Softbody for Rigged Characters in Blender

This is just a simple and quick explanation on the making of the softbody effect for the SoftBird (or "PengZilla", as someone on ElYsiun renamed it). To know the bases of softbody in Blender you should also read the wiki pages at this address (raccomanded!).

STEP 1

Of course, model the character.

STEP 2 and 3

Then, built a custom IK armature and rig the character to the armature in the usual way.

NOTE: I usually do all these steps almost at the same time, to try to build the flow of the mesh's poly in the best way for the animation.

STEP 4

Add materials and textures (in this case all Blender's procedurals) to the character.

STEP 5

Build an animation library of Actions (walk, turn-the-head-to-the-left, flap, etc.), and then use them in the NLA to establish the final animation (well, you don't necessarily have to use the Non Linear Animation, of course).

STEP 6

At this point create a new vertex group and name it "SOFT" (or whatever you want).
Ideally share the mesh in different areas with different weights and then, selecting the interested vertices, start to assign these different weights always to the "SOFT" group.

For PengZilla, this is what resulted after all the different weights had been assigned:

The red areas have 1.000 weight value (maximum bone's influence), so they don't get deformed from the softbody and straight follow the armature animation (let's say they are the underskin bones areas of the animal or the stiff parts as the beak).
Altough in the image it doesn't show clearly, the green areas have many different weight values; the lesser is a weight value on a mesh's area and the more the softbody will deform this area.

STEP 7

Last, go in the "Object" window (F7) and select the softbody panel. Enable it (it will appear in the modifiers panel you see below) and tweak the different values; on the left is what I used for PengZilla.

That's all, folks!