Rigging a drawing in Adobe Animate involves adding a skeletal structure, or bones and joints, to your artwork. This allows you to animate the drawing by posing the structure rather than redrawing each frame.
What is Rigging in Adobe Animate?
Rigging transforms a static drawing into an animatable character or object by applying an Inverse Kinematics (IK) structure. This structure consists of:
- Joints: Points of rotation (like elbows, knees, or spine segments).
- Bones: Connect the joints, acting like limbs.
Manipulating a joint automatically moves the bone connected to it and any subsequent bones in the chain, making complex character animation much easier.
Tools Needed
The primary tool for rigging in Animate is the Bone tool.
Step-by-Step Guide to Rigging Your Drawing
Here's how to add a bone structure to your artwork:
- Prepare Your Artwork: Ensure your drawing is broken down into separate pieces that you want to animate independently (e.g., upper arm, forearm, hand). Convert these pieces into Symbol instances on the stage.
- Select the Bone Tool: Choose the Bone tool from the Tools panel (it looks like a bone).
- Start Adding Joints:
- Click on the stage where you want the root joint of your structure to be (e.g., the hip or shoulder). This is the base of your bone chain.
- Click and drag away from the first joint to draw the first bone and place the next joint (e.g., from hip to knee).
- Continue clicking and dragging from the end of the last bone to add subsequent bones and joints in your main chain (e.g., knee to ankle, ankle to foot).
- Branching New Joints (Like a Tail): Sometimes you need to add a bone chain that branches off from an existing one, like adding a tail or an arm coming from the torso.
- Click on the parent joint you want to branch from (e.g., the root joint or a joint on the spine) to make it active. This is crucial as mentioned in the reference: "If you want to branch out a new joint for the tail you can click on the root joint to make it active."
- Once the parent joint is active, click and drag away from it to draw the first bone of the new branch (e.g., the base of the tail).
- Continue adding joints and bones for this branch as needed.
- Associate Artwork with Bones: As you add bones, Animate automatically tries to link them to the Symbol instances they overlap with. You can adjust which Symbol is linked to which bone in the Properties panel.
- Adjusting the Rig:
- Use the Selection tool (V) to select joints and move them. Moving a joint will bend the bone chain.
- Use the Subselection tool (A) to refine joint placement without bending the chain.
- You can also use the Bone tool itself to click and drag joints to reposition them.
- Test Your Rig: Create a new keyframe on the timeline (usually on the IK layer that Animate automatically creates). Select the Selection tool and drag the joints to see how the bone structure bends and how the associated artwork follows.
Practical Tips for Rigging
- Rigging works best with Symbol instances.
- Rigging creates a dedicated IK layer for the bone structure. Your artwork symbols remain on their original layers.
- Plan your bone structure before you start drawing. Where do you need joints to achieve the animation you want?
- Keep your bone chains simple initially and add complexity as needed.
By following these steps, including activating a joint to branch out new bone chains like for a tail, you can effectively rig your drawings in Adobe Animate, making them ready for dynamic animation.
