Rig a Low Poly Character in Blender 2.9x

>> In this video, you're going to learn
how to turn this low-poly character

into a rigged character so you can animate
them, either for Blender animations,

or if you want to put this character in a game.

Check out the other video, where I
actually model this character from scratch.

If you want to learn that one first,
because I made a separate one,

creating this guy from scratch, and then you
can watch this video again to do the rigging.

All right, so why would you even want
to rig a character to begin with?

Well, it's not really much fun having a
guy sliding around in a T pose all day,

so we have to create a skeleton for him so we
can actually animate those with key frames,

and have the arms and legs
moving, or even turn them

into a ragdoll, if that's what you want to do.

And we're going to start
by creating the armature.

I press one on the keypad to
go into the front view here.

Make sure I've got no object selected here.

Make sure the cursor is in the
center as well at the feet.

Very important.

Also, the character's center
should be at the feet here.

We model this character with its
pivot point down here at the feet.

Good practice to do it that way, because then
it's easy to position the character in a world.

So make sure that pivot point and the
origin of the character is at the base

of his feet, and also this 3D cursor.

Now, if the 3D cursor is not there, maybe it's
over here, press Shift C to reset the cursor.

And then I'm going to press
Shift A to add an armature.

And that creates a big fat bone right at
the bottom here, and slides it straight up.

The first thing we want to do
when this bone is selected is go

to this little tab here called object, data,
properties, but it looks like a running man.

Go into viewport display, and tick in front,
and that will show this bone through the body.

And you can see if I press the middle mouse
button, now it's actually in the center,

but it looks like it's showing
it in front all the time.

And then I press tab to go
into edit mode for this bone,

and we've got this armature up here selected.

I'll click with left mouse button on
the bone, press one on the keypad.

And then I'm going to slide it up now,
and there's a few ways to do that.

G, I usually do, but it's
difficult to keep the center here.

You can press zed to force it into the
movement of the blue zed axis here.

Then I'm going to put the balls where they go.

And then click on the tip here.

And then you can either enable this little
move tool here, or press Shift, Space and G,

that's a shortcut for that, and slide it down.

We're going to have a little pelvis bone
here, or a root bone that's for his hips.

And then I'm going to press
e to extrude this bone out

and press zed to lock it into the zed axis.

And this is going to be a spine
bone that we're going to put there.

E to extrude one more time, and then
zed to lock it onto the zed axis.

And this is going to be the
upper part of the spine.

And then I'm going to skip the neck.

I'm just going to do a head for this one.

So I'm going to E to extrude this one, zed,
and then up to the top of the head here.

Now, when I use the middle mouse button,
I can rotate and see that it seems

to be pretty good in the
center of this body here.

Click a bone here, and press F2 to rename it.

This one, I'm going to call it root.

Usually, that's a common word for the root bone.

Click on this one, press
F2 and name it "spine one".

Click on this bone, F2, "spine two".

Click on this bone, F2, and
this is going to be called head.

Now we need arms and legs, so I'm going
to click on this little joint here

between the upper spine,
or spine two and the head.

Press one on the keypad or the numpad,
and E to extrude this one down.

And sometimes, or usually, I
create a shoulder bone as well.

I'm going to do that for this one.

So I'm just going to extrude this one down to
where the arm is going to pivot, so about here.

And then E to extrude to the elbow,

and E to extrude to the hand,
and then E to extrude to here.

It's not so picky with the up and
down, so I didn't lock it to any axis.

Now you can even click on one of these joints
here, and press G to refine these a little bit.

If you need to click on this one,
G, to move that up maybe to there.

What is important, however, is that you want
to make sure that you pick this elbow joint,

and move it back slightly, just
a little bit like this will do.

And it's because, if it's straight locked
like this, and it could be a little bit tricky

to animate it, because the -- it's called
an IK solver, or inverse kinematic solver.

It doesn't really know how to fold
the elbow if it's perfectly straight,

so just put that little bend there.

That'll help a lot later on.

Okay, we're going to do the
same for the legs now.

First of all, oh yeah, that one's connected.

So we'll rename this first.

Press F2, shoulder.

And here you should always do
period, or dot full stop L,

because that's his left now, his left shoulder.

And we name it "dot L", because then
we can do automatic symmetry later on,

then Blender will know how to
translate that into our right side.

So the same for this one.

Click on it, F2, upper arm,
dot L. Dot L, very important.

Click on this bone, F2, lower arm, dot L, and
then here, F2, hand, dot L. So that's our arms.

We're going to do the legs now.

So click on the ball by the groin, one
to go into front view, E to extrude it.

And we'll just do it straight
down, roughly like this.

Not too picky on this one.

Click this bone, and press G to move it.

And we're going to put it where his
hip is going to be, roughly there.

Click on this bone, or this joint here,
G to move that down to where the knee is.

It could be a little bit tricky to see
where we put the geometry for the knee.

So do Alt zed, okay, that was no good.

Maybe we'll do a zed, and do wireframe.

We see -- we want to move this all the way
down to here, to the center of his knee,

G, move that one onto there, maybe.

And E to extrude.

Keep this wireframe view, if
you find that one easier, maybe.

And then that's going to be the lower leg.

And then E one more time.

And then we can lock it zed,
if we prefer, on the zed axis.

And now, when we look from the side,
I'll press three on the numpad.

Make sure we want to put a little dent on
the knee as well, just we did for the elbow,

so it knows how to fold this leg later on.

We could move this joint
back as well to there, maybe.

And the foot, we don't really
want to have straight down.

So take the tip toe here, press G, and
move that down to the tip of the foot,

because that's where it's
going to pivot later on.

Okay We can do Alt zed again to disable see
through, and press zed then go to solid again.

If you want to have it like
this, and we need to rename this.

So click on this bone, F2 upper leg dot L.
This bone, F2, lower leg, dot L, and then F2,

foot dot L. There's one more thing
we want to do before we mirror this,

and that's we want to set up inverse kinematics.

And that's really good for
-- especially for legs.

When you keyframe and animate the character,
you don't really want to have to change

as you lower his body weight down.

You want the legs to bend automatically.

You don't want the legs to come
down with him most of the time,

so you have to fold the leg manually.

It's really tricky to keep
the feet planted then.

So we're going to set up something
called "inverse kinematics".

Before I do that, I want to go to
front view here, one on the numpad.

Press A to select all the bones.

And in this view now, in edit mode, press Shift
N, and do recalculate roll on the view axis.

It doesn't look like anything happened
here, but it actually helps a lot

when we do the animation later on, because
then it knows which way to roll the bones.

If you want to do symmetry, like you want
to flip a pose from like this to this,

by having the roll angle, that'll help out.

Now we can go three on the
numpad to see the side here.

Click on the knee joint, and
press E to extrude this one.

Just a funny bone like that.

Click on the heel joint here as well.

Press E to extrude that one.

Looks really weird at the moment,
but I'll tell you why this one.

We need to do Alt P and clear
parent, and then press G to move it.

This is going to be called, what's
called an "inverse kinematic pole bone".

And basically it's nothing else
than it needs to have this bone

so it knows where to aim the knee.

So when it folds the leg, it wants to
know in which way should my knee face.

So that's what this bone is going to do.

It's going to help us.

We also have to do this.

Go to the bone here, when this
is selected, and deselect deform.

Otherwise, it might try to deform
this mesh later on using this bone.

And we don't really want the
knee stretching forward here.

Same thing for this bone.

Click on it, do Alt P, and clear parent,
but leave this one just where it is.

But we do have to go to the bone here,
and deselect deform just the same way.

And then we're going to rename these bones.

So click on this one, press F2, and
then name this one "IK leg pole dot L".

Click on this one, do F2, IK target dot
L. That's going to be a target bone.

We've got a few more steps to do
for this leg inverse kinematic.

We do -- I click on this lower leg now, and
then, press Ctrl tab, and go into post mode.

Now we got a few more things
here on the right side,

click on this bone constraints properties
tab, and add the bone constraint.

And this one we're going to
do, add inverse kinematics.

On the target here, you can click on this little
dropper tool here, and click on the armature.

And then on the bone, we need to type,
this is going to be the target bone.

And we name this one conveniently
to "IK target dot L",

so search for that one and pick that one up.

For the pole target, we'll do
the same, armature and bone.

It's the P-O-L-E, and then
here we go, pole target.

See how it flipped its foot out to the side now?

We can fix that by changing the pole angle here.

You can slide it or type it in.

And since we did the roll angle from the front
view, we need to type 90 here on the pole angle,

and that'll get the foot to face forward again.

And if your character is funking
out now, mine isn't because this,

I forgot to actually connect this
upper leg bone to the body here.

If I press Ctrl tab, make sure
I've got this select again.

Press Tab into Edit mode So we're
out of post mode, but in edit mode,

and if I move this leg now, you
see there's no dotted line here.

So we need to connect this
leg to his root bone here.

So I'll make sure that I select this upper leg
first Shift, Select his root bone, press Ctrl P,

and do make parent, but keep offset.

And that created this little dotted line here,
and that means that his leg is now connected.

Okay, now we can go back into
post mode, so I'll press Ctrl tab,

and go to post mode and select this joint here.

And that's important here, the chain length
needs to be set to two, because it's only going

to affect this bone and this bone here.

What we've done now when we've enabled inverse
kinematics, is that if I click on this bone,

and enable this little move tool, and press G,

you can see that it's actually moving
the leg now, and if I click on this bone

and press G, it actually folds it down.

But we've got a problem with the
foot, because as he kneels down,

or as he squats, is the foot is tiptoeing down.

So we have -- that's pretty much the
last thing we need to fix for this.

So select the foot bone here,
and go to the bone tab here,

click on relations, and disable
inherit rotation.

That was step one.

Now, when we move it, it's like this.

But we still have a problem.

We can't really rotate the foot.

We want this target bone to
control the role of the foot.

So to do that, make sure that
this foot bone is selected.

Go to the bone constraint tab
again, click add bone constraint.

And here, we're going to do
copy rotation for target.

We want to select this armature again.

We select the armature.

And here we want to select the target bone.

And it flipped it to the opposite side.

Now we need to change the target to local space,
and the owner to local space That snaps it back.

And finally, we need to do a few more things.

If I do R to rotate, that seems pretty good.

If I do R around the zed axis, you can see that
it's actually rotating the wrong direction.

So with this selected, we need
to flip, invert zed rotation.

Now, when we rotate on the zed, then
the foot is rotated as we expect.

We might have the same problem with the roll.

So if I do R to rotate, and Y, you can see when
I rotate this right, the foot is rotating left.

So we need to do the same thing.

I'll select this bone again,
and invert the y-axis.

Now, when I click on this one and
rotate it, it rotates the same.

It's a bit quirky, but you'll
get used to that one.

Okay. Now when we drop, if we select
the torso again here, and do --

or the pelvis and drop, you can see that
the foot is nicely planted as he bends down,

and the knee is pointing, remember
this one, if I move this to the side,

you can see that it's pointing
the leg to that one.

This is ready to be symmetrized
now, so press Ctrl tab to go

out of that mode, out of post mode.

Make sure that the armature is selected here,

and then just press normal tab
to go into edit mode again.

Press A to select all the bones here.

And now you can press F3, and type "symmetrize".

And armature symmetrize here.

And that automatically, since we named the bones
"dot L" for left of all the legs and arms stuff,

then it's actually automatically
mirrored this into the other side.

And now the final step is just to press tab
to go out of edit mode, select your character,

and then Shift select the armature and
press Ctrl P. And then we want to set parent

to armature deform with automatic weights.

And I think Blender is usually
really good nowadays

to get this automatic weight going properly.

We can select the armature here, press Ctrl tab.

And now if you try to drop them
down, select the torso, G to move it.

And the hat is not moving
because it's a separate object,

but the character is moving good.

We can also try rotating the head.

And we've got an issue now with the eyes, and
that's because it didn't really know how to pick

up those as separate objects here.

So this is a good opportunity
to learn how to fix that.

If something -- we can check the other
parts here as well -- the other limbs.

Arms working pretty good.

Rotate the elbow here, and could have done
maybe some more geometry around the wrist

to get less deformation there,
but it's pretty good.

If you want to move the leg out, G, we've
got some maybe excessive deformation here

of the belt that we could get rid of.

G to move on.

Rotate the knee.

And if you want to hide the armature,

you just click on this little
I, you can see how it looks.

So we've got a few things that we could tweak.

The leg seems to be affecting
the belt a little bit too much,

and the head is not affecting the eye enough.

We'll enable the armature again.

Press A to select all the bones,
Alt R to reset all the rotations,

and Alt G to reset all the movements.

We'll fix the first part with a belt down
here, with what's called "weight painting".

And weight painting is every vertex now.

If we're going to tab out of control, tab, go
back into object mode, select this character,

press tab to go into edit mode,
and press one to go into vertex.

Then we can see these verts here.

And basically these verts have a
value now that's linked to a bone.

That's what this automatic weight thing did.

So on item here, with this vertex selected,
I can see that it's picked for the root bone.

Here it's only put 0.031, affecting the spine.

It's affecting it a little bit more, and
the upper leg is affecting it quite a lot,

and that's something we don't really want to do.

And it could be a bit tricky here to edit
these manually, so usually we do this

in what's called "weight paint mode".

To go into weight paint mode, press tab
to get out of edit mode for this one.

Select the armature first from
scratch, and shift select the character

and go from object mode up
here into weight paint.

And that turns in blue like this, and it
shows you how the vertices are assigned

to different bones.

I'll shift click, and select the bone.

It's very important that you hold shift if you
want to select or deselect bones like this.

But it's very important now, if I select this
bone, we can see that the torso is affecting.

Blue is nothing.

Cyan or light blue is a little bit.

Green is a little bit more.

Yellow is more.

And all the way to red.

That's the 100% how much it --
100% how much it affects it.

So we had some issues here where this leg bone,
I'll do shift and select this bone, and shift,

deselect this one first shift,
select this one active.

And we want to reduce the amount that
the leg here is affecting the belt,

so we slide the weight up here
now down to zero, pretty much.

And then we can just start painting here.

And see how that color goes back to blue.

That means we're removing the weight now.

So I'll just colorize this.

Make sure we take away everything
on the belt here.

I pan with shift and middle mouse button.

Okay, that should be a little bit better.

Since we're still in mirror mode.

I only have to do this for one side.

I'll go back into object mode, select this one,
Ctrl tab into post mode, and G to move this one.

And we can see that looks better.

Now we're still affecting a little bit
too much on the inner side of the belt,

but you can refine this now with
the weight painting technique,

and add and remove the weight.

Now remember that the color blue is nothing,

and all the way to red is 100% how
much this bone should affect a vert.

For the eyes, we're going to
do a slightly different method,

because we know that they want
to be 100% linked to the head.

For this one, I'll press Ctrl tab to go back
into object mode, select the character again,

and press tab to go into
edit mode on the character.

While the mouse is hovering over the eyes, now
I'll press L to select the linked vertices here.

That selected everything
that was linked to this eye.

A very handy way to select geometry
that's detached from something else.

And now, I'm going to go up to
vertex, and go to vertex group,

and I take -- remove from all that means.

That these vertices are no longer linked
to any bone at all, no weight whatsoever,

because we want it to be 100%
affected by this head bone now.

So I go back into vertex, vertex group, which
is the same, actually, I can press Ctrl G to get

into here, and I'm going to go set active group.

I'm going to select head, and
then we'll do Ctrl G again,

and make sure that we do assign to active group.

Now you can see here, with these verts
selected, we can see that 100%, or 1.0,

which is 100% is connected to the head now.

Tab out of edit mode, select the
armature control tab to go into post mode.

Left click to select the head, and R to rotate.

And now we can see that the eyes are
following good with the head, 100%.

The ears could have suffered the same
problem, but they seem to be all right, okay.

We had a problem here.

I accidentally added the vert here that we had.

We must have had this vert -- or I did.

I'm not blaming you now.

I had this vert selected by mistake.

You'll do loads of errors on and off.

Don't worry about those.

It's all about learning how to fix those.

Ctrl tab out of edit mode of the
armature, click on the character.

Tab into edit mode, and then
I select this vertex here.

And you can select -- see now that I've
actually got assigned 100% to the head here.

So first thing we want to do here is remove
the head vert weight here altogether,

so this one's not linked to anything now.

So with this one selected Shift,
select another vert that you want

to copy it from, and then click on copy.

And now when we go back, it's transferred
all the weight from there to this one.

So that should work pretty good.

Now we can tab out of edit mode,
select the armature control tab

into post mode, and G to move this one.

That works good.

And make sure that the head is
not affecting down there anymore.

So there's ways to fix it if you screw up.

For the hat to follow the head, we can
do it differently, since that's not part

of the same object, we can't
weight paint that one.

So select the hat and go to this
object constraints properties.

Drop down this one, and do child of,
pick the target and pick the armature.

And then here, this one, we want to do head.

And see that the hat disappeared
now, and put it over here.

Just click on set inverse, and
that'll bring it back to here.

Now, when we animate the character,
I'll select the armature control tab.

Select the head, press R to rotate, then
the hat will follow along with the head.

All right, in this video, you learned how
to rig a character and set up the armature

so it affects the low-poly character.

So make sure you hit that subscribe
button if you want to see a future video,

where I'm going to take this guy, and we're
going to keyframe animate him into an idle pose,

walk animation, run animation, and maybe
even some fancy doughnut-eating move.

It's a cop, after all.

Finally, you can also check out my Patreon page,
where the tutorial tier gets to download all

of these files, and many others that
I've created through my YouTube history.

Until next video, take care,
and I'll see you then.

Bye for now!

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