Rigging REVERSE-JOINT Characters (FULL PROCESS)

This was by far the most difficult tutorial I've ever made, but I managed to record the ENTIRE rigging process for a reverse joint character from beginning to end, hope it helps :)
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- Royal Skies -
#3D#Animation#Blender
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Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

[@TheRoyalSkies]

For anyone looking looking to have the Character in the Video, you can find him on my ArtStation Store Here: www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/Lw530/anime-style-alien-aero-trooper? You Can also find the "Complete" Set for all of his buddies in my "Alien Army" pack here if you need the whole Set: www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/8gMAP/anime-style-alien-army-pack? I hope the tutorial was useful :) It takes quite a lot more time and effort to prepare than normal tutorials, but if you think the content is helping, I have an idea for one more crash-course rigging tutorial which would include advanced feet rigging - Let me know down below if that sounds like something you would find useful - Otherwise, well move on the exporting side :)

[@oversalt4713]

Correctly rigging feet are super important, but personally, I'm keen to get exporting right.

[@kubaofc123]

Awesome tutorial! Maybe you could cover exporting to different popular software/game engines where they have different object scaling and axis alignment?

[@caravita9475]

This was super awesome and helpful! Would you please also show a way to rig the tail, perhaps similar to this, but where the tail maintains a fixed length? I noticed that as you moved the character around, the tail would add and remove joints & length. A facial rig could also be super helpful! Maybe how to rig bits that normally arn't tied to an armature, such as different face textures or something.

[@ScorgeRudess]

omg you are awesome, the next ian hubert for humanity

[@popi9276]

OH WOW thank you! im just working on a reverse join character right now!, thx!

[@pixel_vengeur391]

Despite the speed that doesn't allow to follow along, this might be the most straightforward, semi-advanced rigging tutorial I think I've seen as of yet. Not only does it cover the basics, but also throws tips and best practice reminders at us. All in all, yes, PLEASE a hand and toe rig tutorial will be extremely welcome :)

[@xxscribbledragonxx9744]

0.5 speed bro 🤜 personally I love this quickfire style, I can feel it download into my brain

[@F1dg3t]

Every time teach me something new, I save the video to a playlist of tutorials, and half of them are yours.

[@aluckyshot]

If I ever need to learn anything in Blender there is a good chance Royal Skies has covered it faster and smoother than everyone else. Thanks for all your hard work. When trying to learn it is hard to watch a half an hour slow moving tutorial.

[@Dabbl1ng]

The thing you did with attaching both ends of the curve to rig controllers, didn't even know you could do that, so thanks a lot C:

[@CassyDaBean]

I just want to throw this out there, that blender can autoname the LEFT/RIGHT bone names without you manually doing it. Just select the bones you're wanting to be named > Press W > Names > Auto-Name Left/Right. I hope someone sees this, because out of the process of rigging, i'd say manually naming with .left/.right is too much, if you do want yo manually name them I'd advise just putting ".l/.r" at the ends of the names instead of the full "left/right" name, it works as well with the mirroring of the bones.

[@Dabbl1ng]

Nice, I didn't know you could auto name. Much appreciated 🙏

[@MartinNicolasGrasso]

A MA ZI N G !

[@Ikxi]

You can also just select all left bones and open the search menu and type "symmetrize" will duplicate the bones to the other side with correct naming (if all prior bones had .l attached)

[@CassyDaBean]

@@Ikxi I also said that in the Og post

[@Ikxi]

@@CassyDaBean ah I had just skimmed your comment, so I missed it

[@melancholyblight3616]

honestly, all of your videos have taught me more about 3D modeling and rigging than any of the official courses. it's so straight to the point and I appreciate you for it

[@wooshewoosher3598]

Ayyyy that was me!! Anyways love the tutorials I don’t consider my self a beginner anymore so it’s nice that you don’t go over every single thing you do or click. Your sleep and what you describe is perfect keep it up!

[@farn1991]

That is VERY a long sequence for a casual 7min. Thank you. I think I got a lot of reading and practicing ahead.

[@ericelliott6654]

Incredibly helpful, thanks! A feet and toe follow-up tutorial would be wonderful!

[@taksinwatanabe9362]

yes, this tutorial is helpful! And I would like a more advanced tutorial too. thank you very much for sharing!

[@stevannikolovski]

Damn you make it look so easy and I was banging my head about rigging.

[@Solusarian]

Strongly appreciate the IK rigging steps. Rigify was dead simple, but had tons of setup issues, and it didn't translate to Unity at all.

[@muhammedyusuf8968]

That was the best rig tutorial i've ever watch good job

[@Hyphen3372]

Very complex and i like it. Btw the way you add the key press box that pop up help alot and your vids are alot more better than your old rigging series but not alot alot has changed but its abit better than before. Thank you for making this tutorial.

[@mqbaka]

That was a faaaaantastic tutorial.

[@gabrielgherman87]

Your videos are always extremely helpfu!!!

[@Attaxalotl]

Holy cow, this is incredible!

[@risingghost2809]

A foot and toe rig would be awesome!

[@lovingfool2060]

Thanks a ton! Definitely saving this for later, I have a character I'd like to model who's legs are double jointed, going from thigh, to a backwards joint, then back forwards to a normal-ish leg (almost makes a z shape from the side), I think this will totally help. Was fast paced but clearly explained steps!

[@buystander]

best tutorial I've watched for blender...

[@yo-ht5jb]

OMG Good Work men

[@thefluffles6384]

thx a lot for these vids man

[@madwlad799]

some say it's a little fast, but you can stop it any time and I personally love compressed tutorials that get to the point

[@paolaanimator]

Amazing tutorial! I'm more into organic modeling like humans with clothes so modeling alien/machine type characters would be a pretty big challenge for me. But I would like to try out modeling machine/alien looking characters for animation, that would be pretty cool! It's just the topology looks pretty complex to me, it needs to look clean but also take shape/form of something rigid and solid.

[@NICK....]

Could you make a tutorial on highly stylized/deformation heavy rigs like a squash and stretch ball rig?

[@hikolanikola8775]

sick

[@Spellbound_93]

Only flaw I notice, (feel free to correct me if im wrong so I learn) is when creating an IK for the spine. You need to remove the parent from the lower spine (line the arms and legs) in order for it to work. This however makes it so the upper body does not move with the hip (lowest spine) bone.

[@TheLizardAmaterasu]

Man..... I could kiss you!!! just cuz im so happy your videos help me so much and actually makes me understand shiet!! ;DDDD

[@kriegs8315]

Yes

[@ty-xq7bl]

Would you ever consider doing commissions for animations?

[@TheRoyalSkies]

I am considering it, but at the moment my main focus is to finish the game. When the game is over in a week-ish I'll see what I have time for -

[@thorrhodes4053]

i like the video and i like the info! However, i dont like how the tail spawns new meshes as it grows longer. I personally think it would be better for it too just stretch.

[@Blvxkyy]

Thank you. But, what if you do want the wings of your character to move?

[@Pelicanlover117]

What is the name of that outro track? I love it and really would love to be able to hear the rest of it.

[@yulianmercedes4263]

Could you do a tutorial showing how to join 2 skeletons with animations into 1 skeleton without losing the animations?

[@Ryuufu]

Are you sure all of these methods work fine when exporting to a game engine? I know you've been using these characters for a Unity game, I'm not sure if parenting an object to a bone (without vertex weights) work fine when exporting, and I'm pretty sure that curve, especially animated curves don't export correctly, unless blender does some magic. How do you go about exporting a fully rigged+animated character? - Fantastic tutorial anyways!

[@nazfive7063]

would it be possible for u do a indepth rigging for snake like creatures? one not in standard postition?

[@artthounasty5877]

Is there a reason to have custom bone shapes? :o

[@sergiomendo77a]

Would the curve set up work in a game engine?

[@venomherlet2825]

Do you have a blender tutorial for porting a character from (somewhere) into a game, please? I can assign the bones from an exported model to be used for the new model to said model but that's about it. The character then wiggles from left to right (based on assigned animation package from the game) but it is static (for example the arms are frozen solid while wiggling instead of having their own take on the wiggle. This could also be due to the two models (anything exported from the game, and a character I want to import) having two different T-poses, thereby the arms are not high enough for the bones to reach, but... I dunno. If you couldn't tell, I am an absolute beginner in all this and using blender 2.79.

[@anish9376]

The fact that this looks super simple but is actually not that easy... I mean with practice.. Sure... But still.... I am trying to rig up a very simple robot.. And the ik bones seem to move with the entire joint and I am not able to fix it... CAN U MAKE A SLOWER TUTORIAL IT'S REALLY TOUGH TO FOLLOW ALONG WHILE SEEING THE RIG AND BONES AND THE PROPERTIES AT THE SAME TIME PLEASE.... LOVED THE TUTORIAL AND THE TEACHING STYLE AND THE FLOW.

[@tlbm672]

does this hook bone works for engines like unreal or unity?

[@mr.m2675]

how about how to rig an animal like dog or cat, i still don't know how to create a spine that is intuitive to control and reacts to the neck and tail rotation, they always end up acting seperate. it also does not help that a other 3 part tutorial on KZbin is still missing the last part after many years that would have answered that question

[@neakybrown6088]

could u plz make a tutorial how to aimate janpanese kimono , I don't like clothes simulation to animate clothes

[@MsZyraMMD]

I need more help with anime style face rigging and doing facials for animation

[@TheOneWhoMends]

Im trying to make a robot character with double reverse knee joints… maybe a bit ambitious for a beginner but I’m on a mission.

[@Birb666]

I noticed at around the 3:04 min mark, when The legs' meshes are autopainted to the rig, they "popped" slightly. As if the leg's bones were moving. I got those issues with legs that had an angle: I put a pole, but then the ik seems to move places, even when the -90 degree changes were made. I had to mode the pole Bone to make the leg not move from its original pose. Did people here got that issue?

[@copyright24]

I just can't manage to make the IK work when they are away from the armature, I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong

[@rishikruthinmalireddi2005]

How to make full ctrl bone in ik ?

[@shmuelisrl]

How about a wing rig for birds, dragons and…..

[@ITheSuperior]

You dont need to add left/right to the names, there's an autoname function Saves a few seconds

[@Mcl_Blue]

How does exporting this tail to the game engine work?

[@mr.m2675]

unless you programm something like that, it doesn't

[@user-mr7tp2ic2m]

is it posible to make it more detail cuz it going too fast

[@Kilakilic]

what about quadruped, where to put the root?

[@TheRoyalSkies]

Same place, at the bottom of the Pelvis - Instead of making the spine go up, it just goes forward instead -

[@manfriny_]

I wanna buy one course of yours, with detailed walk through into Rigging process... why do this, why do that... important concepts on rigging... etc... etc... #shutUpAndTakeMyMoney

[@iangraham6730]

First!

[@farianderson168]

what does it even mean reverse joint character ? :)

[@Dabbl1ng]

when knees bend backward instead of forward

[@farianderson168]

@@Dabbl1ng Ah, i didn't think there should be a difference

[@Mcl_Blue]

@@farianderson168 In terms of how to rig it, there actually isn't. At most, where you want to position the IK pole, but other than that it's the same process.

[@RaichuWizDom]

In the majority of cases, a 'reverse joint' character will refer to an anthromorphic character (such as, say, a furry) that's either digitigrade or ungulligrade: they walk on the length of the toes or the tips of the toes. Common examples are anthro dogs: Charlie from All Dogs Go to Heaven is digitigrade when he's walking on two legs. When you see a satyr or an anthro horse that walks on two legs, typically they'll be walking on flat hooves, which is the tips of their toes. So in theory, you can just use the same humanoid rig on any four-legged creature, it just becomes a bit ungainly depending on the proportions. Trust me, I've tried: adjusting topology to put the heel in the right place makes for a nice look, but controlling that rig gets tricky, since you end up having to grab at a large section of limb for IK controls instead of the smaller bits, like you would in a human. Haven't experimented much with that lately, though, so get a second opinion on that. Those designs have a large bend backwards, which at first looks like it's the knee going backwards. In reality, they have a very small hip bone, and the big bend backwards is the shin. Everything pointing straight down beyond that point is really the foot. That's for the legs. In the arms, when you have a reverse joint it's usually something with blades or wings at the extremities, that fold in so they walk or crawl on their knuckles. Ka Zhix from League of Legends, or anything that's modelled after a praying mantis, will have that look. Again, though, in reality that big bend backwards is the wrist, not the elbow, and the actual elbow still goes forward as you'd expect. If you see wyverns or other dragon-type creatures walking with wings folded like they're arms, generally those are folded hands as well, comparable to bat wings. It's easier to spot that in arms than it is in legs. If you're interested in getting things absolutely 'right' in this area, just look up the term "homologous organs" and check what the topology and rigging is for a human, then copy that over as needed. The model Royal Skies is using here is not modelled after natural anatomy, though, it's lacking feet and hands, so those are genuine backwards knees and elbows. No critiques there, sometimes you just want a design that looks alien and reversing joints is an easy way to do that.

[@Skyerzen]

People are stupid. They called it "reverse" jointed but what I'm sure they meant was LIFTED ankle or also known as "Dog leg" or "double" jointed You see, there's no such thing as "Reverse" jointed in vertebrates. Dogs, horses and birds, which are the usual animals people think of as "reverse" jointed, actually have front facing knees like us, that joint you see as "reversed" is actually the ankle. These animals usually walk on the "ball" of their feet or straight on their toe/s.

[@cliffy987]

Are you ok bro you don't sound as happy as you used to?

[@Ikxi]