[Blender] Convert Bendy bones to Regular bones

[@millerbyte]

I was looking for a method to make my bendybones compatible with Godot -- this worked like a charm, thank you!

[@CGDive]

Nice!

[@Legend64Project]

You’re the only person I’ve seen cover this. Thank you so much 🙏

[@Pouk3D]

Literally just what I was looking for. Thanks. :)

[@saramarquezreina9538]

Es exactamente lo que estaba buscando, muchísimas gracias!!! No he visto ningún tutorial parecido. Para hacer colas o animaciones suaves los B-Bones son lo mejor, y saber que no hay que rehacer animaciones nuevas para exportarlas a otros programas es un gran alivio.

[@myrminki]

This will be a nice addition to my future custom rigs

[@TimDownsAnimation]

I just had a realization. This could be useful for facial rigging! Instead of the bendy bones deforming the face, it's the individual bones parented to them. That way you can make large poses with the bendys' controllers, then fine adjustments with the bendys' child bones. Could also probably help simplify action constraints for a complex facial armature. It'd be kind of like the old method of "ribbon" rigging in Maya, which Blender can't do.

[@CGDive]

Interesting. I haven't heard of the ribbon method. Googling now :)

[@TimDownsAnimation]

@@CGDive Yeah I haven't the faintest idea why it's not doable in Blender. It comes down to how NURBS surfaces and constraints work in Blender. No way to hook something to a NURBS ribbon-- only the other way around. I think it's why they came up with Bendy Bones in the first place, also they're a bit more efficient. But if you want a lot of points of control, then the bendy-ness becomes kind of pointless unless you do something like in this video! I've been really excited to implement this in a real face rig, but I haven't had the time. Soon, though!

[@CGDive]

@@TimDownsAnimation BTW, you can parent Empties to verts and then constrain the bones to the Empties. Would that be useful?

[@TimDownsAnimation]

​@@CGDive You can achieve the same effect using polygons and vertices, but it'd be much more expensive than with NURBS. Also to parent an empty to vertices, you can only either parent it to one vert (which has no rotation) or to 3 verts (which isn't accurate unless you subdivide the mesh, which makes it even more expensive).

[@AdamJanz3D]

Thank you so much for these in-depth videos! They are incredibly helpful in showing how to get a rigify character (with face rig) into UE4.

[@yvesmolina]

Brilliant, thank you 👍

[@TraumaEcarlate]

Thanks a lot ! I may have seen this written soluce and missed the effectivness, thanks for putting this in video.

[@Montogoronto]

YES i searched so long for this. Thanks.

[@CGDive]

Enjoy!

[@Montogoronto]

@@CGDive i in fact did enjoy.

[@hydrocosmo]

Life saving and game changing. Thank you.

[@stoplight2554]

also gotta say, the method to make normal bones follow the bendy bones curve is also just really great as a way to visualize the curve even when you have bones in the stick display mode

[@buttons_]

Genius stuff thank you

[@atkay4611]

This is absolutely genius, thank you a thousand times!!

[@ikarosainasoja]

This video saved me, thanks! Works perfectly and imports flawlessly to Godot.

[@CGDive]

Great to hear!

[@horiamihaipopescu4798]

Exactly what I was searching, thanks!

[@da_drood-digitalart]

Thanks so much! I needed exactly this type of tutorial! Greatly explained and pretty simple to follow. You're awesome :) Subscribed

[@ЖмыхАирлейнс-о8м]

just what i need! Many Thanks!

[@thomascrozelon1648]

I'm not sure I got this right. I've found your video after the same answer on the thread, I've followed everystep but when I import in Unity it still doesn't work, my guess is that is because the bendy bone still there in blender does not import in unity, so my deform bone has no target. Am I right? Do you have any suggestions? Perhaps I need to re-animate everything with your technique? (because I tried your technique after I animated everything, I didn't know BBones didn't work in game engines :v )

[@CGDive]

yeah, export may need special preparation. If you share your blend I could take a look and offer a suggestion.

[@thomascrozelon1648]

@@CGDive That is very kind of you. Here's the blend file: fromsmash.com/WJevK-~o7Z-ct Note that I deleted on purpose the step I've followed in your tutorial, let me know if you need me to re-do these

[@CGDive]

@@thomascrozelon1648 Thanks, I am busy today. I'll try to have a look tomorrow :)

[@CGDive]

I took a quick look. I can see that you parented the body of the robot directly to a bone. This will not work for game export. For export, you need to parent the whole character to the armature using *weights*. Please watch this video (at least the first 13 minutes or so) kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z4nQYpttZZWons0 I have a whole series on exporting to game engines and we also made an addon to make things easier. But you need to understand what can be done and what can't. The bendy bones setup may or may not need tweaking but there are other problems before that.

[@thomascrozelon1648]

@@CGDive Oh, I see. I'm used to 2D animation so I'm pretty new to this. Thanks a lot, have a nice day :)

[@jamesgerard9330]

Thank you

[@TheYoukarel]

thank you !!! you saved my life !! :D THis is what I absolutely needed !!! :))))

[@zegaroth9596]

a true life saver

[@CGDive]

Awesome!

[@Lukes3D]

Will the "squishy" or volume preservation you get with bendy bones be preserved when exporting?

[@CGDive]

If ou convert the bendy bones to normal bones and weight the mesh to the normal bones, then you are seeing exactly what will be exported :)

[@MastersRoger]

OMG ,thank you 👍

[@myrrysmiasi4866]

Thank you! You are a life saver!

[@CGDive]

Happy to help!

[@iltaen]

Helpful, thank you!

[@davidffortesmeireles5328]

great

[@Vincentn64]

Thanks! 🙂

[@ekaterinamozharovskaya3053]

Thank you for great tutorials! But there's one important thing that you didn't tell: when you add the stretch or damped track constraint, you have to choose the targets. )))

[@luciox2919]

hi if i want to extrude again a second bendy bone, shall i leave the "end" bone parent cleared? or keep the "end" bone parented?

[@CGDive]

Hi. Hard to answer because I am not even sure what you are trying to do. Did you try it? I am not sure why you ask a theoretical question that you can test with a couple of clicks. :P

[@luciox2919]

@@CGDive thanks.. thats what im gonna do

[@jpaikmedia6972]

your method works well. in unity when I stretch out the arm (for a cartoon character model) is there a way to prevent the hand from also stretching?

[@CGDive]

There should be but I don't understand your setup well enough to make a suggestion.

[@saikatazad3297]

Neat! the only bummer is that you have to weightpaint again. Regardless Cool stuff. Thanks!

[@J_Mon]

NC tweaking at bendy ^^ . helpfull dude

[@superwalnuts2855]

Is it possible to keep the bones connected, meaning the length of the chain won't stretch?

[@CGDive]

I am pretty sure it is but I am not in the headspace where I can give you the solution in a YT comment right now :D

[@whiskerbiscuit6674]

If you hide bendy bones do they stop deforming for you? They are for me currently

[@TNTthepyro]

Would this work for things like VR models? As they are rigs being animated in the moment and not animated/exported as a full animation before hand? Has anyone tried this yet?

[@CGDive]

It should work if you understand how export works and what is being exported. Covered this extensively here kzbin.info/aero/PLdcL5aF8ZcJvCyqWeCBYVGKbQgrQngen3

[@leonelsantos6517]

Naice.

[@XingyaChen]

Can I use converted bendy bones for games?

[@CGDive]

It should work.

[@illumisanic]

Love U

[@shadowknight__]

when I attempted to use this method when I added the object constraints the top half of the bone wouldn't conform with the new bones.

[@CGDive]

I am not sure why that is. All I can say is that I recently tested this workflow just to make sure that it works the same way in recent versions of Blender and the results were exactly as in the video.

[@umarcga7823]

Sorry but this constraint is not working properly... I have done this in past.... This constraint is great for realistic character and you dont have to damp track it... There is something off

[@CGDive]

Which part doesn't work?

[@umarcga7823]

@@CGDive I don't mean the way you do it... I mean this constraint as it did before I used it.. I didn't do this complicated of a setup before.. And even if you can see the reference you gave the guy just use simple armature binding with the bendy bones.... I also get this info from there.. Today I started searching for it because I is not working the way it did for me..... So I found your video and then his post... And I realize I am doing nothing wrong!!!!! Or am I? Simple Armature Constraint Should work... Why its not working I don't understand... even in your video you are using damp track constraint Why?

[@Hoichael]

@@umarcga7823 O___O

[@jmstudioman]

Really amazing stuff. just one problem when exported to unity. since its not connected to anything it automatically sticks to the root bone. and when it moves with a root motion setup the deformation bones offsets to the original bendy bone.

[@CGDive]

Interesting. I'm not sure how this is different from any other type of bone that is exported to a game engine but I'll keep it in mind

[@Haroon3D]

when will you upload Retargeting Video 3?

[@CGDive]

Next week. I wanted to upload it this week but there were a few things to finish and polish.

[@Pouk3D]

Oh in Blender 3.2 I don't see the individual Bendy Bone segments, only the whole "Bendy Bone" as a whole.

[@CGDive]

Hmmm, I can see them here in 3.2

[@Pouk3D]

@@CGDive Well I'd like to see them too! :) I'm working in Blender for about two weeks, so I don't know what it could be. I see there is a similar fuction in the Damped Track, you can click at "Follow B-Bone" in there and it sort of works similarly.

[@CGDive]

@@Pouk3D I am not sure what the problem is. You can try to post images etc. on our Discord server. discord.gg/YFH5HUv

[@junlinchen4363]

💋💋💋💋💋thank you ,you aer my god!

[@322ss]

Did you skip showing how twisting works? As a chain that isn't supporting twist feature is pretty much useless for many purposes.

[@CGDive]

Twisting works with this setup (as you can easily verify in 5~10 minutes if you test it for yourself).

[@322ss]

@@CGDive OK good to know!

[@viarshenia]

Can I join your discord channel? :)

[@CGDive]

sure discord.gg/YFH5HUv

[@aaronguo5128]

Doesn't work.

[@CGDive]

My favourite type of comment.

[@Atomic-toons00]

Toooooooo much talking for nothing

[@CGDive]

TicToc is all yours! :)