Model 4: Rigging

For this task, I have to rig an object and start to animate it. Rigging is something I have gone over a little in class but for this task, I had to make a skeleton which is something I have never done before. To start off, I made a cylinder and there is a tool in the Animation tab called Skeleton. I choose that and then Joint tool. What this allowed me to do is to start to make 'joints' for my skeleton.

I could then 'draw' the joints for the skeleton and after that and shift selecting the bottom of the joints and the cylinder, going to Skin and then Bind Skin, Smooth Bind to get something like this:

I could then rotate them and get something like this:

I then made the skeleton of the fish by using the method before, following the tutorial I was using.
When I had to bind the skin, I had to make some changes in the options for it so the joints effect only what is the closest to them instead of anything else that is around it.
I see what gets effected by doing a test animation. I select one part of the body, set a key frame at 1 then move it, set one at 6 then copy and paste the first frame to 9. I do this for 10, 16, 19, 20, 26 and 29 for the Fin, Dorsal Fin and then the Tail so I can see the skin deformation and then get to fine tuning it.

 

 

 I can sort out the skin for the fish by using many different tools in Edit Smooth Skin (under Skin) and the one I am going to use for this is: Paint Skin Weights. What that does is allows me to select parts of my joints and see what the deformation is and change them if I need to.

Once that has been done, I can start to animate the actual fish and not have any deformation.
I finally got to finishing the animation and I got this: