L24 — Rigging for beginners (Tiny3D limits)

Goal

Add a simple armature, bind weights, and respect Tiny3D’s skinning rules so export won’t produce spaghetti.

Tiny3D constraints (read twice)

From Tiny3D’s design (Module 2 era):

• Fake blend: effectively 1 bone per vertex influence in the ucode model
• Up to 3 bones can affect a triangle’s vertices combined
• Keep bone counts low (root, spine, head, limbs — not a film rig)

Don’t copy a Mixamo 100-bone rig

It will not map cleanly. Use the course reference animated character (player_anim / snake) to study a working setup.

Minimal humanoid steps

1. Object Mode: Add → Armature.
2. Edit bones: root at feet, spine up, simple arms/legs.
3. Select mesh, then armature → Parent → Armature Deform → With Automatic Weights.
4. Weight Paint: fix obvious errors (hand weighted to foot, etc.).
5. Pose Mode: smoke-test rotate a bone.

Course shortcut

Use player_anim (Quaternius / Tiny3D sample lineage, CC0 via Tiny3D examples) as the known-good skinned mesh while you practice on a simpler block character.

Lesson code

Module 3 is Blender-first — there is no per-lesson C ROM for L17–L25.

Runnable code that loads the course meshes lives in the Module 3 asset lab checkpoint (lessons/m3-asset-lab/).

Next

L25 — Idle & walk.