Been playing with rigging for several years and never achieved more than "It's kind of alright, from a distance, at the right angle." Finally I've rigged a character and thought, "YES! THAT'S IT!" Thank you so much for this tutorial and for introducing me to ARP.
Also, ARP places the finger bones in the centre of the finger which results in rounded knuckles. If you want the knuckle bends to look sharp (i.e. more realistic) move the ball joint up closer to the knuckle.
ARP mangled the bones of my model. Is bone roll important? I dont see an option for adjusting roll. Some fingers were not given adjustment rings, maybe thats why.
Wow, thank you for making this tuorial series. This is probably the ONLY concise series on Auto-Rig pro. Even the creator has silent videos on their page that arent too helpful. I'm looking forward to the creatures tutorial as well. Rhank you so so much. Ive been watching all your Auto-Rig pro tutorials, they are the best. And thank you for contributing to improving the Add-on with your feature request.
Paint Weights question: At Time index 46:53 I turn on mirror symmetry on the X. 1. The weight normalization seems to re-assign weights across the X axis. For example, when I paint out weights around the left eye, new weights are created on the right side. 2. Another question of weight normalization, is there a way to lock the weights that I want to keep? For example, after painting the weights around the eye, I go to the eyebrows. I start painting the weights on the eye brows, and the weights around the eyes change. 3. If there is a way to lock the weights after they have been painted, it might help speed up the weight painting. 4. Thank you for making this tutorial.
I've had ARP for a while and kept getting frustrated when the basic options wouldn't give me the results I wanted, so this video helped me lots! The fact alone that I could have been using different types of binding for different groups of vertices blew my mind.
At the Smart Setup stage I've found setting finger thickness to 5 means the the control widgets are visible whereas leaving at three they are often hidden inside the hand
I'm disappointed for one reason, namely that I can't give 100 likes to your tutorial. I really want. Great job, great tutorial. A lot of knowledge. 100 out of 10.
Only being able to give a single thumbs-up is a crime! I spent aboput 4 hours watching and rewatching portions of this video. It is a treasure trove of information! I'd give it 100 thumbs up if I could.
haha thank you. I have more ARP tutorials on the channel and more are on the way. All of them are here ua-cam.com/play/PLdcL5aF8ZcJuHJFQgb4altQWs-RCKA7Bq.html
This is a fantastic video. I'm new to Blender, Auto-Rig Pro, and Voxel Heat Diffuse Skinning, and you answered all of my questions and more with this one video. It didn't take long for me to comprehend just how powerful Auto-Rig Pro is and the overall rigging and skinning process with these 3 tools. Thank you so much.
I just bought it having no understanding of rigging whatsoever. I’m gonna study this and rigify in hopes to actually learn something. Thank you for these videos.
@@CGDive Always used RIGIFY and I love it but, I spend too much time setting up the meta rig and, I hope, with ARP when rigging the face it will be more friendly.
I discovered Auto rig pro for the first time on this channel. I am yet to buy the add on but maybe future episodes of this course will finally convince me. I like what I am seeing so far!! thanks!!
Great video! Have used ARP for few years now so know it fairly well. But, learned a bunch of different ways to do things given the workflow you're using. Including the weight painting info. Have not spent too much time with weight painting. More so used ARP's corrective shape key feature to get the deformation I've needed. But this just filled some holes in my weight painting knowledge / skills. Thanks!
@@CGDive That’s great. I am interested and will check it out. Btw, I’m going through the wholes series on ARP. You’re absolutely right, Lucas is great at responding to messages and overall support. I’ve had several back and forth with him. The ARP documentation is solid but the how-to tutorials are needed as you mentioned in video. Thanks for putting the time into this.
these tutorials are really awesome, I go back to them all the time when I have problems with my rigg. However at the moment I find myself making cartoon characters, and ARP can be a bit annoying when your character has a disproportionately large mouth and eyes. It would be great to see how you approach a character like that. Best regards and thank you very much!
The voxel heat skinning though an extra 30 dollars proved to be worth it, before I had weird skewing of my clothes, but using that everything looks just as it should.
Here is the full ARP playlist. More videos coming soon. Subscribe with notifications haha ua-cam.com/play/PLdcL5aF8ZcJuHJFQgb4altQWs-RCKA7Bq.html And here are my ARP Retargeting tutorials. ua-cam.com/play/PLdcL5aF8ZcJvvsiXT9kOvO6xCCv2r9sOW.html
I'm rigging up an anime styled model and there's an issue maybe you could help me with. The eyeball (white part) is basically just an empty hole while the iris floats in the head. The glint is also a separate model. How would I go about rigging this?
Anime is not my area of expertise but one way to approach is to imagine huge eyeballs and place the eye bone in their imaginary center. Then you would probably only weight the iris to the eyebone. Just some pointers to get you started.
So helpful. I've been using ARP for years and picked up a few useful tips from this. Somehow never realized the potential of binding selected bones/vertices only - this would've saved me SO much time completely redoing a rig because one aspect of it got messed up somehow. Some of the biggest pain-points for me are the knees (pushing the leg up towards the thigh causes the knee to really mess up) and the shoulders (specifically the serratus anterior muscle & underams when raising the arm up above the head). I can never figure out where the shoulder bones go especially on more muscular characters with bigger traps. It's been pretty frustrating trying to figure out how to fix those spots when the documentation doesn't really cover it and the tutorial videos are... rough. One thing I think would help demystify the addon for a lot of people (including myself) would be a video or downloadable example rig showcasing each aspect of a fully rigged character - where the bones are, how the weights look, where corrective shapekeys might be needed, how to control the rig correctly etc. *Especially* for realistic characters where proper deformation really matters. There's definitely some floating around out there, but for the most part they're cartoony characters. Either way, thanks so so much for this video. Stumbled upon it on accident and immediately started fixing one of my rigs with a lot of success.
Great! I am actually working on a manual rigging course (will be free here on YT) which will feature a semi-realistic character and I am just working on bone placement for the shoulder right now. It's very important and can be confusing. This tutorial will take a while and won't be about ARP but it will apply to APR as well. I'll consider a full project with APR down the road.
@@CGDive Awesome, thanks so much! I'm sure the information in the tutorial will carry over. ARP really suffers from being marketed towards those of us with little rigging experience while being difficult to diagnose & fix issues without rigging experience. A full ARP tutorial would be massively appreciated but no pressure at all.
@@noaburr That is such a good point. That's why the series I envision should cover a lot of these fundamentals. Hopefully, people who complete it will be in a good place to use ARP, Rigify or continue digging deeper into manual rigging.
How do you create a Control Rig for 2 separate parts but without affecting the weight or rather model's shape of one of the objects? For example an Inorganic Head on top of an Organic Body. Moving the Organic Body can affect it's own shape but should not do anything to the Inorganic Head except changing it's Rotation if applied. Changes in Location & Scale will still follow the Organic Body of course. Was able to successfully do this in the past but I just couldn't repeat the process that I did. :-P EDIT: Just figured it out again. After creating the Control Rig for the Organic Body only, go to Object Mode and select all the Inorganic Body parts. While they're selected, go into Pose Mode and Shift + LMB the top of the head Bone (or Control Rig for that matter; Circular cyan shape). Then press CTRL + P to parent them those selected parts to said Bone. In the menu that appears below, check the "Relative" option for that parent Bone.
I used to on my model and it has serious issue with the rotation of the hand-IK which heavily deforms/twist the arm. Is this intended or did i do something wrong? Edit: The bones deformation bones werent properly placed before matching to rig. That fixed the issue.
I'm getting familiar with ARP, and I must say I'm really enjoying it. One question: with RIGIFY, there was an option to choose the parentage of the hands and feet. You could decide whether they were child of the root or hip bone. I can't seem to find how to do this in ARP. Does anyone know how to do it?
Yeah, if you select the IK hand control and go to Tool > Rig Main Properties, there is a Snap Child of button. By default you can switch between having the hand parented to "c_traj" (which is the root bone) or None. But you can go to Bone Constraints and add more Child of constraints which point to other controls such as the hips, head, etc. As you add more constraints the "Snap Child of" buttom will offer each target as an option. Hope this makes sense. It's not very intuitive but once you know it, you have a lot of freedom. I should make a tutorial about that. :)
btw there is a free addon name Spiraloid Vertex Group Mirror, I forgot to turn the x mirror but this addon helped me out, and the bone layer addon also works well, don't know if it compare with autorig pro cause the custom menu when making animation of autorig pro a bit chunky
I just showed how to separate the meshes if they are not separate already. Mine were separate to begin with so I had to undo out of my little demonstration. :)
AMAZING TUTORIALS!! but i need some help...why do my character´s skin texture fails in some objects when i click "ok" ? they loose some nodes and scale changes in the noise
Firstly THANK YOU! amazing video and walkthrough! I am having a trouble with Smart mode, it doesnt build my HAND bones correctly (simple human hand with 5 fingers) The resulting bones are a big tangled pile with incorrect orientations. I see in the video walkthrough you provided on how to do simple nudges, and volume snapping for minor fixes. But what is the workflow to rebuild/fix hand bones that are mangled? I have tried to let ARP do it from scratch 20 times. Cheers!
Cheers! I can't say for sure. Either skip the automatic hand setup (it will be fine :) ) or fix the mangled mess manually. Automatic stuff is nice but not guaranteed to work.
Edit: soon as I asked, I read the gumroad page, thanks in advance and I'll wait till september. I havent watched all the bought tutorial yet, but I was wondering if you didnt go over creating a rig from empty with ARP, I love its features but really want to learn how to customize everything from the start.
Thanks for the tutorial I learn a lot, not sure why but even with the mirror activated on X axis the paint skin weight didn't mirror properly on the face and on the ankle.
I found out that parenting with blenders automatics weights will give good results especially aroubd the eyes. Then correcting the weight around the teeth a bit.
please reply, at 37:20 you said auto rig pro automatically enables preserve volume which game engine like unity doesnt support. if i disable preserve volume from modifier option should i disable from auto rig pro bind option too ??. because you have disabled preserve volume from modier option but you have not disabled in auto rig pro bind option tab in video, so iam confused
If you disable it from the ARP options then it will disabled on the modifier when you press bind. At the end it's important if it's enabled or disabled on the Modifier.
Help! I can't find the tang-bang bone! 🤣 But seriously, this was incredibly helpful after buying Auto Rig Pro on sale today. Used your referral link too. Thanks!
Auto Rig pro is great for your standard humanoid character. But I'm finding it increasingly difficult to attempt anything else. In this case I'm trying to Rig an Ogre with a single eye and a missing hand. The documentation is awful and there seems to be little online resources that demonstrate to do anything other than a standard smart rig. Back to rigify for me until there is better documentation/support...
I am going to resume my series in the coming months and will show how to do more non-standard characters. The single eye should be doable in the newest versions. See this video about new features ua-cam.com/video/nNNnVs-rvb8/v-deo.html And an arm is easy to remove. Go to Edit Reference Bones, select any bone of the arm, and click Disable. Then Match to rig. :) Here is the full ARP playlist if you haven't seen it ua-cam.com/play/PLdcL5aF8ZcJuHJFQgb4altQWs-RCKA7Bq.html
Thanks for the great tut! One question, for some reason the weights that I'm painting around left eye won't transfer to the right eye for some reason - though I have Symmetry Mirror X mode turned on. Thanks in advance!
Does audio2face to Blender work well for jaw teeth tongue animation too? Have you tried it. Most tutorials only cover the part in which skin is deforming, not the teeth tongue and gums. I think we really need a tutorial on that by some one. I think you are the chosen one to do it @@CGDive
Thanks for yet another useful tutorial on rigging. Trying to figure out my AutoRigPro and I was wondering if there is a tweak to fine-tune the influence of the control bones? For instance, the eyelids follow the eyeball movement which I know how to reproduce with constraints. You just place a controller object and it pulls the eyelid controllers with a small force. But here they are hidden - where do we find them or is it possible at all?
I couldn't fully follow what you are saying but the Rig settings are in the N panel, under Tool. See Rig main properties. They change depending on the control you have selected.
I just installed the auto rig pro 3.65.49 and i use blender 3.2. i used the retarget features without any problems. I have problem the rigging features.. i used a low poly character and when i am at the final step to bind the character and i push the bind button blender stop responding..i tried several times and always happens the same thing..i don't have much experience and i can use any help i can get.. Any suggestions ?🙏🙏
Thank you for this series!! although I still consider ARP to be a good overall investment (particularly for the retargeter), I still think the facial rigging is a glaring weak spot compared to importing a Daz figure with the FREE diffeo add on that converts it to rigify and supports FAC’s(iphone facial capture) Daz native lipsync animation, and even imports audio based MOHO.dat files from papgayo or lipsyncotizer. or an Iclone Avatar already facial animated. As a sci fi guy who uses alot of helmeted/armored soldiers etc., ARP is great for building non speaking Characters for mocap animation in Blender But for easily audio based talking Character driven scenes I still have to rely on Daz/Reallusion imports. I really hope Artell ,the ARP dev, gives us more option for easier facial animation &lipsync.
Thank you for the tutorial, but it's still not good on my side, still the same problem, the "automatic weight". I bought voxel heat diffuse skining which works in all circumstances but I only use it in last resort since I can't use it. The weight distribution is hazardous and really complex to correct, for example, the fingers are linked to each other in an erratic way and the mouth and merge, for the head, it is elastic if I move it backwards it will deform at the nose levels. For the moment I have found nothing to apply rigs on complex characters to send them to Unreal from Blender, on the other hand it works with simple meshes with these meshes can be dense as in the video. I also tried the reallusion and acurige suite but that didn't work either. But by dint of digging I have found alternative solutions, such as with daz studio, I export a basic genesis 8, I modify the morph to correspond as closely as possible to one of my creations that I export with daz to unreal then I export again in Blender then I link the target mesh to the source with transfer mesh data... like adding clothes to the rig, the result is more conclusive and easier to correct, in general, I retouch the face mainly then delete the source (genesis 8) and I leave only the figure created then I reimport with Unreal. Another variant, follow the tutorial with a simple mesh deform beforehand with the shrinwrape and sculpt it to best match the figure you want to export, apply the rige with auto rige pro then again, link the figure to the mesh a times the weight apply. (this method allows you to do without daz studio and therefore remove an operation). Or again, I use Blender's basic rig since I only apply it to correct ARP or auto rig pro errors, but from time to time I do some tutorials since everyone seems to use that. Besides, it's thanks to you that I can do it so well now. Thanks for that too. On the other hand, I don't know if it's possible to convert a mesh with an already existing rig into an armature for unreal, I'll try to dig that out. The meshes downloaded from Mixamo work well to apply the rigs easily and transfer the weight.
Hello, pls i do have. Question with the Auto rig pro rig, its human I have an issue where by after posing my character and key it, and move to another keyframe a part of the rig goes haywire, (it could be the eyes, knee joint or ankle)and i try to repose and key it, but it still wont stay put Any ideas on how to fix this please?
the part after the eye setup where the bone thingy is it completely glitched out and now i have so much random bones but i dont know what too do because i cant see threw the skin either like you can where you can see the bones idk whats wrong with it but do you know how to fix it pls???
i did my smart basic it worked on the body and the head. but the eyes, glasses , cloths tail ears not connected. how can i rig everything with the extras?
hi I tried to parent my mesh to the bone with all method the voxel EN was too wired and I had issue for eye controller in the first one I don't remember the name it is started with an H doesn't matter finally I tried to parent my mesh to the generated bone with the Old method with Automatic Weight and weight paint all the trouble part and my model working fine my question is did I miss any thing from Auto Rig pro features by doing this or it doesn't mater it just one way to connect the mesh to the bone? for example can I retarget ? and I'm really appreciate if you can solve my problem in Rig the eye (in H started EN) or in voxel method It make another character with mud material :-)) it was crazy didnt try the third one because it need the add on .and thanks
Is there a way to go back to the placing markers stage if you have already built the armature? Let say you have accidently built your body armature and you forgot to set up the face markers, is there a way to go back to the marker stage and set up the face markers?
Can I somehow do skinning seperately on select bones? Specifically the fingers, they're not properly skinned using the voxel heat diffuse addon, and I can't reassign the weights.
Hey man question, I have a character that has a human body, but one of the arms is mechanical, and the character doesn't have eyes. When I try to rig my character without eye bones it doesn't let me. Should I just hide some tiny eyes inside the mesh? 🤣 And how can I rig a mechanical arm properly in this case, or is it all in the weight painting? (For having no deformations)
Hi, I think I found the answer to my prior question [how to fix Joint bends]. I found out my advanced Rig has Vertex Groups near the knee - when I rotate that bone, it fixes the behind knee flex or relax. (So I just need to add key frames for those bones - to sync with leg bend keyframes.) But the next problem was how to covert my Rig to ARP Rig (to keep my weights). This is solved by using ARP > Quick Rig addon. But can you help: a problem with Quick Rig 1.24.13 and a FBX file that I imported > Accessory Mesh Parenting problem after I generate the Quick Rig. *EDIT: SOLVED. I'm so happy. 1.24.13 seems to have a bug, but it's frustrating because Art's change log doesn't say so.* I uninstalled 1.24 > closed Blender > installed Quick Rig 1.25.15 > Setup matching bones > > after clicking Quick Rig > I chose Copy Constraints, and on/off both worked (thus I think this setting doesnt matter to me, and it was instead a bug with 1.24). Now my accessory Meshes with no Weight paint or Armature Mod - correctly move with the ARP armature and keep their correct scale. I searched your channel and didnt see a specific vid on ARP "Quick Rig"? So if you can do a video on this, user suggestion to explain: 1) what Copy Constraints is used for (e.g. for Accessory Meshes or Rigs that have Constraint bones?) 2) The proper way to detect Twist bones in Upper arm and Lower arm or wrist? Thank you. (My Rig is very complicated with ~10 bones in the arm. I looked at [his website... auto-rig-pro/doc/quick_rig_doc.html#arms-twist-scheme]. And I selected a bone above the Upper Arm (named IK shoulder), which rotates the entire arm-to-hand. But when I apply Quick Rig, that Twist bone doesnt rotate the arm. I also have wrist bones that turn the wrist, but not hand. So is the Lower Arm (Forearm) Twist-bone supposed to twist just the wrist or hand also? I didn't find a bone that did both. Youre the pro so you could explain better.) ------------ _Original issue:_ I have an original Rig & body meshes that are weight painted. And it has a Watch Mesh (at the Wrist) -- with no Vertex Groups at all, no Constraint mods, and no "watch bones." It is parented to the Rig (but DOESNT have an Armature Mod like the Body mesh does), but when I rotate the arm, the Watch rotates correctly with the wrist. Meaning the default file import works. But once I transform this Rig to ARP Rig (using Quick Rig) > the Watch Mesh scales to 1 (gets giant compared to body)? and is no longer parented correctly to the ARP Rig. What is wrong? I tried many things before and after the ARP > Quick Rig. Before applying Quick Rig, I: 1) Selected Watch mesh > Applied all Transforms. Quick Rig > watch still a weird scale or doesnt move when the new ARP arm bone rotates (remember this Mesh was parented to the prior Rig and rotated correctly; but ARP Quick Rig breaks the Mesh from working). 2) I tried Select Watch then my Rig > Parent > automatic weights. (And Weights from the Body mesh transfer to the Watch Mesh. But after ARP > the Watch has 3 hand bones giving weight paint (Vertex Groups), so the Watch has 3 deformed copies. I tried deleting til just 1 Vertex group affects the watch at the wrist area. But 1 group only doesnt seem to give the Watch the correct shape - watch still split in 2.) 3) After ARP > I tried selecting the Watch > add Mod > set the same ARP armature that Body mesh uses. But still watch was scaled wrong or not deforming correctly. What is the issue? 4) Before ARP > I also tried All parenting options > parent the Watch mesh to Body mesh (which has an Arma Mod). But I prefer the Watch meshes to be separate objects in the game, to turn off. And doing this parent in Blender doesnt fix the scale or deform of the Watch mesh (I forgot which) > after ARP Quick Rig. 5) Do I need to Clear Parent on the Watch mesh before/after the Quick Rig. Then add Mod > Arma to Watch mesh, and parent to ARP Rig - and that will set the scale to the correct prior size? Ty 🙂
Thx for the turorial but I have an issue, at 10.10 just after generated the reference bone my root bone and my spine 1 bone are not connected, do you have any solution? Thx you!
wish it worked so well for me, as soon as I click on match to rig all hell breaks loose. It doesnt matter if I do it manually or use to pro feature. I randomly got it to work only once or twice.
You can rotate it but not with full freedom because that would make IK pointless. The whole idea of IK is that it takes care if most of the rotation of the bones it controls.
Been playing with rigging for several years and never achieved more than "It's kind of alright, from a distance, at the right angle." Finally I've rigged a character and thought, "YES! THAT'S IT!" Thank you so much for this tutorial and for introducing me to ARP.
Thanks for sharing your experience. I am super glad it worked well for you!
Also, ARP places the finger bones in the centre of the finger which results in rounded knuckles. If you want the knuckle bends to look sharp (i.e. more realistic) move the ball joint up closer to the knuckle.
Nice tip, thanks!
ARP mangled the bones of my model. Is bone roll important? I dont see an option for adjusting roll. Some fingers were not given adjustment rings, maybe thats why.
@@jangounchained2942 It's a 10 second tweak. I found Rigify much harder to learn than ARP and don't forget it includes mocap remapping
Wow, thank you for making this tuorial series. This is probably the ONLY concise series on Auto-Rig pro. Even the creator has silent videos on their page that arent too helpful. I'm looking forward to the creatures tutorial as well. Rhank you so so much. Ive been watching all your Auto-Rig pro tutorials, they are the best. And thank you for contributing to improving the Add-on with your feature request.
Thanks for your comment. We're just getting started! :)
You can always ask the creator ;). I found the docs really helpful
Thank you so much for this! After watching it I bought auto-rig pro and was able to set up an awesome rig in literally seconds.
Great to hear!
Paint Weights question: At Time index 46:53 I turn on mirror symmetry on the X.
1. The weight normalization seems to re-assign weights across the X axis. For example, when I paint out weights around the left eye, new weights are created on the right side.
2. Another question of weight normalization, is there a way to lock the weights that I want to keep? For example, after painting the weights around the eye, I go to the eyebrows. I start painting the weights on the eye brows, and the weights around the eyes change.
3. If there is a way to lock the weights after they have been painted, it might help speed up the weight painting.
4. Thank you for making this tutorial.
37:35 Really good thing to know about the "preserve volume" setting - great tutorial mate.
I've had ARP for a while and kept getting frustrated when the basic options wouldn't give me the results I wanted, so this video helped me lots! The fact alone that I could have been using different types of binding for different groups of vertices blew my mind.
Glad the vid was useful. More are coming :)
At the Smart Setup stage I've found setting finger thickness to 5 means the the control widgets are visible whereas leaving at three they are often hidden inside the hand
I'm disappointed for one reason, namely that I can't give 100 likes to your tutorial. I really want. Great job, great tutorial. A lot of knowledge. 100 out of 10.
haha thank you!
Only being able to give a single thumbs-up is a crime! I spent aboput 4 hours watching and rewatching portions of this video. It is a treasure trove of information! I'd give it 100 thumbs up if I could.
haha thank you. I have more ARP tutorials on the channel and more are on the way. All of them are here
ua-cam.com/play/PLdcL5aF8ZcJuHJFQgb4altQWs-RCKA7Bq.html
This is a fantastic video. I'm new to Blender, Auto-Rig Pro, and Voxel Heat Diffuse Skinning, and you answered all of my questions and more with this one video. It didn't take long for me to comprehend just how powerful Auto-Rig Pro is and the overall rigging and skinning process with these 3 tools. Thank you so much.
Nice! Glad it was helpful!
The best product introduction, cover not only product's info but how to resolve the potential circumstances!
I just bought it having no understanding of rigging whatsoever. I’m gonna study this and rigify in hopes to actually learn something. Thank you for these videos.
Keep at it and let me know if you need help. We have discord :D
discord.gg/YFH5HUv
Thank a lot mate, i was using ARP for the past 2 years without really knowing what i was doing but now you made it clear.
WHEN IT CIMES TO RIGGING IN BLENDER YOU ARE JUST THE BEST
Thanks, Nassir!
Grazie.
Prego! And thank you too :)
Excellent video, really amazing overview of the ARP. Btw, the "tang-bang" killed me :D
This is amazing. I just got auto rig pro and I know Im going to keep coming back to this video. Really helpful.
Great to hear!
Thank you very much! In this very moment the documentation of the website is down, so this is great help!
It's been a long time since I bought auto rig pro and I haven't looked into it yet. Thanks for your work .
Congratulations and thank you for this comprehensive guide, really well done.
Glad it's useful! Are you switching to ARP? I think you were using Rigify earlier, right?
@@CGDive Always used RIGIFY and I love it but, I spend too much time setting up the meta rig and, I hope, with ARP when rigging the face it will be more friendly.
I discovered Auto rig pro for the first time on this channel. I am yet to buy the add on but maybe future episodes of this course will finally convince me. I like what I am seeing so far!! thanks!!
you can easily pirate the addon btw instead of spending like 50 bucks
Great video! Have used ARP for few years now so know it fairly well. But, learned a bunch of different ways to do things given the workflow you're using. Including the weight painting info. Have not spent too much time with weight painting. More so used ARP's corrective shape key feature to get the deformation I've needed. But this just filled some holes in my weight painting knowledge / skills. Thanks!
Nice. I got a whole series on weight painting if you are interested. :]
ua-cam.com/play/PLdcL5aF8ZcJsFEdlMJ7To0Iu9s-XCFV3W.html
@@CGDive That’s great. I am interested and will check it out. Btw, I’m going through the wholes series on ARP. You’re absolutely right, Lucas is great at responding to messages and overall support. I’ve had several back and forth with him. The ARP documentation is solid but the how-to tutorials are needed as you mentioned in video. Thanks for putting the time into this.
Bro, you just made my day THX so much I don't know where to start :)
Thank you so much for this in depth tutorial series about Auto-Rig Pro (and Faceit) !!
these tutorials are really awesome, I go back to them all the time when I have problems with my rigg. However at the moment I find myself making cartoon characters, and ARP can be a bit annoying when your character has a disproportionately large mouth and eyes. It would be great to see how you approach a character like that.
Best regards and thank you very much!
I believe the mysterious side lines are where the jowls are (for the inflate/hollow action, like when blowing a horn or trumpet)
Awesome work! This is very easy to follow and explains it well
Thanks for your great tutorial, I discovered some new tips and techniques when using ARP that I did not know about.
Keep up your great work :)
The voxel heat skinning though an extra 30 dollars proved to be worth it, before I had weird skewing of my clothes, but using that everything looks just as it should.
Where is the another video? That's what you promised. I'm dying of expectation. No more patience. Excellent category
Here is the full ARP playlist. More videos coming soon. Subscribe with notifications haha
ua-cam.com/play/PLdcL5aF8ZcJuHJFQgb4altQWs-RCKA7Bq.html
And here are my ARP Retargeting tutorials.
ua-cam.com/play/PLdcL5aF8ZcJvvsiXT9kOvO6xCCv2r9sOW.html
extremely comprehensive and i love the effort you put in with each video!!
Thanks this video was really in depth and with high quality information. Much appreciated and liked.
Glad it was helpful!
Fantastic tutorial for a fantastic Add-on!
Thanks a lot for your effort making this series of tutorials!
I'm rigging up an anime styled model and there's an issue maybe you could help me with.
The eyeball (white part) is basically just an empty hole while the iris floats in the head. The glint is also a separate model. How would I go about rigging this?
Anime is not my area of expertise but one way to approach is to imagine huge eyeballs and place the eye bone in their imaginary center. Then you would probably only weight the iris to the eyebone. Just some pointers to get you started.
@@CGDive I appreciate the feedback!
i'm impressed kinda makes me wanna go deeper into rigging ♥
best tutorial, thanks a lot, I watch it and took notes
really great vid,got me up and running in no time, thanks allot
Thank you very much for all the effort and work you are putting into this series, it is very useful and very useful for everyone!
I really do appreciate your time on creating this tutorial, it helps a lot, Much luve bro 💕
love you mate it's help me alot thank you from Indonesia!
So helpful. I've been using ARP for years and picked up a few useful tips from this. Somehow never realized the potential of binding selected bones/vertices only - this would've saved me SO much time completely redoing a rig because one aspect of it got messed up somehow.
Some of the biggest pain-points for me are the knees (pushing the leg up towards the thigh causes the knee to really mess up) and the shoulders (specifically the serratus anterior muscle & underams when raising the arm up above the head). I can never figure out where the shoulder bones go especially on more muscular characters with bigger traps. It's been pretty frustrating trying to figure out how to fix those spots when the documentation doesn't really cover it and the tutorial videos are... rough.
One thing I think would help demystify the addon for a lot of people (including myself) would be a video or downloadable example rig showcasing each aspect of a fully rigged character - where the bones are, how the weights look, where corrective shapekeys might be needed, how to control the rig correctly etc. *Especially* for realistic characters where proper deformation really matters. There's definitely some floating around out there, but for the most part they're cartoony characters.
Either way, thanks so so much for this video. Stumbled upon it on accident and immediately started fixing one of my rigs with a lot of success.
Great!
I am actually working on a manual rigging course (will be free here on YT) which will feature a semi-realistic character and I am just working on bone placement for the shoulder right now. It's very important and can be confusing. This tutorial will take a while and won't be about ARP but it will apply to APR as well. I'll consider a full project with APR down the road.
@@CGDive Awesome, thanks so much! I'm sure the information in the tutorial will carry over. ARP really suffers from being marketed towards those of us with little rigging experience while being difficult to diagnose & fix issues without rigging experience. A full ARP tutorial would be massively appreciated but no pressure at all.
@@noaburr That is such a good point. That's why the series I envision should cover a lot of these fundamentals. Hopefully, people who complete it will be in a good place to use ARP, Rigify or continue digging deeper into manual rigging.
How do you create a Control Rig for 2 separate parts but without affecting the weight or rather model's shape of one of the objects? For example an Inorganic Head on top of an Organic Body. Moving the Organic Body can affect it's own shape but should not do anything to the Inorganic Head except changing it's Rotation if applied. Changes in Location & Scale will still follow the Organic Body of course. Was able to successfully do this in the past but I just couldn't repeat the process that I did. :-P
EDIT: Just figured it out again. After creating the Control Rig for the Organic Body only, go to Object Mode and select all the Inorganic Body parts. While they're selected, go into Pose Mode and Shift + LMB the top of the head Bone (or Control Rig for that matter; Circular cyan shape). Then press CTRL + P to parent them those selected parts to said Bone. In the menu that appears below, check the "Relative" option for that parent Bone.
THANKS ALOT FOR THOSE AUSOM TUTORIALS
I used to on my model and it has serious issue with the rotation of the hand-IK which heavily deforms/twist the arm. Is this intended or did i do something wrong?
Edit: The bones deformation bones werent properly placed before matching to rig. That fixed the issue.
Thank you for this excellent tutorial. It comes at just the right time for me. I'm looking forward to the next video as I'm about to rig a turtle.
Really good tutorials, thank you.
Such a great video, helped me a lot, thank you so much!
I'm getting familiar with ARP, and I must say I'm really enjoying it. One question: with RIGIFY, there was an option to choose the parentage of the hands and feet. You could decide whether they were child of the root or hip bone. I can't seem to find how to do this in ARP. Does anyone know how to do it?
Yeah, if you select the IK hand control and go to Tool > Rig Main Properties, there is a Snap Child of button. By default you can switch between having the hand parented to "c_traj" (which is the root bone) or None. But you can go to Bone Constraints and add more Child of constraints which point to other controls such as the hips, head, etc. As you add more constraints the "Snap Child of" buttom will offer each target as an option. Hope this makes sense. It's not very intuitive but once you know it, you have a lot of freedom. I should make a tutorial about that. :)
@@CGDive ahhh I was thinking to use that! That “child of” option is so powerful in ARP. Once again, thank you for your great help!
Excellent tutorial!
btw there is a free addon name Spiraloid Vertex Group Mirror, I forgot to turn the x mirror but this addon helped me out, and the bone layer addon also works well, don't know if it compare with autorig pro cause the custom menu when making animation of autorig pro a bit chunky
Thx for making this awsom e tutorial for free :)
Great tutorial! thank you so much for your work!
Min 16:00 You join the mesh, seperate and undo . What is that for?
I just showed how to separate the meshes if they are not separate already. Mine were separate to begin with so I had to undo out of my little demonstration. :)
AMAZING TUTORIALS!! but i need some help...why do my character´s skin texture fails in some objects when i click "ok" ? they loose some nodes and scale changes in the noise
ohhhh.... I have no idea :) Not even sure if I understand the problem correctly.
Thank you! Awesome tut! Subscribing now!😀
Firstly THANK YOU! amazing video and walkthrough! I am having a trouble with Smart mode, it doesnt build my HAND bones correctly (simple human hand with 5 fingers) The resulting bones are a big tangled pile with incorrect orientations. I see in the video walkthrough you provided on how to do simple nudges, and volume snapping for minor fixes. But what is the workflow to rebuild/fix hand bones that are mangled? I have tried to let ARP do it from scratch 20 times. Cheers!
Cheers!
I can't say for sure. Either skip the automatic hand setup (it will be fine :) ) or fix the mangled mess manually.
Automatic stuff is nice but not guaranteed to work.
Edit: soon as I asked, I read the gumroad page, thanks in advance and I'll wait till september.
I havent watched all the bought tutorial yet, but I was wondering if you didnt go over creating a rig from empty with ARP, I love its features but really want to learn how to customize everything from the start.
Thanks for the tutorial I learn a lot, not sure why but even with the mirror activated on X axis the paint skin weight didn't mirror properly on the face and on the ankle.
You probably have broken symmetry on your mesh. See this
ua-cam.com/video/s3n9Umi2Jt8/v-deo.html
I hope you will show how to build monster / fancy rig from scratch without any template provided by ARP.
Will do.
I found out that parenting with blenders automatics weights will give good results especially aroubd the eyes. Then correcting the weight around the teeth a bit.
Thank you for a great tutorial! Where can we learn more about posing character that is rigged with the ARP?
I don't have a tutorial like that yet but I will in the future.
please reply, at 37:20 you said auto rig pro automatically enables preserve volume which game engine like unity doesnt support. if i disable preserve volume from modifier option should i disable from auto rig pro bind option too ??. because you have disabled preserve volume from modier option but you have not disabled in auto rig pro bind option tab in video, so iam confused
If you disable it from the ARP options then it will disabled on the modifier when you press bind. At the end it's important if it's enabled or disabled on the Modifier.
MY EYES KEEP MOVING FROM ITS POSITION
THIS MAY HELP
ua-cam.com/video/4DcwCa-cAX0/v-deo.html
Amazing guide, thx u!
Help! I can't find the tang-bang bone! 🤣
But seriously, this was incredibly helpful after buying Auto Rig Pro on sale today. Used your referral link too. Thanks!
Haha, that's a special bone 🤣
Thanks for your support!
All right, it's time to learn a new rigging addon :)
thanks for making this video, i can fix my error
Glad I could help
How do you go about rigging accessory meshes? Things like armor shoulder plate, capes, etc.
Auto Rig pro is great for your standard humanoid character. But I'm finding it increasingly difficult to attempt anything else. In this case I'm trying to Rig an Ogre with a single eye and a missing hand. The documentation is awful and there seems to be little online resources that demonstrate to do anything other than a standard smart rig. Back to rigify for me until there is better documentation/support...
I am going to resume my series in the coming months and will show how to do more non-standard characters.
The single eye should be doable in the newest versions. See this video about new features
ua-cam.com/video/nNNnVs-rvb8/v-deo.html
And an arm is easy to remove. Go to Edit Reference Bones, select any bone of the arm, and click Disable. Then Match to rig. :)
Here is the full ARP playlist if you haven't seen it
ua-cam.com/play/PLdcL5aF8ZcJuHJFQgb4altQWs-RCKA7Bq.html
@@CGDive Thanks for the insights man, appreciate you taking the time to educate me!
Thanks for the great tut! One question, for some reason the weights that I'm painting around left eye won't transfer to the right eye for some reason - though I have Symmetry Mirror X mode turned on. Thanks in advance!
It's possible that the mesh is not really symmetrical even if it looks that way. See this
ua-cam.com/video/s3n9Umi2Jt8/v-deo.html
Please CGDive, how can I add corrective bones and shape key drivers on ARP armature
Wow perfect ! just one problem, i got like 8 ads in this video !
Ask UA-cam about the ads :)
I also have the videos as a Gumraod product, $5 no ads.
@@CGDive Ok 👌
Itd be great to see your work flow on ARP to game engine, thanks!
13:00
32:25 Voxel heat Skinning
38:05
I love you bro. Thanks!
For whatever reason I can’t open the auto rig pro tab after editing the armature. What do I do?
You are the best!
So so so helpful! And well donnnneeee
Glad it was helpful!
can you make videos on Audio2Face to Blender
Not sure but I am thinking about it.
Does audio2face to Blender work well for jaw teeth tongue animation too? Have you tried it. Most tutorials only cover the part in which skin is deforming, not the teeth tongue and gums. I think we really need a tutorial on that by some one. I think you are the chosen one to do it @@CGDive
Thanks for yet another useful tutorial on rigging. Trying to figure out my AutoRigPro and I was wondering if there is a tweak to fine-tune the influence of the control bones? For instance, the eyelids follow the eyeball movement which I know how to reproduce with constraints. You just place a controller object and it pulls the eyelid controllers with a small force. But here they are hidden - where do we find them or is it possible at all?
I couldn't fully follow what you are saying but the Rig settings are in the N panel, under Tool. See Rig main properties. They change depending on the control you have selected.
I just installed the auto rig pro 3.65.49 and i use blender 3.2. i used the retarget features without any problems. I have problem the rigging features.. i used a low poly character and when i am at the final step to bind the character and i push the bind button blender stop responding..i tried several times and always happens the same thing..i don't have much experience and i can use any help i can get.. Any suggestions ?🙏🙏
That's very strange. Low poly characters should finish binding within a couple of seconds. Please ask the addon dev for further details.
@@CGDive thank you for your answer
Thanks this tutor is very helpful, waiting to see next tuto about auto-rig, then i have a question. How to join another bone in auto-rig pro?
Just add a normal bone in the reference armature and it will stay after generation :)
@@CGDive okay thank you very much, I will try and see what happens next.
Thank you for this series!!
although I still consider ARP to be a good overall investment
(particularly for the retargeter),
I still think the facial rigging is a glaring weak spot compared to importing a Daz figure with the FREE diffeo add on that converts it to rigify and supports FAC’s(iphone facial capture)
Daz native lipsync animation, and even imports audio based MOHO.dat files from papgayo or lipsyncotizer.
or an Iclone Avatar already facial animated.
As a sci fi guy who uses alot of helmeted/armored soldiers etc., ARP is great for building non speaking Characters for mocap animation in Blender
But for easily audio based talking Character driven scenes I still have to rely on Daz/Reallusion imports.
I really hope Artell ,the ARP dev, gives us more option for easier facial animation &lipsync.
Thank you for the tutorial, but it's still not good on my side, still the same problem, the "automatic weight". I bought voxel heat diffuse skining which works in all circumstances but I only use it in last resort since I can't use it.
The weight distribution is hazardous and really complex to correct, for example, the fingers are linked to each other in an erratic way and the mouth and merge, for the head, it is elastic if I move it backwards it will deform at the nose levels.
For the moment I have found nothing to apply rigs on complex characters to send them to Unreal from Blender, on the other hand it works with simple meshes with these meshes can be dense as in the video. I also tried the reallusion and acurige suite but that didn't work either.
But by dint of digging I have found alternative solutions, such as with daz studio, I export a basic genesis 8, I modify the morph to correspond as closely as possible to one of my creations that I export with daz to unreal then I export again in Blender then I link the target mesh to the source with transfer mesh data... like adding clothes to the rig, the result is more conclusive and easier to correct, in general, I retouch the face mainly then delete the source (genesis 8) and I leave only the figure created then I reimport with Unreal.
Another variant, follow the tutorial with a simple mesh deform beforehand with the shrinwrape and sculpt it to best match the figure you want to export, apply the rige with auto rige pro then again, link the figure to the mesh a times the weight apply. (this method allows you to do without daz studio and therefore remove an operation).
Or again, I use Blender's basic rig since I only apply it to correct ARP or auto rig pro errors, but from time to time I do some tutorials since everyone seems to use that. Besides, it's thanks to you that I can do it so well now. Thanks for that too. On the other hand, I don't know if it's possible to convert a mesh with an already existing rig into an armature for unreal, I'll try to dig that out.
The meshes downloaded from Mixamo work well to apply the rigs easily and transfer the weight.
Hello, pls i do have. Question with the Auto rig pro rig, its human
I have an issue where by after posing my character and key it, and move to another keyframe a part of the rig goes haywire, (it could be the eyes, knee joint or ankle)and i try to repose and key it, but it still wont stay put
Any ideas on how to fix this please?
Hi can you help me. The rig layer UI is not showing up? I want to use the bone selected only feature
the part after the eye setup where the bone thingy is it completely glitched out and now i have so much random bones but i dont know what too do because i cant see threw the skin either like you can where you can see the bones idk whats wrong with it but do you know how to fix it pls???
i did my smart basic it worked on the body and the head. but the eyes, glasses , cloths tail ears not connected. how can i rig everything with the extras?
hi I tried to parent my mesh to the bone with all method the voxel EN was too wired and I had issue for eye controller in the first one I don't remember the name it is started with an H doesn't matter finally I tried to parent my mesh to the generated bone with the Old method with Automatic Weight and weight paint all the trouble part and my model working fine my question is did I miss any thing from Auto Rig pro features by doing this or it doesn't mater it just one way to connect the mesh to the bone? for example can I retarget ? and I'm really appreciate if you can solve my problem in Rig the eye (in H started EN) or in voxel method It make another character with mud material :-)) it was crazy didnt try the third one because it need the add on .and thanks
It's just one way to bind mesh to bones so you are not missing anything.
I show how to bind the eye in this video. Please watch it.
Just purchased ARP because of this video. A snag maybe with 4.2, I don't see the bones after I click GO.
I have used arp with 4.2, seems fine here. Please direct any technical questions and issues to the developer. I can’t do much to help.
Is there a way to go back to the placing markers stage if you have already built the armature? Let say you have accidently built your body armature and you forgot to set up the face markers, is there a way to go back to the marker stage and set up the face markers?
Yeah, see the Fox video. There I used the face set up after already having a basic rig
ua-cam.com/video/qc7yT-hyhOI/v-deo.html
@@CGDive Thank you!
Can I somehow do skinning seperately on select bones? Specifically the fingers, they're not properly skinned using the voxel heat diffuse addon, and I can't reassign the weights.
Yes, see the part about weighing the face separately at 34:30. Follow the same principle for the hands.
Hey man question, I have a character that has a human body, but one of the arms is mechanical, and the character doesn't have eyes. When I try to rig my character without eye bones it doesn't let me. Should I just hide some tiny eyes inside the mesh? 🤣 And how can I rig a mechanical arm properly in this case, or is it all in the weight painting? (For having no deformations)
Damn Good man...But Plz next time cover some finger attributes also. Specialy fingers spread,curls etc.
Do you mean how to use the rig controls?
Hi, I think I found the answer to my prior question [how to fix Joint bends]. I found out my advanced Rig has Vertex Groups near the knee - when I rotate that bone, it fixes the behind knee flex or relax. (So I just need to add key frames for those bones - to sync with leg bend keyframes.)
But the next problem was how to covert my Rig to ARP Rig (to keep my weights). This is solved by using ARP > Quick Rig addon.
But can you help: a problem with Quick Rig 1.24.13 and a FBX file that I imported > Accessory Mesh Parenting problem after I generate the Quick Rig.
*EDIT: SOLVED. I'm so happy. 1.24.13 seems to have a bug, but it's frustrating because Art's change log doesn't say so.*
I uninstalled 1.24 > closed Blender > installed Quick Rig 1.25.15 > Setup matching bones >
> after clicking Quick Rig > I chose Copy Constraints, and on/off both worked (thus I think this setting doesnt matter to me, and it was instead a bug with 1.24). Now my accessory Meshes with no Weight paint or Armature Mod - correctly move with the ARP armature and keep their correct scale.
I searched your channel and didnt see a specific vid on ARP "Quick Rig"? So if you can do a video on this, user suggestion to explain:
1) what Copy Constraints is used for (e.g. for Accessory Meshes or Rigs that have Constraint bones?)
2) The proper way to detect Twist bones in Upper arm and Lower arm or wrist? Thank you.
(My Rig is very complicated with ~10 bones in the arm. I looked at [his website... auto-rig-pro/doc/quick_rig_doc.html#arms-twist-scheme].
And I selected a bone above the Upper Arm (named IK shoulder), which rotates the entire arm-to-hand. But when I apply Quick Rig, that Twist bone doesnt rotate the arm. I also have wrist bones that turn the wrist, but not hand. So is the Lower Arm (Forearm) Twist-bone supposed to twist just the wrist or hand also? I didn't find a bone that did both. Youre the pro so you could explain better.)
------------
_Original issue:_
I have an original Rig & body meshes that are weight painted. And it has a Watch Mesh (at the Wrist) -- with no Vertex Groups at all, no Constraint mods, and no "watch bones."
It is parented to the Rig (but DOESNT have an Armature Mod like the Body mesh does), but when I rotate the arm, the Watch rotates correctly with the wrist. Meaning the default file import works.
But once I transform this Rig to ARP Rig (using Quick Rig) > the Watch Mesh scales to 1 (gets giant compared to body)? and is no longer parented correctly to the ARP Rig. What is wrong?
I tried many things before and after the ARP > Quick Rig.
Before applying Quick Rig, I:
1) Selected Watch mesh > Applied all Transforms. Quick Rig > watch still a weird scale or doesnt move when the new ARP arm bone rotates (remember this Mesh was parented to the prior Rig and rotated correctly; but ARP Quick Rig breaks the Mesh from working).
2) I tried Select Watch then my Rig > Parent > automatic weights. (And Weights from the Body mesh transfer to the Watch Mesh. But after ARP > the Watch has 3 hand bones giving weight paint (Vertex Groups), so the Watch has 3 deformed copies. I tried deleting til just 1 Vertex group affects the watch at the wrist area. But 1 group only doesnt seem to give the Watch the correct shape - watch still split in 2.)
3) After ARP > I tried selecting the Watch > add Mod > set the same ARP armature that Body mesh uses. But still watch was scaled wrong or not deforming correctly. What is the issue?
4) Before ARP > I also tried All parenting options > parent the Watch mesh to Body mesh (which has an Arma Mod). But I prefer the Watch meshes to be separate objects in the game, to turn off. And doing this parent in Blender doesnt fix the scale or deform of the Watch mesh (I forgot which) > after ARP Quick Rig.
5) Do I need to Clear Parent on the Watch mesh before/after the Quick Rig. Then add Mod > Arma to Watch mesh, and parent to ARP Rig - and that will set the scale to the correct prior size?
Ty 🙂
Glad you solved it. Yeah, I'll make a video on quick rig some time soon.
today i parched this addon but its not working on human gen 3 chracter, please help 🙏🙏🙏 after rig 💪🦵 not working 🙅
I can't help with that. Get in touch with the developers of the addons you use.
Thx for the turorial but I have an issue, at 10.10 just after generated the reference bone my root bone and my spine 1 bone are not connected, do you have any solution? Thx you!
I don't understand this. There is no root bone in the Reference bones.
wish it worked so well for me, as soon as I click on match to rig all hell breaks loose. It doesnt matter if I do it manually or use to pro feature. I randomly got it to work only once or twice.
It's just magic! But please tell me. Why I can't rotate the bone c_thigh_ik and c_arm_ik (axes are unlocked). I want to add a shape key to it rotation
You can rotate it but not with full freedom because that would make IK pointless. The whole idea of IK is that it takes care if most of the rotation of the bones it controls.