Combining 2 Bone folders into 1 rig

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Little Yamori
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Combining 2 Bone folders into 1 rig

Post by Little Yamori »

Hi All,

Well, for those of you who saw my last sample animation for The Golden Gecko, I had a rigged monkey arm made based off of Dan Sugar's (funksmaname?)'s tutorial of hand rigging. I was hoping to use it on a complete monkey character, but am having brain freezes (not the fun kind) of figuring out how to take this arm and seamlessly add it to the monkey as a whole. My first attempt was to duplicate the arm, flip it so I had a left and right, so I now had two arm bone folders inside a new main parent bone layer for the monkey, then rigging the monkey in the main parent bone layer, I added a left and right stubby arm bone, to which I bound one each, the left and right previously bone rigged arms, but the movement and visuals were a little awkward. So I'm just stuck for the moment, as I contemplate how to take this arm asset I already created and naturally surgically attach it to my character.

Any and all answers are appreciated.

Thx
LY
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synthsin75
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Re: Combining 2 Bone folders into 1 rig

Post by synthsin75 »

You should be able to copy/paste the arm bones to the main bone layer, but you may have to redo binding...and probably fix the actions after reparenting the arm bones (redo the bone rotation keys for each SB action).
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Little Yamori
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Re: Combining 2 Bone folders into 1 rig

Post by Little Yamori »

synthsin75 wrote:You should be able to copy/paste the arm bones to the main bone layer, but you may have to redo binding...and probably fix the actions after reparenting the arm bones (redo the bone rotation keys for each SB action).
Thanks synthsin75, I hadn't thought of copying the bones themselves, it's all the re-binding I guess that's unavoidable, (I was afraid of that part :? )
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3deeguy
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Re: Combining 2 Bone folders into 1 rig

Post by 3deeguy »

Little Yamori wrote: ...it's all the re-binding I guess that's unavoidable, (I was afraid of that part :? )
I'm rebuilding a character right now. I spent a lot of time building a head that turned and tilted with SB's. As soon as I added and reparented 'skeletal' bones I ruined the SB actions!
I had to:
1) duplicate the parent bone folder
2) take screenshots of my SB targets(3/4 left, right, tilt up, tilt down)
3) delete the SB actions in the new folder
4) import the screenshots as images
5) create and parent 'skeletal' bones then bind the layers to them
6) recreate the SB actions using my screenshots as guides

I should now be able to add a body with arms and legs without ruining all my 'head' work. It is unpleasant but I think I've learned a lesson.
Cheers, Larry
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Little Yamori
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Re: Combining 2 Bone folders into 1 rig

Post by Little Yamori »

3deeguy wrote: I'm rebuilding a character right now. I spent a lot of time building a head that turned and tilted with SB's. As soon as I added and reparented 'skeletal' bones I ruined the SB actions!
I had to:
1) duplicate the parent bone folder
2) take screenshots of my SB targets(3/4 left, right, tilt up, tilt down)
3) delete the SB actions in the new folder
4) import the screenshots as images
5) create and parent 'skeletal' bones then bind the layers to them
6) recreate the SB actions using my screenshots as guides

I should now be able to add a body with arms and legs without ruining all my 'head' work. It is unpleasant but I think I've learned a lesson.
Yikes! lesson learned, :shock: wow, I'll give this all a try, but might end up starting from scratch for the hands on the full rig. Thanks for the breakdown of what you did.
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