Rigging

I had attempted to rig models in the past, but found it very difficult and often, the joints didn’t work like I wanted them to.

Through Google searches I found a lot of rigging tutorials but unfortunately, they all seem to do use different methods. It got suggested to me that I should try rigging with a biped so I found a decent tutorial to righ with that method and tried it on my spade.

First, I had to remove all mesh smoothes and attach all of the parts of my spade together to form one object (not to group them as I had done in the past). The tutorial also said to leave out the eyes, as they can be attached later.

Next, I had to use the biped tool to draw a skeleton over the top of it. I then removed the arms (as my spade has none) and resized the different bones so that they fit around the spade.

I then added a physique modifier to the spade and attached the biped. Amazingly, it only needed a small amount of adjusting and the spade was able to be fully animated. What once would have taken me several hours only took several minutes!

I also found that by using a biped bone structure within my models, I could use pre-animated walk, run and jump cycles. (See ‘Spade Run Test' video).

I used exactly the same process on all the other tools and the gnomes so they were fully set up and ready to animate.