Tutorial Lesson 4 - Elbows/Knees - Rigging Females 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: Elbows and Knees

We will ensure when the elbows or knees are fully straight, that they look correct, and also that when they are fully bent, they look great as well. We will achieve this with a simple double-joint and, in the elbow, a simple set of bones for the biceps and forearm. In the knee area, there is a more complex set of drivers and constraints that make the large mass of the thighs, calves, and knees move properly for a full range of motion.

Because there are no nude rigging aspects to elbows and knees, this is a safe-for-work lesson of the course.

This lesson is broken up into these sessions:

1. (43m45s) Elbows. Two driven and constrained bones on the inside of the elbow. The bicep stretches to the foream and modifies its volume with drivers. The forearm corrective stretches to the humerus and modifies its volume with drivers as well. This session runs long because I decide part-way through that Monette Taida’s arm is different enough from Verachantesse’s that I need a slightly different setup.
2. (4m09s) Elbows Addendum. The mystery of the weird bicep corrective at extreme poses, and how to solve it. We add a bone on the humerus that copies its rotation at a slight amount, and the bicep corrective becomes its child.
3. (33m48s) Thighs. Thigh squish, and its 3 children.
4. (11m52s) Calves. Squishing to match the thighs.

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