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I did NO vertex painting, NO envelopes -- just clicked Bone Heat!

So easy...

(Sorry but I'm just esctatic... (grin))

like i know, all the new updates in blender made me download it again, i haven't made anything in blender for over a year. i can't beleive i still remember how to do everything (i need to practice nodes a bit)
but yeah, its fun.

maybe you can show us some pics of the proces.

Process?

First make the rig like this:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Flying_Bird_-_Building_the_Rig

Then, I skipped the second part of the tutorial, I just parented (ctrl-p) the mest to the armature and in 2.46 it's possible to say that bones use Bone Heat (instead of old closest bones, which wasn't quite as impressive).

That's all!

Basically take model, draw bones (i.e. armature), parent and animate... Ok, it's not perfect, but if you want to refine, you can use this as a base for vertex painting...

does boneheat work good in hands were bones are close together?  I find tha the most boring part of riging and would be pleased if it could be automated.

I fear that it's not that precise, but I think it helps the preparation.

I know, rigging fingers is difficult in any sw I have tested. :(

ok thx for the info.

Rigging is tidiouse work and takes up a LOT of time.
 But it all seems to go down the drain when I try to pose the figure. It always screws up the joints. They either invert or flatten. Does the new Bone Heat feature fix this?

SEspider, try extra (perpendicular) bones for bad joint points, that may fix the real bad joints. Also some more subsurf helps often. But nothing is very easy if you're doing photorealistic stuff. Guys in blenderartists dot com may be able to help, there are real pros there...

As far as i may concern the bone heat system is cool, it saves many hours of vertex grouping nor the envelope system. indeed the system developed by the blender guys is awesome. Blender are now already being the first open source 3d software that can fully match several major paid 3d software.
Anyway, what you should all know is that in 2.46 you can't bone heat two mesh with one armature structure. you have to do it one by one. But though it still too cool to be true

Quote - Rigging is tidiouse work and takes up a LOT of time.
 But it all seems to go down the drain when I try to pose the figure. It always screws up the joints. They either invert or flatten. Does the new Bone Heat feature fix this?

i don't know for sure by what you mean. but as far as i've tried this new bone heat system i haven't use rigging at all. For the finger and pose i use pose edit mode and play around with the bones. At least that's all i can say for now. and i think it saves more time than rigging. that's my opinion.