Reusing a base rig, and after the course is done questions.

[Nathi Tappan]

Howdy!

These questions are not quite connected to this lesson, but I just finished the course and will try to apply what I learned on these two simple characters I made for Christmas.

You can see they are basically the same mesh, with just a couple of differences on the face and materials.

 

My questions are, once I’m done with the rigging of one is it easy enough to copy the rig to the other character?

I was thinking something like just duplicate the file, bring in the GEO collection from the second character, deleting the GEO of the first one and attaching the armature to the new one. Will that transfer the weight painting as well? Will that even work? Let me know if you can point me to any resources on this topic.

And second question: do you by chance also have any recommendations on how to make the accessories (say the hats, or the moustache) move according to how I animate the character? Other than the basic parenting to the bone. More like the pompom reacting to gravity or the clothes wrinkling with the body movement), or hair moving in a somewhat organic way. Would that be through constraints, maybe physics?

And last question (sorry for a long post): on the character prep before rigiging… Wayne mentioned he had the origin of everything at 0,0,0.

Any words of advice on the GEO prep? I know for instance he left the hair and hat separate, Should everything else be joined then, or can I leave my mesh objects split? Leave modifiers as is?

It’s crazy how even a simple character as this has a lot of mesh objects in the end…

Thanks for any insight!!

[Wayne Dixon]

Hey Nathi.

Cute characters.

Let me see if I can answer all your questions.
Yes you can copy the rig to the other characters.

After you’re done with 1, you can duplicate it and transfer the weights from one mesh to the other. (more on that in a moment)

You could share the same data on the armatures  but that will only really help you if you need to tweak the positions (then it will update on the copies)

Constraints live on the pose bones, but the data of the armature is related to edit mode.  So if you change any constraints, it will only change that one the copy you are working on.  So it’s best to finish your rig first.

As for transferring weights – there are 2 ways.
Transfer the weights in weight paint mode – select both meshes, then in weight paint mode go to the ‘weights’ menu and choose transfer weights.

I can’t remember the correct order you need to select them but I think the tool tip will tell you.

The other way is with the data transfer modifier.
Set the Vertex Data on, as well as Vertex groups, and then you can change how it is mapped.
The generate Data Layers button will create the vertex groups it needs on the mesh,  But once the settings are looking correct, you can apply this one.

[Nathi Tappan]

Thanks Wayne! That doesn’t sound hard at all! Thank you, it will save me a ton of time.

[Author]

Posts