This question is sort of aimed at the devs but if any one else is skilled then please share. Ive been trying to make Animations recently and the modeling is going fine and so is the texuring but whats really dragging me down at the moment is getting life like models (human, animals) to move properly ive been using armatures in Blender (the program I use becuase its free) to pose them and get them to move but I carnt get it to work very well, For instance If I move the leg his abdomen sort of inplodes and moving the arm will make it go really big and parts of it disapear. Ive notced alot of others dont have this problem Fable 2 didnt seem to any way and I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice on how to get them to work properly becuase this is the stepping stone for my animations at the moment and its starting to fustrate.

I know getting a real reply from the devs is very hard as there very busy most of the time but I really do need help with this as its really dragging my animations behind.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

I don't know if blender has this ability but in Maya when you build your skeleton/ rig(Ik& Fk handles) it allows you to paint weights which helps the models move without distorting the geometry after you have attached your skin(geomerty/ character model) to the skeleton. And can't forget blend shapes with handlesor buttons, or programmed animation so when you move its hand the fingers auto wiggle. then I know there are plugins that allow you to add muscle and ligament movments.

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Yes you can paint weights in Blender but it always turns out a mess for me, the arm started to increase in size as I moved it and twisting it in order to make the pose I wanted didnt result well.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

When you set up your rig did you make animation handles?
if you used a rig or model that was already made with the program did it come with the animation handles?
Then make sure you aplied the skin to the rig right.

when the skin(model) is alpyied to the skeleton(rig) you should not have to actually move any geometry, the character should be moved with the animation handles.

What about settings maybe something is turned off keeping you from seeing these handles try turning on something that allows you to see curves or locators.

We have to figure out the rig before you can setup the weights properly. which when doing that act your geometry should move but not to the point it becomes unrecognizable as to the movment.

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No the object doesnt come with animation handles but you can create a pose libary in order to tween from pose to pose (making runing look alot more smoother lol) but thats another bridge across the hill I need to cross this bridge on how to get it to move without distroting the rest of the model.

Here I dont know if this helps but it may paint a picture at what im dealing with, this is a picture of my current rig.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

You said something about poses?
I was reading that you can make your own poses in blender,
so you have to be able to use handles in oder to move your character without ever touching the model/geometry, how else would you be able to make your own poses?
Thats just kinda odd you still have to have handles to move your rig all the while your model follows the rig due to being attached.

There is just no point to a rig if you are having to move the geometry every time you are forming a pose.

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Well you move it by using the armaturs (the rig its self) I dont know if they count as Handles.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

no thats the skeleton. you should see if you can constrain a handle of your choice to the joints. Thats how we set it up in Maya.
Its this process as you build the rig you make sure to get the joints constrained to eachother properly for them to move the right way when you grab the handles b/c you should not be moving the character by its rig or skin.
Did you constrain, parent, or group anything when you made your rig?

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Yes I set up vertex groups for each bone to so they only moved those specific parts.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

What other options do you have as far as rigging and animating?
I will down load Blender tonight when I get to see the preferences.
It strikes me kinda odd that you can't use controllers or locators.

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Well thank you Alice sorry I havent been able to reply latley I know your trying to help me here and it almost seemed as if I'd ungreatfully abandond this topic, My modem had broken I had to replace it so I havent had the chance to reply to this message as today I had training and didnt get back till late, now I carnt get any sleep (insomnia) so I thought id check the forums.

I'm not %100 sure about controlers and locators posing isnt my forte and thats what I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to change.

But please if you find some think that could help me please post it I would be very great full.

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

I had to replace my computer recently. I was so lost without it.

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Well, I'm most definitely not an expert but, like any drunk, that won't prevent me from foisting my opinion on any subject I catch ear of.

Common sense tells me that if you make a model and you bung a skeleton in it and start bending things, it cannot possible get even close to working. I only have to imagine a human bending over and think of how their muscles bulge, belly folds and spine arches to think that it must be something to do with how you're binding your model to your skeleton. To do it properly I can't imagine that being any easier than building a model from scratch.

I hate to admit but I'm still having a lot of problems with this, I just don't know how to solve it, I've tried every, every tutorial I can find about this and it still just screws up, help some one, it's really pissing me off.

I'd hoped maybe the dev's would have answered and helped but we'll its been 4 months since the last reply so I guess the dev's don't have an idea either, maybe the model guy doesn't come on or some think, and I wasn't brill at explaining it last time so it seems maybe your all lost on the answer, but well I still need help with this if anyone's willing to help, been on tutorial sites and nobodies helping, watched youtube vids and they don't seem to help either, you can't imagine anything more frustrating then not knowing how to do something when you really need to know how to do it.

I've Improved at it though an it doesn't look half as bad as they used to but I still can't seem to be able to rig successfully.

What's happening is that I've rigged it for each limb but it badly deforms it when I move to pose it, for example say I want my character to wave I'le rotate the the arm by 90 degree's and then the shoulder and half of the back will implode, If I try it with the for arm it will all twist in the centre of were the elbow would be, If I try to move his leg it will all go into his chest. when moving the head the neck pops out, all this type of stuff happens and no matter how hard I try to correct it or find a solution, it's greatly hindering my animations, I keep building brilliant models such as cookers, fridges big space ships and medieval inns, swords and such but there getting let down because I built them with the great regret that I'm building them in vain because I can't rig so months and months of work are just going down the drain because of it, knowing that when there finished I wont be able to import my characters and start to have them interact with it.

Now this forums here has some of the smartest people I've ever met (your probably not that smart by your standards but remember I'm from Barnsley, I'm considered probably the smartest kid on worsbrough Common and I don't know *** if that puts it into prespective) so I'm sure, and I hope at least one of you knows how to do this (perhaps this is just a very amateur mistake to you guys and it could be easily fixed) and one of you will help me with this please.

Remember I asked nicely .

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"IrishMorn"
If Adon and Sagat step in....ah, what the hell, I'll get drunk and join in on that one.

Try doing it with a really simple model. You may have already tried this, but let's take the model out of the equation.

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http://projectthwart.sourceforge.net/