Okay this is the one, it seems, that most people have been waiting for. Thanks for your patience on it. It took me a while to be able to wrap my mind around it so I could put it into a tutorial for you all, I hope it makes sense.

First off, I designed a cartoon type character for this rig. If you have a complete mesh of your character (poser) this won't work the way I have set it up. Below I have outlined the parts of the model and how I made them. After I had the character made I converted each piece into a polygon mesh. For best results convert to a bezier surface first, then slide the complexity slider down to minimize the polygon count, then convert to polygon mesh.

The next step is to start dropping in the IK chains or "Bones". I Used the bone tool to click and drag them where I wanted in the front view and then move them around so they are centered in the geometry of the model. Below I have pointed out how I put my bones in. Make sure you let the bones stick out of the geometry so you can grab them when you want to move them.

Okay, now I used the little rope tool and hold down the option (MAC) or alt (win) key and click and drag the bone to the arm.

Now with the BONE (IK) CHAIN selected I click on the edit button.

Once inside the bone (IK) chain edit mode I named all of the bones. Next I option click dragged the shoulder bone to the shirt sleeve. The only way to connect more geometry to a bone (IK) chain is to do it while in the chains edit mode. Now the arm and sleeve will move with the bones.

After all of that I had to find all the stray points. I selected each bone I named in the list and all the points that didn't show up red around the bone needed to be selected with the little point tool. If you have a ton of points in your model this part will be painful. The fewer points the less the computer will have to think. Keep it simple.

Now that the bones are all hooked up I needed to hook the arm to the shirt. In my model I have chosen my shirt to be the parent object. Link the sleeve to the arm first.

Then the arm to the shirt.

Now the bone (IK) chain to the shirt. Now, when I move the shirt everything else will follow!

Here is what my project window looks like now. Everything in the arm is a child to the shirt.

Now I have to go in and set up the field of movement for each bone. Below is a quick shot of what I was doing to set up the pinky in the z axis.

That was one arm. Now I have to do the same to the other arm and legs etc.. When it is all done then I can move the character around the screen by the shirt and pose the key frames with the bones. Hope it helps.



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