Thinking Outside the Box:
Lincoln, Sitcher Ass Down

By Paul "Villam" Steed

Activate it and make sure ‘Pivot’ is on and click on ‘Affect Pivot Only’.

If you rotate the arm with the default setting for the pivot point it’ll look something like this…

No, this would NOT be right. Hit undo and go over to the pivot menu again. Click on the upper left arm and this is what you’ll see this.

Just like if you were performing a move, scale or rotate on an object or bone, the same axis icon appears allowing you to move the pivot point of the object to it’s correct location. Pushing the pivot of the upper arm to the shoulder, we get a better picture.

Now if we go back and rotate that arm, it looks like this.

Go through and finish the pivot adjustment for the rest of the body. Make sure all the limbs and the waist rotates like you want it to. Next time we’ll get into some wacky stuff like ‘inverse kinematics’ and ‘key frames’. I gots to get back to work cause that is all the time I got this week, friends and countrymen. Maybe I’ll get the next installment out in (gasp) seven days since I’m anxious to make S.A.D. earn his keep and show you sum dem aminations!

Later

ps

- Paul Steed is an incredibly opinionated 3D artist at id Software. He's working on Quake 3: Arena right now, so don't bug him...we want the game this year, dangit.