Rig a Bucket to a Human Skeleton

[ToastedBaby]

Okay, so I've been trying to do this whole 3D modeling thing/rigging/trying to make a stupid character, and I'm pretty sure I'm short a few brain cells because even if I follow the instructions on the tutorials that I've found, I can't get it to work. All I want to do is mount a bucket to a human skeleton (so it's just a bucket floating there, but uses all of the default human animations). This is as far as I got before Blender told me no:

 

http://i.imgur.com/WCbx4xR.png

 

If anyone out there is willing and able, could you just mount a default bucket to a human skeleton? (Bonus points for managing to get the handle to flop around for comedic effect if that's possible). Or, if you're willing, walk me through it step by step and explain it to me like I'm 5. (Which isn't too far off from my mental age, considering I think having an NPC bucket is funny).

[madmongo]

Is that a human skeleton? I usually import a body nif and delete the body mesh, which leaves a skeleton that doesn't look quite like that in Blender (or maybe I've got my view settings different or something).

 

Anyway, once you have the bucket mesh and the skeleton together in Blender, just select both of them and press CTRL-P to parent the bucket to the skeleton, and select create from bone weights. However, depending on where you put your bucket, this can cause weird things to happen. Blender does a truly horrible job of assigning bone weights, so parts of your bucket (or other object) will often end up weighted to arms and legs, which causes your bucket to weirdly distort as the skeleton moves. To get around that, I usually shrink the bucket (or whatever object I am working on) until it is fairly small, and stick it right next to the bone that I want it to be tied to, which will probably be one of the spines in this case. Then I CTRL-P to parent it, then select the bucket and re-scale it back up to size. Then I go into the bone weights to see if Blender still managed to somehow screw it up.

 

Then export to nif, and make sure you have both the bucket and the skeleton selected when doing the export.

 

Then go into nifscope, because Blender always screws up the shader flags, or at least it does for me, no matter what I seem to select in the nif export options (if anyone knows a way around this please let me know). Select your bucket mesh, select the BSShaderPPLightingProperty, scroll down to shader flags, and click on the check boxes to enable SF_skinned and SF_shadow_map, otherwise you'll end up with an invisible bucket in-game.

 

You can try weighing the bucket handle to the arm or foot bones or something to try to make it flop around, but that might end up just looking weirdly distorted instead of flopping like a bucket handle. I suspect that you will really need to create new animations to make that look right, but who knows. Play around with it and see.

[devinpatterson]

However, depending on where you put your bucket, this can cause weird things to happen. Blender does a truly horrible job of assigning bone weights, so parts of your bucket (or other object) will often end up weighted to arms and legs, which causes your bucket to weirdly distort as the skeleton moves. To get around that, I usually shrink the bucket (or whatever object I am working on) until it is fairly small, and stick it right next to the bone that I want it to be tied to, which will probably be one of the spines in this case. Then I CTRL-P to parent it, then select the bucket and re-scale it back up to size. Then I go into the bone weights to see if Blender still managed to somehow screw it up.

 

As an alternative you can assign all vertices to a single group or two ( a bone and a envelope). It's simple, quick and you don't have to worry about the issues you described (bone weight is 1 for a solid object like this since you don't want it to distort as the skeleton moves about).

 

 

 

If anyone out there is willing and able, could you just mount a default bucket to a human skeleton? (Bonus points for managing to get the handle to flop around for comedic effect if that's possible). Or, if you're willing, walk me through it step by step and explain it to me like I'm 5. (Which isn't too far off from my mental age, considering I think having an NPC bucket is funny).

 

Here is a bucketArmor, untested in game.

[devinpatterson]

Oh, just thought of something. You'll have other issues, like I imagine the face/head and hands will be rendered by the game engine.

[devinpatterson]

Here is a pack that contains a set of "invisible" gloves and helmet (once again untested). Set them up the same way in the geck and they should take care of the head/face and hands. Make sure you create a new biped model list with all three and select it in the armor for. Then they will automatically be equipped when the armor is.

 

Re: the pipboy you have several issues with removing it. I won't go into specifics since I'm not up to speed on the subject.

[mindboggles]

If ever there was a candidate for a custom skeleton creature this would be it, the thing would only need 3 bones. Maybe 4 if you wanted to be clever and have the handle move about.

[devinpatterson]

If ever there was a candidate for a custom skeleton creature this would be it, the thing would only need 3 bones. Maybe 4 if you wanted to be clever and have the handle move about.

But then ToastedBaby couldn't run around as a bucket. As to the "why" of ToastedBaby's bucketphilia, we may never know.

 

BTW if you were to just cull a bunch of bones from a skeleton (and assuming any mesh was rigged only to the remaining bones) would the animations work normally even though the translations are for bones that aren't there. Just curious from someone with 0 knowledge of animations.

[ToastedBaby]

Is that a human skeleton? I usually import a body nif and delete the body mesh, which leaves a skeleton that doesn't look quite like that in Blender (or maybe I've got my view settings different or something).

 

Anyway, once you have the bucket mesh and the skeleton together in Blender, just select both of them and press CTRL-P to parent the bucket to the skeleton, and select create from bone weights. However, depending on where you put your bucket, this can cause weird things to happen. Blender does a truly horrible job of assigning bone weights, so parts of your bucket (or other object) will often end up weighted to arms and legs, which causes your bucket to weirdly distort as the skeleton moves. To get around that, I usually shrink the bucket (or whatever object I am working on) until it is fairly small, and stick it right next to the bone that I want it to be tied to, which will probably be one of the spines in this case. Then I CTRL-P to parent it, then select the bucket and re-scale it back up to size. Then I go into the bone weights to see if Blender still managed to somehow screw it up.

 

Then export to nif, and make sure you have both the bucket and the skeleton selected when doing the export.

 

Then go into nifscope, because Blender always screws up the shader flags, or at least it does for me, no matter what I seem to select in the nif export options (if anyone knows a way around this please let me know). Select your bucket mesh, select the BSShaderPPLightingProperty, scroll down to shader flags, and click on the check boxes to enable SF_skinned and SF_shadow_map, otherwise you'll end up with an invisible bucket in-game.

 

You can try weighing the bucket handle to the arm or foot bones or something to try to make it flop around, but that might end up just looking weirdly distorted instead of flopping like a bucket handle. I suspect that you will really need to create new animations to make that look right, but who knows. Play around with it and see.

 

I was following this tutorial (down at the bottom for using existing skeletons) and it pretty much says exactly what you said, but even after following it step by step and double checking everything, Blender is still throwing errors about unweighted vertices, so I just gave up with trying to deal with it. I know how to use the GECK without issues, but apparently my brain decays right when I leave it. :(

 

 

Here is a pack that contains a set of "invisible" gloves and helmet (once again untested). Set them up the same way in the geck and they should take care of the head/face and hands. Make sure you create a new biped model list with all three and select it in the armor for. Then they will automatically be equipped when the armor is.

 

Re: the pipboy you have several issues with removing it. I won't go into specifics since I'm not up to speed on the subject.

 

That bucket armor and invisible gloves/helmet do the trick on a human NPC. It's not quite the custom creature that I was hoping for, but at this point, Blender and I don't seem to want to cooperate, so I'll just base it of a regular NPC. Thanks again for making those armors. I tried making a bucket armor as well, and shockingly enough, I failed at that, too! Who'd have thought?!

[devinpatterson]

That bucket armor and invisible gloves/helmet do the trick on a human NPC. It's not quite the custom creature that I was hoping for,

? Your post was a request to rig a bucket to a human skeleton;

 

If anyone out there is willing and able, could you just mount a default bucket to a human skeleton?

Your alternative would be a new race (which allows you to use a different mesh, aka your bucket), but a bucketman race doesn't have all the advantages a armor form can provide.

[madmongo]

I'm not at my home computer right now, and I have this written down in a cheat sheet word document so I don't forget it, but I can't access it from here. It's very easy to end up with unweighted vertices when you have complex shapes. An easy way around it is to select whatever bone you want the object weighted to (one of the spines in this case?) then set the weight to 1.0 in Blender, then select the mesh (select all using A) and press I think CTRL-K or something like that. It will paint the current weight value to all of the vertices at once. Boom! No more unweighted vertices.