Rigging Individual limbs and limb sets (Blender)

[Dardissounet]

Hey guys, I wish to start rigging and animating the limbs I make, but I'm wondering, can I rig individual limbs or sets (legs specifically, and if so, how do i do it? Or does a new limb even need rigging? I'm guessing that it does, but it's confusing me like hell. Basically, I would like to learn how to rig sets of limbs for things like walking, and I'm getting absolutely nowhere by sheer experimentation. Also when I attach 2 individual objects to one armature, when I move a single bone like the thigh, the two limbs move with eachother i.e symetrically, to make the other limb I just duplicated the first one, separated it from the other and inverted it, I'd say it's to do with the parenting, but does anyone know how to fix that on blender 2.61? Thanks for the help guys!

[Ashasekayi Ra]

If for example, you had an avatar with four arms, the two left arms could be weighted to the left arm bones of the armature. The armature bones don't have to be in the middle of each piece of geometry to work.

As for your second question, I'd need to see some pics. I'm not exactly following what you are describing there.

[Luc Starsider]

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Dardissounet wrote:

Also when I attach 2 individual objects to one armature, when I move a single bone like the thigh, the two limbs move with eachother i.e symetrically, to make the other limb I just duplicated the first one, separated it from the other and inverted it, I'd say it's to do with the parenting, but does anyone know how to fix that on blender 2.61? Thanks for the help guys!

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It sounds as if the duplicated limb is still weighted to the same bone as the original was. That is, it is influenced by the same bone(s) as the other one, thus moves in tandem with the first one.

I might be wrong but I seem to remember that this works - If you use the mirror modifier to duplicate the limb, in stead of duplicating it (ctrl+D), and then apply the mirror modifier, you will have a duplicated limb weighted to the correct bones. This may depend on the armature - names and position of bones and so on - but have a go and see if it works.

- Luc -