Intro to Skeletons, Skinning, and Weights

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Everything below represents notes for Sepha to finish the YouTube vid and article with.

A brief history

In the past, characters were 2d, and individual sprites were flipped between to create the illusion of motion.

Then characters became 3d, and their individual verts were animated frame by frame to create the illusion of motion.

Then as characters became more complex, and polycounts and Vert counts bolooned - animators needed a better way to animate their characters.

This "better way" is via Skeletons, Bones, Weights, and Rigging.

Bones

Instead of animating individual vertices, we bind verts to bones, and animate the bones themselves. Blender contains bones in an argmature.

Keep this chapter simple and introductory, you want to highlight the fact that meshes need to be parented to bones and the weights need to match the bone names - highlight importance of correct naming etc and symettry.

Include a simple youtube vid showcasing all of this and the weight binding process.

Key begginer point - the weights linearly fall off, try and communicate this.

— CREATE A YOUTUBE VIDEO SHOWCASING THE BASICS OF ARMATURES, AND WEIGHT PAINTING.