Hello, I am a beginner at animating in blender and I was wondering if you had tips on making smoother animations? I'm not sure if I have to add more bones to the sims rig sims 4 studio provides or maybe a modifier. Thank you.
Okay, that’s quite the question there.
I’m going tumble around the order a little, but lets start with the Sims 4 base rig.
I would say yes. Modifying the base rig is a hugely important part of getting better results out of it. How you go about that is complicated though... First and most important rule is this:
NEVER MESS WITH THE BASE BONES
This is what happens when you do
I know that seems completely paradoxical to what I said initially. The very first step is create a ‘go-between’ layer in the base rig. Select all the bones (in Edit mode) by tapping A, then hit Shift D, then Right Click anywhere on the screen. Press M and select any of the boxes in the display that next pops up that doesn’t have a dot in it. What you’ve just done is Duplicate a copy of the base bones and then moved them to a new view layer, these will form the ‘go-between’ rig. To find these bones you need to find the armature tab in the properties window, it looks like a little green stick figure waving. Under the Skeleton section of the Armatures tab you should see a very familliar looking grid of boxes, the same one you saw when you duplicated the bones. Click the same box you clicked during that previous process and blender will take you to that new layer.
You’re gonna want to go through all of them and rename them to something sensible so they’re easier to find in the future. I usually use a naming convention like DF_Spine0, DF_Calf.L .etc
Now go back to the base rig bones on the original layer and switch yourself to Pose mode. For each bone in the rig you need to add a Copy Transforms constraint to each of the bones in the base layer, with their target being the newly created and named ‘go-between’ bones.
So b__Spine0__ will have the target of DF_Spine0 if you use my naming conventions. Do take note that the Target field will need the name of the rig, the subsequent box that will appear below that labeled Bone is where you enter the name of the corresponding ‘go-between’ bone.
If everything is working properly, you should now be able to move any bone on the ‘go-between’ layer and the mesh should follow as it normally would if you were using the base bones for the same action.
Beyond this point it really does get allot more complex, and this answer post is already pretty long. But a quick note on animating in general.
I would never advise trying to achieve a smoother animation. I would always frame it “I want to make a better animation”. Human actions are not always smooth flowing affairs, they’re often jerky and sporadic, and filled with little twitches and details that when added to your work really makes it that little bit more real. When in doubt look for reference material, study whats going on, pick two poses from the reference, mimic those with your rig, then watch for the differences between what happens when Blender makes the frames between and compare it to what happens in the footage. Its a good way to develop a better eye for details.
Do send me a PM for more info on rigging, its a labyrinthine subject and it realy works better on a one to one teaching base. I’ve often toyed with the idea of doing a full rigging how to video series, never seems to be the time unfortunately.