help! problem with blender animation guide(solved)

[mc08]

I do not really know if this is the right part of the forum for this kind of question, but anyway here goes:

I'm following a BLENDER guide, posted as a sticky over at the "guides how-to tutorials", or whatever it's called. It explains how to make a character from scratch and apply bones, animation etc. here it ls:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/ ... _Animation

When rigging the character, setting bones etc I got totally stuck at page 124 where the guide apply a master bone to the armature, to be able to move the whole rigg. basicly he's extruding the first spine bone and makes it a parent of all the other bones. But when I do, all bones I make children of the master bone lose connetion to one another. Sure, i can move the rigg with the masterbone, but the whole funktion of the rigg is destroyed.

I'm sure this is a very small problem, but I'm new to blender and I can't figure out how he is able to keep all bones connected as he makes them children of the masterbone.

Please help! O.o

[vermeer]

there's a thousand ways to do a rig....

For that, I just use an empty...which was the very old way, I am afraid... An I just parent normally the armature in object mode. Or other empty-controllers....ie, imagine I have an empty to control each hip, and empty in each foot, an empty where shoulder starts, etc. I make em all child of root empty.I know using this has its probs, but maybe am just too lazy to do other way...

[mc08]

Thx for answer. Currently I solved the problem with making only the uttermost parents children of the master bone, to keep the connections between the bones (for example the 2 "leg controller bones"). I wonder though how the heck the guide makes all bones children of the master bone and still manage to keep the connection of the bones? :S
I would really like to know the way the guide does it, if someone understand please tell me!

I appreciate your reply, vermeer

[vermeer]

probably was not typed correctly...

there's a constraint called child of as well, but doubt it is it...

you're welcome

[mc08]

A new problem with blender has turned up and I feel it's kind of unnecessery to create a whole new thread about it, so I simply post it here.

I want to export my animated character to be able to use it in a game a friend is working on, but I seem to be unable to find a single guide dealing with this matter. Anyone who could link any good guide about exporting animated models?

EDIT:
made a new thread about this...