Okay, right now let's take a look at setting up custom bone shapes for your armatures.
This is good because, you know, if you've got to pass it off to somebody else to animate
with, you know, it can give them some idea what the bones do instead of just having these
tons of bones that all look alike.
And also, you know, it can be helpful for you too.
So let's take a look at doing it.
We'll start with a simple example.
Let's make a bone shape for the body bone, and we'll just make a circle so that it looks
like the body.
So what we're going to do is we're going to need to add an object.
In this case, let's just add a circle, and let's just make that 8.
And we don't want to fill it in this case, so we'll say OK.
And if we take a look at it, there's our circle.
What's important here is changing its name.
Let's give it a name that means something.
Instead of circle, I always like to give them a WDG for widget underscore, and then name
it.
In this case, I'll call it body.
So I've got widget body.
If I select the bone I want to add it to in pose mode, in the armature bones tab, there's
this field right here for object.
If I give it that name, WDG underscore body, and I select the W, it will stick it in there.
Now, in this case, it's a little too big, so let's select this object.
And in edit mode, we're going to scale it down.
Perfect.
And just so you know, you can also add modifiers to affect it.
In this case, as is a little sharp, so let's smooth it out.
Let's add a sub-surf.
Why not?
Nice and smooth.
A nice, smooth circle for the body.
Looks great.
OK.
And when you're done there, I like to just take this object, and I'm going to hit M.
And I'm going to stick it on this last layer here, odd site.
So let's do it again for one more.
Let's make a bone shape for a foot here.
And when I do this, I want to create something that's going to be obviously a foot, and also
indicate a direction.
So let's go ahead and add.
In this case, let's add a plane.
X90, and let's go on into edit mode, and I'm just going to delete that vertices, giving
me just this outline here.
Let's see.
I'm going to select all, and let's rotate it and scale it.
All right.
That's giving us kind of a pointy section here.
Let's go ahead and extrude these back.
All righty, and let's go ahead and extrude again, and let's move this up.
All right, so now we kind of have a foot type shape, and it's also giving us a direction.
And there's an open end here, so we have an arrow almost, and almost a foot, and that
should do.
We can go ahead and also let's add that subsurf modifier, make it nice and smooth.
I'll turn it on in the 3D view so I can see what it looks like.
And that's not bad.
Let's go ahead, though.
Let's subdivide here and here, and I'm just going to grab these two.
And I'm going to yank them back here to sharpen up that point up there.
Yeah, and maybe scale on the Y a little bit.
I'm sorry, scale on the Z.
There we go.
All right, so let's give it a name.
W-D-G, foot, sounds good to me.
And so we'll select this bone in pose mode, and enter our name, W-D-G, underscore foot.
And let's not forget to hit the W. And we'll notice this isn't working quite right because
it's not facing the right way.
But just like we scaled the last time, we can also reorient it.
So let's select this, go into edit mode, we'll just select all, and let's rotate X 90.
And although it's funky here, it's right here.
And let's go ahead and make sure that this, right there, yes, that's good, perfect.
But let's just also scale that up a little bit.
And there we have it, custom bone shape for our armature.
We have this custom, doop, doop, doop, enjoy.
