Bones

[Joseph Q]

Hey I have basic question that has confused me a little. 

Why do you place the Def_Body, Body, Main bones in the same place making it hard to select them if necessary. And if some are not meant to be selected for further use, why create them in the first place. 

Apologies if this is a basic question but it has always been on my mind watching these videos.

Regards

Joseph 

[coyo]

I’m sure Wayne will be along shortly to explain it better detail (correct my mistakes) but basically the general rule of thumb is that each bone has its own unique function.

So, DEF bones are the main “skeleton” of the rig. These are the bones actually skinned to the geometry.

The bones with no prefix will become the custom shapes which act like handles that the animator manipulates to control the rig. When the rig is finished only these bones will be visible.

MCH bones are the workhorses. They generally contain information or otherwise exist to tell the other bones what to do.

Once you get further into rigging it starts to make more sense. With overlapping bones, pop into b-bones view and scale the overlapping bones slightly differently so there is a visual indicator of the overlap. You can also use ALT+LMB (or your preferred select button) to pop up a list of all overlapping objects and choose from that list.

Hope this helps!

[Wayne Dixon]

Coyo said it perfectly.

It’s easier to assign specific roles to your bones.  Technically they are all bones, but your are giving them special names and special jobs.

There’s only really 3 jobs for bones.
CTRL – controls.  (we don’t label them in any special way because these are the only ones visible to an animator)
MCH – mechanisms (We need these in order to make the controls do what we want – they are hidden from the animator)
DEF– these are the ones that actually deform the mesh (they are hidden from the animator and they are the only bones that have the ‘deform’ option enabled)

If you mix the roles things become much more difficult to manage.
“Hey which one of you guys was in charge of deform this wheel?  Was it you ‘Wheel-mech-02′”
‘Nope – ask Axel-control-06, he was over that way the last time I checked’
“OMG – Why isn’t there any logic to this?”

Check out this from the fundamentals 😉
https://cgcookie.mavenseed.com/lessons/rigging-concepts-made-simple

[coyo]

I can’t believe I forgot about the marionette example. While simplified, it has helped me keep the concepts organized in my head.

Imagine a marionette. The DEF bones are effectively the puppet themselves. The CTRL (un-prefixed) bones are the sticks the puppeteer holds. The MCH bones are the strings between the two!

[Dwayne Savage]

I think everyone covered it from the Blender world, but I wanted to point out that in other 3D software their are differences between the types(DEF, Control, and MCH). Like in Maya the control is actually a curve object(usually). Animation master 2009 the MCH bones are a different object attached to the deformers(DEF bones in Blender). So learning to have it as separate pieces will also help you if you ever have to work with other 3D rigging software. 

[Joseph Q]

Thank you Coyo my brain is finding it hard to understand some of rigging concept and rules but the example you gave about the Marionette makes a lot of sense. Thank also to Wayne (as always) & Maciek. 

I have been watching a lot of videos and taking the course and understand most of the concept in the examples given but applying them to what I personally need is where I seem to get confused. Hopefully I will get there one day. 

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