Animate Wings The Easy Way! A Blender Tutorial

[@DemNikoArt]

I was made aware that the "copy driver to selected" option is only available in blender versions 4.2 and newer. For those who use 4.1 or lower, please use the "copy driver" and "paste driver" options in the same menu instead. I'm still learning this tutorial thing 😁

[@GabrielSantos-tb2zo]

Thank you sooooooo much !!!

[@Shamazya]

It's honestly pretty interesting to watch the controller transform. It's very lifelike for a sphere!

[@DemNikoArt]

Hehe right? It's like a living blob 😁

[@ShahanAkhter]

i feel like there is a shortage of more in depth rigging tutorials, this is so well done thank you very much! i was looking forward to this after seeing ur posts on threads 💚😌

[@DemNikoArt]

Oh nice that's interesting to know 😃 And yes I agree, there could definitely be more of those. I'll see if I can make another one with something interesting.

[@ShahanAkhter]

@DemNikoArt i appreciate it! your replies from threads make more sense now 😀 awesome

[@countR3141]

In mathematical terms: because the neutral element for addition is 0 and the neutral element for multiplication is 1, the position starts at 0, and the scale starts at 1. When you use the position as a base for the driver, it starts at 0, so the rotation (in radians) is also 0 at the start. When you used the scale as a base, the rotation was 1 radiant (57.something degrees) , because the scale starts at 1. That's why subtracting 1 from the variable in the driver works.

[@DemNikoArt]

Oh man... I barely understand that but it also kinda makes sense 😁 Thanks for that!

[@xfiremhyoutube]

A good resource for making winged characters or just birds in general. Glad you made this one.

[@DemNikoArt]

Happy to be helpful 😊

[@Hayreddin]

Fantastic tutorial and very easy to follow even for me that I've never properly rigged anything

[@DemNikoArt]

Oh wow! Nice, thank you. That's good to hear! 😃

[@BinIsLearning]

Thank so much. This awesome.🎉

[@JobeStroud]

Very cool. I have never tried blender, considering it seems very daunting. You gave me a reason to try it!

[@DemNikoArt]

Oh nice. Well it can be daunting and it is a complex program. But it's still worth the learning curve 👍😉

[@johnbenson492]

If it wasn’t for twitter I wouldn’t even have found this gold Keep up the great work !

[@DemNikoArt]

Oh nice. Good to know! Thank you! 🙂

[@Clases3d]

this is so cool and so useful, thanks for sharing

[@DemNikoArt]

You are very welcome!

[@KelmarFiresun]

Love this; it's nice having something a bit less complex than a full character model showing details of these more complex options with the rigging system can be done with a clear explanation.

[@G3P8C]

Absolutely amazing! Thank you for posting this. 🙂

[@fergadelics]

Nice, the wing rig also comes with the engine rig and vdb + shader which i can use for something else. i made a lazy version of a similar engine rig but will swap it out now. Thoughtful layout on controllers. Tutorial is available here for iteration and troubleshooting. No brainer buy

[@DemNikoArt]

Thank you very much!!! 😃😃😃

[@samwinchester3201]

a little tip in general especially to see how the drivers work and the bones - on first frame set a keyframe for the icosphere, play 2 3 seconds move the sphere down new keyframe and same vice versa cause even if you are in the pose mode you still can hit play and see the changes insteaad of always switch modes move switch and so on

[@DemNikoArt]

Hmmm... Interesting. I'll check that out.

[@Artof3drendering]

really a clever and easy way to animate it, thks

[@DemNikoArt]

You're very welcome!

[@SanOcelotl]

Damn i wish i could have seen this sooner, figuring out wings for one project i did was so hard for no reason

[@DemNikoArt]

I hope you can maybe implement it now!?

[@SanOcelotl]

@DemNikoArt ill come back to this whenever i need another winged rig for sure

[@RoboThePanda]

huzzah! finally i’ve been waiting for this one!

[@kevinlopez-vo3wv]

you are a genius, thanks u"

[@DemNikoArt]

You're welcome! 🙂

[@0onguyenquanghuynolonger975]

Yessir. It’s finally here

[@SuperMontana2008]

Great tut, can you do a tutorial showing how to attach the wing armature to a birds armature with a walk cycle ? :)

[@DemNikoArt]

For that you don't need a video. You can either just parent the wind armature to an object on the upper body. An empty or whatever. Or use a "child of" constraint on the wing rig and use an upper body bone as the parent. That's it 🙂

[@SuperMontana2008]

@@DemNikoArt sorry, i meant more of a bird or dragon tutorial with the cool techniques' you use, walk cycle added with wings, maybe run and takeoff , just an idea :)

[@DemNikoArt]

@SuperMontana2008 Aaaah I see. Well my animation skills aren't there yet I believe so I'm probably not the best person to ask for a tutorial on animal animation 😁 But it's definitely a good idea to create a complimentary tutorial for this one... once I know how to do it 😄

[@samwinchester3201]

i cant exacvtly explain why, but i see the problem - if you leave it without changing to -1 - if you change the x scale of the main driver to 0,01 than its also fixed but you dont get good results in the view port. 0.01 is a known value when it comes to rigging in blender and export it to Unreal Eninge or Marvelous Designer for example.

[@gordonbrinkmann]

Sehr gutes Video, ich bin inzwischen auch ein großer Freund von OpenEXR geworden, und wie du sagst, gerade bei Farbbildern ist es mit DWAB (lossy) einfach unschlagbar weil es quasi optisch keinen Unterschied zu einem lossless Bild gibt, dafür aber die Datei schön klein bei voller Bit-Tiefe ist. Das einzige was ich nicht mache ist der Color Management Override beim Speichern, die Mühe spare ich mir. Egal ob ich alles lasse wie es ist und im Color Management Filmic, AgX oder sonstwas eingestellt ist oder ich gehe auf Override und stelle es auf Linear Rec.709, das macht für das OpenEXR keinen Unterschied - das ist immer linear ohne angewandtes Color Management. Keine Ahnung wie sich das in Affinity Photo bemerkbar macht, aber wenn ich das OpenEXR in Blender importiere für Compositing o.ä. oder in Photoshop oder DaVinci Resolve, die Bilder sind immer identisch, egal ob ich Override verwendet habe oder nicht.

[@DemNikoArt]

Danke dafür! Allerdings bin ich komplett verwirrt. Dein Kommentar passt so garnicht zu dem Video. Ich erwähne mit keine Wort openEXR oder schneide das Thema überhaupt an. Habe ich etwas übersehen? 😄

[@gordonbrinkmann]

@DemNikoArt Nein, du hast nichts übersehen. Diesen Kommentar habe ich am PC zu einem ganz anderen Video geschrieben, schon bevor ich dein Video (am TV!) gesehen habe. Sehr merkwürdig. Aber dein Video ist auch sehr gut! Wirklich ne sehr gute, einfache Art Flügel zu animieren.

[@TheWolf1340]

Nice tuto but you might precise that you use Blender 4.3, because the option "Copy driver to selected" is not available in 4.1

[@DemNikoArt]

Yep, I heard that recently. Didn't know that it's such a recent feature. I'm using 4.2 but I guess that was the first one with that option. Now it's too late I guess but I will create a pinned comment that you can also "copy driver" and "paste driver". Either way, thanks for letting me know!

[@cryptoben9314]

Hii Niko! this tutorial was great i even made an eagle wing using this and its working fantastic, but i'm not able to attach it to my Animated character, having problem moving it around the viewport, whenever i try to move it here and there with a parented empty the wings starts to go crazyyy.......can you please please help me with this, it would really mean a lot.

[@DemNikoArt]

Hey, oh sorry for your problems. Write me a DM on Instagram or twitter. Then we'll see.

[@cryptoben9314]

@@DemNikoArt yup thank you so much

[@fellthekiller]

can you show how to rig a snake, like a game ready snake

[@DemNikoArt]

I don't have any experience in creating assets for games. So I'm not sure I'm the right one to ask. Also I tried to rig a snake once and it didn't work super well. There are many pitfalls to make it work well and I would need to experiment more.

[@ameridraws2383]

If I make double wings, do I have to create another sphere as the controller or just pick the same one?

[@DemNikoArt]

It should automatically work since the drivers will be copied too with the same sphere selected

[@PauZakArtist]

"Copy Driver to Selected" does not exist on 4.0. when trying to copy the driver to the next bone. is there a work around?

[@DemNikoArt]

Ooooch really? I didn't know that. I assumed such an essential feature would exist for a longer time 🙂 I don't have 4.0 on my pc but is there the "copy driver" option in the same right click menu? Then you could just "copy driver" then select the new bone and right click and "paste driver".

[@ameridraws2383]

Help! My wings didn't move after I set the parent with the amateur :(((

[@DemNikoArt]

It could be literally anything. That's definitely not enough information to find the problem.

[@ameridraws2383]

@@DemNikoArt I tried again with the duplicated wings & it worked 😂 I still have no idea where it could be wrong though 😅