Tutorial Lesson2 - Hips/Pelvis - Rigging the Nude Female with Blender

Complete Course Overview

There are a lot of things you see on a nude that you don’t see on a clothed model. From the scapula to the shoulder, the hips to the toes, there are a lot of concerns that traditional character rigging tutorial series skip. We will skip none of these.

When viewing a nude character, all of her joints, bends, and creases must be addressed. If we fail that, the nude will look low-quality and strange.

Improper treatment of these items lead to drinking-straw collapsed elbows, awful disjointed hips, and necks that look like they belong on a monster. Not only will we improve on these joints, but sometimes we will go above and beyond to add subtle deforms that give a subtle punch to the render that everyone will notice and appreciate, but unlikely even the pros will be able to explain the difference that puts your renders above-and-beyond.

In short, this series of tutorial videos will teach you the required techniques and skills to make your nude character attractive and human-looking.

We will concentrate mostly on Monette Taida, the surfer girl character pictured on this page. She is thin, but not overly so, with enough fatty portions to make her rig more average than, eg, Lilithe Classica, whose rig must take into account how skinny she is.

Monette Taida also is a large-breasted character, which will make the breast rigging portion of the course more obviously beneficial.

This Lesson: Hips/Pelvis (Thighs/Buttocks)

Because of the complexity of this joint, this lessons is broken up into these sessions:

1. (33m4s) Free Technical Overview: Hierarchy and Relationships
2. (7m48s) Preparation and Impetus - Deleting bones to get to basic rig with Thigh Twist Bone setup and Fake FK, demonstrating why the basic rig is insufficient.
3. (24m50s) Thigh Front/Top - The 4-bone stretch-to traveling hip bone (front of pelvis) setup.
4. (12m45s) Thigh Front/Top Continued - What to do for the splits, the compromise between “legs out” and “legs forward.”
5. (18m19s) Gluteus Main - Setting up the gluteus Main, Inner, and Outer bones, inner “hold position/rotation” setup, and constraints.
6. (14m47s) Gluteus Main - Drivers. See the section below for the formulas.
7. (27m24s) Thigh Outer - The 3-bone stretch-to setup with rotation copying on the stretch target.
8. (25m19s) Thigh Inner, Adductor - The 2-bone adductor/pubic mound stretch-to setup with drivers for thigh squish.
9. (11m10s) Genitals - Basic deformation to follow legs as they move. As the setup is so simple, just an overview.

For discussion about this tutorial series, come to the Discord to chat with the community: https://discord.gg/7rFDMEYVzj is the invite link.

The free technical overview can also be found here: https://faemalia.net/Lesson2-HipsPelvis-0-Overview-Hierarchy-Relationships.mp4, it is free for anyone to view.