Thread by @Er1k4r1

It's #skeletember! 💀
Skeletons sustain us and are the foundation of our bodies, yet so many people find them scary (?) and the same goes for rigging!
So let's share some rigging love this September by posting a skeleton study, a rig, or a rigging tip you found interesting 💜

#Skeletember Day 1.
Even muscles can become bones if you believe hard enough in them.
Or you just create an IK constraint to mimic those sexy biceps.
Mine will always look bony anyway u.u
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 2.
I love when the iris follows the pupil just a little bit slower and you control each eye with just one bone.
You can achieve this with transform constraints or simply by turning the iris into a mesh and binding it to both pupil and eye bones.
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 3.
Skeleton doggie runs for a treat, I'm concerned it will come back with more bones. Still a good boy.
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 4.
Ever needed a shoulder to cry on for rigging this? here's a solution to build better shoulders, with fewer tears!
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 5.
2.5D ways of rigging a cube: here's one that doesn't use a constraint.
(and tomorrow I'll post the other one)
Great for floaty gear on a character or when you don't want to/can't have too many constraints.
#madewithspine #rigtip #animtip

#Skeletember Day 6.
2.5D ways of rigging a cube: here's one that uses a constraint. (with translate at -100) I use this a lot for faces or anything that needs a more complex rotation (& I'm so happy people are using something I thought to do cool things ✨) #madewithspine #rigtip

#Skeletember Day 7.
A rig where the character holds or not a weapon with both hands!
(uses IK and transform constraints)
Gif explains it briefly, but you can download it here: esotericsoftware.com/forum/Weapon-1…
#madewithspine #rigtip
legs are for losers when you can stab people with a bone

#Skeletember Day 8.
Clothes tip: control the clothes with their own independent bones, but parented to the right bones like the arms, so that it's easier to adjust a pose or make a follow-through. Here's a cloak, more will come!
#madewithspine #rigtip

#Skeletember Day 9.
Clothes tip:
To further expand on yesterday's example, here's how you could rig a long cloak and a long dress, basically, parent each tiny bone to the correct leg/arm/body to follow, then parent the mesh to the tiny bones only!
#madewithspine #rigtip

#Skeletember Day 10.
An example that holds 8 directions in the same skeleton, adapting the same bones to each pose. To make this more manageable today's #rigtip is to create a dummy animation that holds the various poses to use as base for the other animations. #madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 11.
Rigging shoes nicely can be tricky. Imagine the tip bone bending where the toes touch the ground. For side and 3/4 views form a triangle so that the base that bends has a straight line, and the opposite vertex is where the toes should bend.
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 12.
As long as the proportions and the core skeleton (first part of gif) are the same, you can add very different skins with their own controls (last part of gif) therefore peculiar animations!
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 13.
Today's #rigtip fresh from the Twitch stream is to be creative! Besides moving a bone with an inverse control system, you can also scale the two bones up and down for some interesting effects! #madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 14.
Meshes with many vertices (left) vs low vertices (right) &12 bones (up) vs 4 bones (down).
As you can see it makes more sense to have more vertices rather than bones, and even then the difference is not great. Try to start low, can add later!
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 15.
To further expand on yesterday's concept, here's an example of what you can do with just 2+2 bones, and an IK on the tip to move the wire! (Just 2 bones also on its wings!)
#madewithspine #rigtip

#Skeletember Day 16.
Here's a way to rig a quadruped leg. I'm always fascinated by how so many skeletons are actually human skeletons with different proportions, we're so similar!
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 17. Here's how you can rig the front arm of a quadruped, (everything was red so I allowed more orange influence I would have normally!) still similar to human arms, but using 2 IKs! #madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 18.
An example of how you can create a candle animation. Only the second image from top has blending set to Addditive.
Combine alpha animation, with a little rotation, and you have it! After you have one done just duplicate it around scaling it :D
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 19. Yes, you can have a multi-pose character, here's a way:
1. Rig your character choosing a view (I chose front),
2. Prepare a turnaround animation,
3. Pick a frame to use as base for a side animation,
4. Reuse pieces of the turnaround animewtion!
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 20. Quick sparkles with the Adjust button!
It gives off an "under the sea" or spiraling effect, yet it's only zigzagging.

Art by animalroyale.com
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 21.
Today I present you a dancing cake! You can create chains just by weighting images one after the other to the same two bones only.
Two bones to rule them all, two bones to bring them all, and in the weights bind them where the cake lies.
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 22.
If you're into very 2.5D stuff, I recommend to parent the bones that control the features of the head to the bone controlling rotation, then test that it works even in very weird positions.
Bonus: my grandma ensuring we really ate everything.
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 23.
Meshes are challenging, & vary from pic to pic with no absolute rules.
Here's a breakdown of the logic I use to create the mesh of a face.
Try to follow the lines you would find in the picture itself if you were to trace it to place the verts!
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 24.
It's easier to avoid sliding👟👟if you can adjust them while seeing your character move.
To do so get all your skeleton under a🦴, then constrain it to a path. This path is the first in the constr list. 🔑the constr, animate, delete 🔑& path.
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 25. Here's how to quickly rig a wing that has two swapping images. The magical ✨Update bindings✨ button will let you painlessly bind two images even if the position of the bone is different!
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 26.
To continue on how to rig clothes here's a way to rig a skirt with two layers of fabric! The skirt is weighted to 4 bones although more bones help them to turn nicely up and down, while the mesh follows the lines of the drawing.
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 27.
This is more an animation tip, but:
Step up your floaty idles!
1. create loop with two poses
2. add curves
3. offset the children so that the start of each loop is equally spaced
Make it harder for people to spot your keyframes!
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 28.
If you have lines under and over the parent arm, you can create pieces that fit together but still have a border!
Probably an old trick, but very useful to create Italian gestures.
#madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 29.
People who do puppet animation often forget the parts can be translated or scaled to make rigs less flat. Here's an example of rig so that the arm can look in disbelief towards you instead of only to the side, faking a front rotation. #madewithspine

#Skeletember Day 30.
The order of bones in mesh view matters, the upper in the list, the more in front they'll be!
And you can create a patch to complete the missing side of the cube.
This was the last #rigtip. I hope you found them useful! ✨
#madewithspine

See you next year with #Skeletember! And I would be super happy if other people started posting their tips as well, don't be shy :D sharing is caring 🌈