here are some tips for making a simple cabinet prop rig in blender. hope you find them helpful.
making of armature
4 bones to open cabinets - 2 on each side
2 bones mid
1 bone origin
added an armature and made 2 center bones and root bone:
made one of the mid bones shorter so can select it easier changing tail to 0.7
figuring out origin point for cabinet bone. using cursor to selected on cabinet verts:
orient cabinet bone so rotating in +z opens cabinet by adjusting roll:
create other cabinet bone from first.(used the cursor to selected trick then the >> selection to cursor to position second bone)
set bones rotations to xyz euler (i think this should work for this simple example). lock scales for all bones except root bone.
setup the parenting
-select child then parent >> ctrl+p keep offset
mirror left bones to right side.
-in edit mode select left side bones >> armature >> symmetrize .L bones get renamed to .R on right side
- need to fix roll on right side bones so +z opens cabinet doors. used roll 180 on right side bones.
parent meshes to relevant bone
-in pose mode >> select child then parent >> ctrl+p bone option
add widgets for bones (make sure display wireframe is checked so can see controls in solid shaded view)
modelling tips
(separate face to make handles ‘p’ in edit mode ‘selection’)
(join meshes ctrl+j to make cabinet body and also to add handles to cabinets)
(apply transforms to reset locations,scales,rotates)
(to mirror half cabinet to other side shift+d to duplicate >> then object mirror x global >> enter to complete)
script ideas from this:
-be nice to have a script that mirrors meshes in x axis and edits names so meshes with .L become .R
-might want a script to rename meshes.name from object.name
inspired by:
https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/76584/how-to-align-or-mirror-half-armature
Nate
