[Bsod-mentors] Understanding armature from scratch to multi-IK

[Alberto Torres]

I hope I'm not too late for this, it's still 10th June in half of the world.


BLENDER SUMMER OF DOCUMENTATION PROPOSAL

UNDERSTANDING ARMATURES FROM SCRATCH

  This documentation project covers everything related with the armature
system of blender in its current status, from the basics to the last added
features including single and multiple IK targets, degree of freedom limits,
bone envelope editing, NLA, stride path and bone, new constraint evaluation
system, custom bone shapes, etc.

  The documentation will be a detailed and illustrated tutorial, with plenty
of examples, following this structure:

1. Understanding armatures
   1.1 Anatomy of the bone
   1.2 Editing armatures
       1.2.1 Mirror editing
       1.2.2 Bone rolling
       1.2.3 B-bones
       1.2.4 Envelope editing
2. Posing armatures
   2.1 Forward kinematics
   2.2 Inverse kinematics
       2.2.1 Setting up the IK constraint
       2.2.2 Degrees of freedom
       2.2.3 IK bone scaling
       2.2.4 Custom bone shapes
   2.3 Multiple target IK
       2.3.1 Setting up & tweaking
       2.3.2 Use examples & tips
   2.4 Constraints
       2.4.1 Copy loc/rot/size
             2.4.1.1 Copy loc/rot tricks
       2.4.2 Track to and locked track
       2.4.3 Floor and armatures
       2.4.4 Stretch to bone
             2.4.4.1 Example: muscle
   2.5 Two different ways of rigging a foot
3. Animating armatures
   3.1 Keying poses and constraints
   3.2 Following paths
   3.3 Composing actions
   3.4 Non-linear animation editor
       3.4.1 Blending actions
       3.4.2 Stride path
       3.4.3 Stride bone
   3.5 Walk cycles
       3.5.1 Using a stride bone
       3.5.2 The sticky bone trick (*see below)
   3.5 Using the action constraint
   3.6 Visual features (ghost view)
   3.7 Animation tips
4. Skinning armatures
   4.1 Parenting
       4.1.1 Armature modifier
   4.2 Deforming with envelopes
   4.3 Managing vertex groups
       4.3.1 Baking envelopes into vertex groups
       4.3.2 Mesh geometry tips
   4.4 Weight painting tool
       4.4.1 Mirrored painting
   4.5 Rectify deformations
       4.5.1 Action constraint
       4.5.2 Shape keys
       4.5.3 Driving shape keys

(*) This is a trick I developed which uses some new features of blender
constraint system, and makes slipless walkcycles even on curved paths.
See a proof-of-concept video of this at the end of this proposal.

The result will be around 30 pages with illustrations, which will serve both
as reference documentation and as a feature-by-feature tutorial clearing any
confuse element. It will be released both in ODT and (media)wiki format.

As my native language is Spanish, I'm getting better results writing the doc
in Spanish and then translating it to English. The illustrations will have
visual clues and text, so they will be released in English, Spanish and in
GIMP (xcf) format, so anyone can translate the image texts.

I started to use Blender seriously since the release of 2.40 version, as
such I'm not 'intoxicated' with experiencie from older versions and I have
expertise in both old and new features. In the following video you can see
my current experience and a proof of concept of two techniques I
investigated and developed, which will be explained in detail in this
project.

http://agaroth.com/dithi/bsod/bsod-pof.avi
(This is an old render, I'm not at home at the moment so I can't
upload the improved one until I'm back)
Note that the video itself is for you to view, it isn't part of the project.

As for my experience with documentation, I'm ready to undertake any writting
task; also the translated beginning of the project is almost ready which
you can evaluate.

                                                 Alberto Torres Ruiz, Spain
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Best regards,
Alberto (a.k.a DiThi)