wickedwhimsanimation Animation and Rig Help

[DontLookImAshamed]

So I've been animating recently, mostly SFW, but I've wanted to make more intimate animations. I'm still learning with Blender but I get the gist on animating and posing. My issue is using other rigs. So far I can only move the bones of the default rigplus blender file. When I try to use any other rig, the the limbs are their own separate thing I guess and I'm unable to bend any bone without decapitating the rig. Even when I click on the rigs blender file as I would for the rigplus, its strictly just showing the pose dots and I can't move anything naturally.

 

I was wondering if there was a way to animate with these rigs the same way I animate with rigplus with the colorful indicators? Or am I supposed to animate with that rig and that one alone with just those dots? If so, how the heck do I move the bones without stretching the skin or removing the limb from the body. Maybe there's a way to add the rig to the asset browser? I'd truly love to know. I've tried looking for answers on how to use other rigs but the videos are either outdate or not helpful. I know there's something I'm just not getting. I read WickedWhims tutorial but it doesn't really teach how to use their custom rigs. Any help is appreciated.

[SyntheticX]

What you're describing is mostly related to the control rig system.

The actual rig that gets exported to the game is the EA skeleton, which is just a bone hierarchy with EA's naming convention and weight painting attached to it. In other words, it's essentially a fairly simple FK skeleton. Because of that, you can animate the base rig bones directly and export them without using any control rig at all, and the animation will still work perfectly fine in-game.

The purpose of a control rig is simply to make the animation process easier and more efficient.

Personally, I think the RigPlus control system is very well designed, but it doesn't feel fluid enough for animation work. On the other hand, the Dagger control rig is much more animation-friendly, but in my opinion it lacks some important controls and flexibility. For example, things like the root bind not affecting the entire body can be limiting.

If you're just starting out, I'd recommend using Dagger's animation controls. However, as you gain more experience, you'll probably want to learn some rigging yourself and create tools that make specific tasks easier for your own workflow.

For example, if you're not satisfied with how the shoulders behave, you could build your own driver setup and turn the shoulder movement into something driven by the hand's position in world space through an MCH system. That's getting into more advanced Blender rigging territory, but it's the kind of customization that can make a huge difference once you understand how everything works.