What about creating a few simple shapes and rigging them to see where the problem is. Then grab a readymesh basemesh and rig that too to see where the problems are. Also if you segment stuff smartly rigging can be extremely fast. Also if you don't want to export to an engine with real animations, you can very well create…
Fixed. The bones aren't the problem... since they are used to pose and animate characters all the time with excellent results. Have you thought about using Biped or some other already made rig like CrypticAR or CAT to quickly rig and pose a character? There are quite a few free rigs floating around that would take the…
Without a doubt I prefer modeling and texturing to rigging and skinning. It's the rigging and skinning that kills it for me and removes the joy from the process. I have absolutely no problem with the actually modeling phase and I've even emulated edgeloops I've seen on models that move well it's just that I can't skin my…
Rigging can be a daunting task for someone who is an artist first and foremost. Like pior mentioned, there's other ways of posing a character without rigging it. Transpose that bitch and be done with it...you'd be surprised at the flexibility it gives you. It also sounds like you're getting ahead of yourself and psyching…
Maybe figuring out if you'd actually prefer to model and texture a character, or skin and rig one would help you complete more projects and give you a sense of achievement, as opposed to trying to learn both simultaneously. I'm sure there are plenty of character artists that can model, texture, skin and rig their own…
Couldnt you just collaborate with someone to rig it for you? You cant expect to do everything, provide some kind of incentive, ask other artists/animators or is that not the done thing?
well, if you feel insecure about deformation, why dont you experiment first? eg build just a simple dummy leg, rig it, and see how it deforms. as a next step apply your gained knowledge onto a more complex model. take a look in the lowpoly section. lowpolys are lots of fun and can be build in just some hours.
A lot of experience can be gained in doing small projects, then add this experience up to make something grand. For a recent example - although not in modeling - I didn't know anything about Drupal (a content management system) but knew I wanted to make a very complex website. So I installed Drupal and just messed around…
Hmmm. It's very possible that all this stuff is rigged just fine ... but the bones are placed in anatomically incorrect locations? Happens alot... You really don't need much helper bones most of the time. Just remember you need to create the joint areas 'deep' (deep armpit, and so on). Check out the SF4 concept art, its…
Thanks for the input! I actually didn't rig the arms in this example I just happened to add all the bones when I added the skin modifier and so the envelopes created happened to catch those vertices and the animation on the bones already included the arms moving. Believe it or not I don't really have any trouble rigging a…