Original subtitles

- [Instructor] From the time being,

we've been animating only object.

And we have seen that each time we try to animate

a new object, the new animation

or a new action data is created.

And when it comes to animating an object,

we are currently only animating at point, its origin point.

But what if we want to animate

a more complex object or a character,

will we have to create an action for each finger,

or do you bend an armor if it's not a separated object?

There is one tool that allow us to do this,

and you've probably already heard about it.

It's a rig or an armature.

So if you think of a human with character rig,

it's generally a skeleton

with a bunch of constraints and mechanism

that allow the animator to manipulate the character

in an intuitive fashion.

And you can rig absolutely anything.

Here is a new version of our bouncing ball.

So there is a new object in my scene,

I can find my ball object,

but I also can find this ball armature object,

and as an object, it has transformed channels.

And as any other object,

it's a container with specific data,

we can't find armature data and bone data.

Also as a specific object, it has a specific mode,

an edition mode, that allow to bird the armature,

and that is used by a riggers,

so you won't need to enter edit mode at any time

and a pose mode, that is the mode that will allow us

to manipulate the armature and animate whatever character

or object that is bound to this armature.

We can change mode from object to pose

by pressing Control + Tab.

So let's have a closer look to this rig or armature.

When in pose mode, you can select whatever controller

you want, those are called bones, and you can consider them

as being sub object of the armature.

It means that each bone

will have its own transformed channels

and each bone have a specific behavior or a specific task

such as being created by the rigor.

On our bone domain controller is called the root

and allow us to move the entire ball.

Moving the green controllers allow us

to use squash and stretch,

the yellow controller allow us to rotate the ball.

So instead of transforming the ball directly,

here we are using those controllers

to create those transformation.

And it will allow us to create way more complex

transformation on to a character

than animating simple objects,

because the armature can deform the object

that is bound to it.

The armature is actually a simple modifier

that deform our object.

So a versatile armature or rig will allow you

to give the pose you want for your character

and the good rig will give you the maximum

of posing possibilities with intuitive fashion.

So before we start animating this query character,

I will give you some good practice

when it comes to animating using an armature.

(swooshing slide)

With my ball rig file open, I will enable the Auto King

and I will switch to pose mode by pressing Control + Tab.

As soon as I transform one of the controller

by selecting it pressing G, S or R

as I will do for any object,

I can see that my Auto King is recording what I'm doing

and Blender is creating a keyframe

for the transform channels of the controllers.

The first awesome thing is that if I switch to the doc sheet

in the action editor and switch to see

all the keyed channel, I can see that

all the different manipulator animation

are stored into a single action

because the action is associated to the armature object

and we can consider each manipulator

as being a sub object that can be animated.

And as for any object,

I can see that each of the manipulator has their location,

rotation and scale key, but each of those controller

has a specific desk, for example, this rotation controller,

if I try to move it or scale it, I can't.

And when I try to rotate it,

it only rotates around its x-axis.

So instead of having a keyframe for every transform channel,

that couldn't be better if I add only a keyframe

on its x rotation, since I won't be using

any other of its transform channel.

So I've selected all the transform channel I don't want,

And I will simply press X to get rid of them.

Now, I will go a little further in time

and I will try to rotate the ball.

As soon as I rotate to rotation controller,

I can see Auto King is on and the x value being arranged,

meaning that it's being transformed but not recorded.

But as soon as I release the transform Blender, right again,

a keyframe on all the transform channels,

and I can go ahead for a long time like that,

removing the keyframe I don't want

and whenever I try to transform this manipulator,

Blender writes a keyframe on everything.

So to get rid of this issue,

we need to create what we call a king set.

To access the king option, we need to go into the timeline.

So the first thing I do is renaming the action

and call it zero zero so that it will be first

in the alphabetic order, king set ball.

Now I will check each controller

and for each transform channel that is locked,

I will get rid of the corresponding keyframe

because these are the only keys

that will really serve the animation of the ball.

In the end I only have 14 keyframes remaining

instead of the 36 initial I had.

So my action editor and my graph editor

will sure be way cleaner, I now need to open the timeline.

So I will drag a new editor and switch to the timeline.

In the timeline header I will go to the king set

and in the active king,

I can see that I have a lot of different options.

So I will choose rotation and I will try rotating

my manipulator then Blender is still recording

all the keyframe, and this is because

we need to tell Blender to use this king set

by clicking the arrow near the auto recording button

and choose only active king set.

Now when I try transforming my manipulator,

all the rotation channel will be keyframe.

So we are getting close,

I will get rid of the unwanted keyframe

and if we go back into the king set,

we can see that there is a lot of option

and the one that is interesting for us is available.

From there Blender will only auto record the keyframe

that has already been written, meaning that to channel

where we have inserted a keyframe file to use this king set.

If you haven't set the first keyframe

before applying the king set,

then the Auto King won't write any keyframe

and if I try inserting a new keyframe pressing I,

I will get this error message.

Basically, I can't write a keyframe with the actual setup.

To fix that, we only need to insert a keyframe directly

into the transform channel panel,

then I can get rid of the two channels I don't want,

the Y and Z channel.

There is another way to set the Auto King

on available by default, it's by going into the preferences,

animation, only insert available.

It's really a matter of personal preferences.

I personally use the king filter,

please note that I'm using Blender 2.92 Alpha,

so the position of the different option might change.

All right, now you are ready to animate using an armature.

We have seen that we can use an armature

to perform more complex transformation,

that an armature can deform the object that is bound to it.

So the armature object is made of super object

and called bone, each of those controller bone can be king,

but Blender will create a single action

that will hold the different key

of all the controller of a single armature.

It is highly recommended to create a king set to keep

your dopesheet and graph editor as clean as possible.