How do i rig a robotic figure using bones or (GENOMA) without deforming the mesh with bones?
Bones deforms the mesh so how can i stop the bones deform the mesh and just drive the mechanical joints and make IK with non deforming rig.
Use weight maps to isolate the parts from each other.
Or split apart your robot into separate layers and parent/constrain each part to the joint that controls it.
The weight thing is probably easier though.
Thanks.. any tutorial out there? rigging mechanical parts etc?
YEah, this was asked just the other day... easiest method is to just treat it as you would any other cahracter/setup, but to instead use "block" weights to fully bind a single part to a single bone... Beyond that you can pretty much follow any regular rigging tutorial.
I just opened up a very old robot model I did for a job years ago. And I used the following methods (no Genoma back then, and I don't think it would work with this set either) no bones, just simple IK for different robot layers.
Now, this was a simple rig, because I was only taking certain poses and keyframing them in Flash (so save on filesize) but I'm sure with a little more effort it could have been used for animation and export for comp.
thanks for all this help..
I think bones give you a few more options than object parts. Nothing wrong with rigging animating object parts of course. But I think bones is a bit more elegant of a solution in my opinion.
I agree. But I for one don't know how to do it properly and would welcome any tutorials on the matter. In the end, I went with the above method as it 'worked' at the time.
With bones, it is the same as rigging a character. And basically the bones rather than your object pivot points are the rotation origins. It is more complex and requires a deeper understanding technologically, but the result is more flexibility and a rig that you can manage separate from the mesh, of just a few advantages.
End the end go with what works for you. Sometimes a more complex and flexible set up is not the best thing.
This is a genoma specific video, but may help.