual, you will have an operator panel appear in the bottom left that you can expand and adjust the number of cuts. 51 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:55.680 But you can also extrude new bones from existing bones by using the Extrude tool. 52 00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:01.680 This can be found in the left-hand side Quick Tools menu in the same way the Extrude tool is used on meshes. 53 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:06.880 For hotkey users, you can press E as an Extrude as well in the same way. 54 00:04:07.840 --> 00:04:11.280 You can extrude bones from the head or the tail of a bone. 55 00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:14.640 Make sure you have one or the other selected and use the Extrude tool. 56 00:04:15.440 --> 00:04:19.760 You can also extrude multiple bones depending on how many heads or tails you have selected. 57 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:23.920 Bones created from extrusion are connected by default. 58 00:04:24.560 --> 00:04:27.120 You can disconnect these bones by unparenting them, 59 00:04:27.120 --> 00:04:31.360 which can be done through the right-click context menu going to Parent and selecting Clear. 60 00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:34.960 For hotkey users, you can also press Alt P. 61 00:04:35.920 --> 00:04:38.560 However, here we'll see two options pop up. 62 00:04:39.200 --> 00:04:41.120 Disconnect will disconnect the bones, 63 00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:45.280 allowing you to move them away from the tail without affecting the bone it was connected to. 64 00:04:46.240 --> 00:04:50.160 But it will keep the bone parented to the other bone with an offset. 65 00:04:51.200 --> 00:04:52.560 Does this sound familiar? 66 00:04:52.560 --> 00:04:58.400 Well, that's because this is the same state as the Keep Offset option when parenting bones. 67 00:04:59.120 --> 00:05:04.480 On the other hand, selecting Clear Parent will disconnect and sever the parent-child relationship 68 00:05:04.560 --> 00:05:05.120 completely. 69 00:05:06.160 --> 00:05:08.960 Another tool you can use from the toolbar is the Roll tool. 70 00:05:09.760 --> 00:05:14.000 Bone Roll dictates simply how a bone is rotated along its vertical axis. 71 00:05:14.720 --> 00:05:16.880 This is typically its local y-axis. 72 00:05:18.000 --> 00:05:20.160 Why would you want to use the Roll tool? 73 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:23.600 Well, assuming you have something simple like an elbow to deform, 74 00:05:23.600 --> 00:05:26.480 and you know elbows only bend in one direction, 75 00:05:26.480 --> 00:05:30.560 you would want that direction to be along an axis of rotation, x, y, or z. 76 00:05:31.440 --> 00:05:36.160 To view the axes of your bones, simply go to the Armature Data tab of your Properties Editor, 77 00:05:36.720 --> 00:05:38.720 denoted by this green stick figure icon. 78 00:05:39.840 --> 00:05:43.120 Then go to Viewport Display and check Axis. 79 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:47.040 Suddenly, all of your bones' axes will become visible. 80 00:05:47.920 --> 00:05:52.320 You can use the Roll tool by simply left-click dragging anywhere in the viewport 81 00:05:52.320 --> 00:05:56.480 to rotate the axes of the bone to align with how you want it to transform later. 82 00:05:57.280 --> 00:06:01.040 You can also edit the roll in the Bone tab of the Properties Editor, 83 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:02.960 denoted by this green bone icon. 84 00:06:03.840 --> 00:06:08.720 Simply left-click drag the roll value, or left-click tap and enter a number manually. 85 00:06:09.760 --> 00:06:13.520 And the last bone editing tool you can select is the Bone Size tool. 86 00:06:14.320 --> 00:06:16.880 This is not the same as scaling the bone, 87 00:06:16.880 --> 00:06:20.880 and you'll notice that if you left-click drag, it doesn't do anything. 88 00:06:21.760 --> 00:06:25.840 That's because these changes are only visible with a different bone display. 89 00:06:26.640 --> 00:06:29.920 Simply go back into the Armature tab of the Properties Editor. 90 00:06:30.880 --> 00:06:36.240 Under Viewport Display, we can open this drop-down to select different kinds of bone displays. 91 00:06:36.880 --> 00:06:39.520 For the Bone Size tool to reflect any changes, 92 00:06:39.520 --> 00:06:42.960 you'll want to choose either the B-Bones or the Envelopes display. 93 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:48.160 Now, when we left-click drag this tool, you can see the width of our bone changing. 94 00:06:49.360 --> 00:06:53.760 You can read more about what each of these bone types do in the official documentation, 95 00:06:53.760 --> 00:06:55.840 which you can find in the description down below. 96 00:06:56.560 --> 00:06:59.360 But most of the time, you can choose one based on preference. 97 00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:05.120 I typically keep it on octahedral, but some people prefer stick, for example, 98 00:07:05.120 --> 00:07:06.400 to simplify the visuals. 99 00:07:07.200 --> 00:07:11.120 Now, let's go ahead and talk about how to use these bones for animation. 100 00:07:11.120 --> 00:07:14.560 In order to do that, we need to understand how Pose Mode works. 101 00:07:15.280 --> 00:07:19.920 Let's go into Pose Mode by either selecting it from the drop-down or pressing Ctrl-Tab. 102 00:07:21.040 --> 00:07:23.760 This will then turn all of our selected bones blue. 103 00:07:24.720 --> 00:07:28.080 Transforming a bone here will actually record location, 104 00:07:28.080 --> 00:07:31.600 rotation, and scale in the individual bone data. 105 00:07:32.320 --> 00:07:36.240 With this, we can finally add keyframes for these bones in Pose Mode 106 00:07:36.240 --> 00:07:40.080 by right-clicking and going to Insert Keyframe, Lock Rod Scale. 107 00:07:40.800 --> 00:07:42.480 This lets us animate. 108 00:07:43.120 --> 00:07:47.600 But you may have noticed that when we move our bones, our character still doesn't move. 109 00:07:48.480 --> 00:07:52.400 So how do we make sure our bones actually move our character? 110 00:07:52.400 --> 00:07:57.120 In Object Mode, we can simply select the mesh, shift-select the armature object, 111 00:07:57.120 --> 00:08:01.280 and open the Parenting menu either through the right-click context menu or Ctrl-P. 112 00:08:02.480 --> 00:08:07.360 You then might notice the option for Armature to Form, with three sub-options below that. 113 00:08:08.320 --> 00:08:13.760 The most commonly used one is with automatic weights, as it gives us a great starting point, 114 00:08:13.760 --> 00:08:17.600 but feel free to read up on the other two options in the official documentation. 115 00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:22.800 Once we selected this, you'll notice that when you transform individual bones, 116 00:08:22.800 --> 00:08:27.040 each bone has been assigned a group of vertices that will deform with it. 117 00:08:27.920 --> 00:08:31.920 This is being handled by vertex groups, also known as weights, 118 00:08:31.920 --> 00:08:35.920 which have been automatically generated by Blender based on the placement of the bones 119 00:08:35.920 --> 00:08:40.480 relative to the mesh. We'll be going over vertex groups in a separate video. 120 00:08:41.440 --> 00:08:46.240 If you select your mesh and go into its Modifiers tab, denoted by the wrench icon, 121 00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:50.800 you'll notice that it now has a new modifier as well, the Armature modifier. 122 00:08:51.760 --> 00:08:55.600 This is how Blender uses armature objects to deform meshes, 123 00:08:55.600 --> 00:08:58.640 based on the transformation of individual bones. 124 00:08:58.640 --> 00:09:03.760 Now obviously this rig is incomplete, and if you want to learn how to rig the entire character, 125 00:09:03.760 --> 00:09:06.480 you can head over to our character rigging video, 126 00:09:06.480 --> 00:09:11.280 but I hope this gave you a good idea of how armature objects work and how to edit them.