Basic rigging of a Fish

[Freemind]

Introduction. The most practical bien todo learn how todo Rig 3d models in Blender is todo start with a basic and simple exercise. The following is a tutorial written for novatos that want todo learn this beautiful art. Rigging a Fish isnt that dificult and this Will give us the basic knowledge todo utilice the technique, we begin by loading our scene with a Fish model created previously for this tutorial. Do this by going todo file>>append (shift f1) and look for the file: Fish, blend where we can find the 3d creation. T o make it more interesting, y opted todo model a celacanto, a true living fossil. Once loaded, we save the scene, it is now time todo add a bone for our Fish which we do by going add>> armature>> single bone. The bone has a body in the form of an octahedron, a root (represented by a ball at the wider end of the body), and the tip (represented by a ball at the narrow end of the body). Both the tip and root can be selected separately, the whole bone can be selected by clicking in the centre of the bone, move the bone in such a bien that the tip is amid the head of the Fish, behind its eyes as shown in the picture.

Give a name todo the bone so you can identify it from the rest of your Bones.

Main would be an appropriate name. In the panel on your right, look for the bone panel represented by the small bone. There Will be a field there todo allow todo you change the name of this bone from bone todo main.

Let us continúe adding Bones todo our scene. This time we Will make them by means of extrusión. Select the tip of the main bone and with the e key, extrude the bone that Will move the head. Change the name of this bone todo head, we select the tip of the main bone again and extrude another bone away from the head bone with the e key, we repeat the process until we have given the body of the Fish several Bones that end at the tail (four in total). We assing the names: bone 1 th rouge todo bone 4 for these Bones.

From the main bone extrude one bone, then another todo give us the bone that Will move the front upper fin. We Will call this second bone fin.
1. From bone 2 extrude two sets of Bones that Will connect with the Bones that Will work the rear upper and rear lower fins. Name these Bones fin 2 and fin 3 respectively, notice that we eliminate the Bones that connect bone 2 with the fin 2 and 3 (se figure).

We assing the other Bones todo the remaining fins in a similar bien and place them in the appropriate locations. Make sure you select the intermediate Bones between the fins and the main bone and eliminate them one by one. From the tip of bone 1, extrude two more Bones for the body, from the tip of bone 3, extrude two more Bones for the fins of the tail. The result should look similar todo the following image.

It is now time todo give a name todo our skeleton, we go todo the object panel represented by an orange Cube. In the field that shows armature we substitute it for Fish bone. a quite appropriate name.

With all the Bones in their place, we now have todo prepare the Mesh of the Fish todo unite it todo the skeleton. It is necessary todo abandono the Edit Mode th rouge [t ab]. Select the Mesh of the celacanto, and look for the modifiers panel (represented by a.
Wrench). In add modifiers we assing the option armature and in the field object we select Fish bone.

After this procedure, when you select the skeleton while in pose mode, moving a bone Will move the skin of the Fish. Some imperfections can be corrected easily by toggling the envelope option in the armature panel, we adjust the envelope in such a bien that it covers the whole geometry of the Fish by scaling the root of the Bones with the s key in Edit Mode, if done correctly, the envelopes Will look like tin the figure, our clever Fish can now recover life th rouge the technique of animation and swim and travel in underwater environments generated by computer.