Hey!

Quick Note: I've got no experience with Blender or animating itself. So sorry if I'm hard to bare.

My Issue:

Ok, so I went ahead and gave the 'Gus the Gingerbread Man' tutorial a try, everything went perfect until I got to rigging. Now I'd hate to be known as 'The guy that failed to make Gus move(Properly)' but that's exactly what's happening so far.

I'm able to make Gus move his limbs, but when I move the arms, it takes way too much chest with it and when I move the thighs/upper legs, the abdomen basically turns in to a 'C' with the curves it makes. The knee joint seems to work fine so far though.

What I've done to change this?

Well first I will point out that I followed the Gus tutorial EXACTLY! There might be a few miller meters off in mesh size, but that would be about it. So I've done the whole "Select Arm.R, Press 'B' and the middle mouse button, scroll over the arm, yada, yada, yada." So I think there is something I'm not seeing at work here. I've taken screen shots if you need it. I wont upload them now for the simple reason that my problem is most likely easy to solve and I'm just too stupid to realize it.

I've also tested the same rigging methods on other custom made models, the same result appears. Though the models don't look that great at the moment. I've even tried making a large square than a round arm attached to that to try and see if it was the positioning of the bone itself. All results are the same, too much chest moves.

Finishing Note:

Any and all advice and answers are greatly appreciated! I'm using Blender Ver 2.6!

I'd also like to note that this post was actually a last resort, I have tried looking for help from other posts and even looking through some rigging tutorials, and they either didn't cover my problem or I got lost vary quickly in the terminology Animators are used too. (So if you can dumb down you answer, if you have one. That would be appreciated!)

Thanks again!
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"When kicking a ball, always be sure to use your foot!"

Where is this “Gus the Gingerbread Man” tutorial? What kind of animation features is it using—armatures, lattices, shape keys?

ldo wrote:

Where is this “Gus the Gingerbread Man” tutorial? What kind of animation features is it using—armatures, lattices, shape keys?

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Manual/Your_First_Animation

That'll take you to a page with the link to part one and two. Two has the rigging set up.

It's using Armature, with out IK. Just 'Add it, Name it, Skin it, Move it.'

I haven't tried using IK yet, but I've seen it in use and I'll be looking in to some information on it soon. I just want to sort this issue out first if possible.
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"When kicking a ball, always be sure to use your foot!"

Ah. Didn’t think to look in the wiki. I was hunting through the list of animation tutorials here http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/animation/, which doesn’t include it.

Anyway, the screen shot shows that armature deformation by “Envelopes” is enabled, along with “Vertex Groups”, but maybe that screen shot is wrong: have you tried disabling deformation by “Envelopes’, to see if that helps?

ldo wrote:

Ah. Didn’t think to look in the wiki. I was hunting through the list of animation tutorials here http://www.blender.org/education-help/tutorials/animation/, which doesn’t include it. Anyway, the screen shot shows that armature deformation by “Envelopes” is enabled, along with “Vertex Groups”, but maybe that screen shot is wrong: have you tried disabling deformation by “Envelopes’, to see if that helps?

I'll give it a try now. But unless it said to do that in the tutorial, than no I haven't.

Two seconds... ...

Sadly no change, I had a look through the pages myself and found some boxes were unticked that were ticked for me. Such as 'Bone Envelope' and the 'Envelope' under Vertex Groups. So I changed those one at a time to see if there would be any change, but in this case no.

Is it possible that I could have a broken download of Blender? I'm not too sure if that thing is common.
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"When kicking a ball, always be sure to use your foot!"

Without actually looking into this, I wold guess your problem is trying to use New Blender (2.62) with an Old Blender (2.49) tutorial. That can be 'challenging' unless you are familiar with Blender.

Well, the only thing I can think of now is, you need to step beyond what is strictly covered in the tutorial. Try weight-painting mode; as you select each bone, are the red (maximum-weight) areas on the mesh where you expect them to be?

ldo wrote:

Well, the only thing I can think of now is, you need to step beyond what is strictly covered in the tutorial. Try weight-painting mode; as you select each bone, are the red (maximum-weight) areas on the mesh where you expect them to be?

I'm not too sure about weight-painting mode sorry.

I'm also not too sure how to answer your question; (Maximum-Weight part confuses me a little.) I think I know what you're referring too; If you'referring to the 'skinning' phase with aligning the right vertices with the armature, than no they weren't were they were expected to be. I mean all the right places were selected, but more than needed was selected. So I did what the guide said and made 'B'oxes around the correctly selected vertices and removed them form selection with the middle mouse button than with the remaining vertices selected, I pressed 'remove' than continued to check and fix the next bone ect. I noticed however some of the 'unwanted vertices' were in different places to the images, but mostly they were the same.

stiv wrote:

Without actually looking into this, I wold guess your problem is trying to use New Blender (2.62) with an Old Blender (2.49) tutorial. That can be 'challenging' unless you are familiar with Blender.

I thought the same, though they labeled it to work in 2.6 on the wiki. But then again, no body is perfect and an error on the person who placed it as a tutorial for 2.6 in the wiki could have not noticed a small change. I mean they advertise a more 'up-to-date' and better tutorial than the 'Gus the Gingerbread Man' but when I tried it, it was all done with an older version that had completely different interface (With the panels and buttons anyway.) and due to changes in the software the tutorial was near impossible for me to complete. I ended up giving up and moving on.

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I'd like to thank you Ido for taking an interest in my issue, but it seems to be a tough one. So if anyone could point me in the direction of a tutorial or guide based around 2.6 involving rigging, than I would gladly give that a try and work through it in no time. And if all is well with a separate tutorial or guide, I wouldn't mind sweeping this issue under the rug. After all there could be some minor mistake I'm making here that is resulting all of it and if that is the case, I'd hate to waste everybody's time.

I'm very new to the Blender community and Blender Resources and I'm not too sure where to find up-to-date guides/tutorials. In this case they don't even have to be new tutorials as long as you know they work with 2.6. I've searched myself and will continue to search but the insight and experience you or any other person who's spent a lot of time around blender would probably produce the kind of information I'm looking for. So any links containing any blender related information that would be vary useful to know would be greatly appreciated.
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"When kicking a ball, always be sure to use your foot!"

Weight-paint mode is just another mode, selectable from the same menu as Object mode and Edit mode. I’m suggesting it because it’s easier than going through the vertex groups in Edit mode and tediously using the Select button on each one to check group memberrships.

In weight-paint mode, the vertices affected by the currently-selected armature bone will show a colour depending on the weight assigned to their membership in that vertex group, from blue to 0.0 to red for full (1.0) weight. Switching between bones will switch the colour display, so you can quickly check the weight assignments for each bone.

ldo wrote:

Weight-paint mode is just another mode, selectable from the same menu as Object mode and Edit mode. I’m suggesting it because it’s easier than going through the vertex groups in Edit mode and tediously using the Select button on each one to check group memberrships. In weight-paint mode, the vertices affected by the currently-selected armature bone will show a colour depending on the weight assigned to their membership in that vertex group, from blue to 0.0 to red for full (1.0) weight. Switching between bones will switch the colour display, so you can quickly check the weight assignments for each bone.

Interesting, Thank you! I'll defiantly start using that instead, The Select and Remove process was quite annoying.

I'll be going through a set of tests to see if it's actually my computer, or a faulty download (Multiple times... So I doubt it.). I'll also be browsing for changes in the recent versions to see if I can combat this. Thank you for all you help.
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"When kicking a ball, always be sure to use your foot!"