rigging – Oded Maoz Erell's CG Log

Blender – Basic time-dependent animation driver examples

Posted on May 2, 2020May 3, 2020 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.82

To setup a time-dependent Driver in Blender, simply use the built-in frame variable.
In this example the expression:

sin(frame)

Set as a Z axis location driver for the cube causes it to oscillate up and down:

Changing the expression to:

sin( frame * 0.1 ) * 2

Causes the motion to be twice as high and 10X slower:

In this example, the expression:

( pow( -1 ,  floor( frame / 30 ) )  *  0.5 ) + 0.5

Set to the cube’s Emission shader’s Strength attribute causes it to alternate between values of 0 and 1 every second (30 frames in this case):

Blender 2.8 – Select bones in Weight Paint mode

Posted on December 12, 2019 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.8

To select bones while in Weight Paint mode in Blender 2.8:

Select the Armature
Shift select the skinned mesh
Switch mode to Weight Paint
Shift-Click bones to select them
* Shift double click to select bones hidden under the mesh

Blender – Copy Bone Constraints

Posted on December 12, 2019June 21, 2020 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.83

To copy bone constraints from one bone to other bones:

In Blender Preferences > Add-ons:
Find the Interface: Copy Attributes Menu add-on, and enable it.
In Armature Pose Mode,
Select one or more bones, and select last the bone that has the constraints you want to copy.
Press Ctrl + C to open the Copy Attributes menu, and select Copy Bone Constraints.

Related post:
Quickly setup bone constraints

Blender Skeleton (Armature) Mirroring

Posted on October 19, 2019 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.8

To mirror a skeleton (Armature) in Blender:

Create bones for one side of the rig and name them with “.L” for Left or “.R” for right.
Select all the bones on that side.
In Armature Edit Mode choose:
Armature > Symmetrize

Blender will create mirrored copies of all the bones with respect to the Armature origin and flip their names to names ending with the opposite side.

When editing properly symmetrized bones,
The X-Axis Mirror tool option will simultaneously update both sides of the Armature to maintain symmetry.

Blender – Create constraints quickly

Posted on April 20, 2019December 12, 2019 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.79

To create constraints quickly:

Select the target object.
Shift + Select the object to constrain (Active Object)
Press Ctrl + Shift + C
Choose the wanted constraint type.
select the constrained object to set the constraint parameters.

Related post:
Copy bone constraints

Basic animation constraints in Maya

Posted on June 15, 2018June 15, 2018 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Maya 2018

To setup basic animation constraints in Maya:

Select one or more target objects, and lastly the object to be constrained.
In the Rigging Tab/Toolbar click the wanted constraint.
Optional:
In the channel box, highlight the constraint and set target objects weights.

Setting up a Point Constraint:

Setting up an Orientation Constraint:

Setting up an Aim Constraint:

Animating visibility in Blender

Posted on August 6, 2017October 12, 2018 by Oded Maoz Erell

Software:
Blender 2.78

When setting key-frames to an object’s Visibility or “restrict view-port visibility” property,
Its easy to forget that it doesn’t affect the visibility in rendering but only in the view-port display.
This gave me some really nasty glitches in production when rendered animation turned out different than what I had expected.

Simple solution to that is:
Whenever an object’s visibility needs to be animated,
First thing to do is to set a Driver for the “restrict rendering” property, that would be controlled by the “restrict view-port visibility” property.
That way the animation done on view-port visibility will automatically also control rendering visibility.
What’s needed is a simple single property driver which is very simple to setup and the huge headaches can be avoided that way.

There are plenty of video tutorials about setting up drivers in Blender:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=blender+2.7+drivers