I'm trying to follow directions from Mullen's book to make simple animation with envelopes.

I have succesfully rigged a character, bones work and deformation is more or less OK. Armature is deformer for the character mesh.

However, if I want to move the whole character in scene, I have problems. Apparently the character mesh needs to be parented to armature (is that so?).

If I parent mesh to armature, it seems that it does new deformations. I already have armature as envelope deformer and parenting seems to try the same...

Help please. How parenting should be done?

Attached Link: http://koti.mbnet.fi/mmyllyma/ani2.mpg

Ho, I found a workaround. I parented both the armature and the mesh to an Empty. Now I can rotate and move the Empty and everything just works...

Still, it is criminal negligence that we do not have real "Character Animation with Blender to Idiots" guide.

Now I can focus to animation itself... 

(Link is to 1.7 Meg MPEG-2 file, one of my first tries to animation with Blender...)

Attached Link: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Introducing-Character-Animation-Blender-Roosendaal/dp/0470102608/ref=pd_bowtega_1/203-1620071-9291964?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179479049&sr=1-1

:b_tonguewink:

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.

Gog_CA1, the Mullen's book I was referring to in the first message is the one you linked. I am trying to follow the directions, but there are slight omissions and unclear issues. It is good and useful book, just not perfect. I hope it will raise discussion...

Ah, apologies, I haven't read it but it's been recommended to me as a good read, interesting feedback, I still haven't got as far as rigging in blender, a lot of my stuff is architecture or product pre-vis.

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.

No need to apologize and it IS recommendable book. :)

Architecture and product pre-visualization? Wow.

Product pre-vis is what switched me from a hobby artist to semi-pro, I'd been using various apps, but then I worked for 4 years in a fast prototyping team that did everything from concept, to prototype production runs. Two of us ended up using max for the early visuals based on our design docs. Once I had a grounding in Max, a friend who's a site engineer introduced me to an architect and I got lucky doing some odds and ends for him. I've moved up the food chain from the prototyping team to manage some software engineering and now have no excuse to buy new versions of Max and rather then buy from my own pocket I ended up using Blender.....

At some point I'll find enough hobby time to put as much effort into something to post here as I would on professional level, but I get too impatient when doing things that are for me.....

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Toolset: Blender, GIMP, Indigo Render, LuxRender, TopMod, Knotplot, Ivy Gen, Plant Studio.

I know the feeling, when you don't have customer pressure, the energy kind of moves from project to other interests and you just finish fast so you can play with some other toy...

On the other hand, this is much, much better hobby than beer drinking... :)