Rigging and Skinning - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 130

1. Build the basic structure. This is the stage
where you construct the fi rst part of the
armature, adding bones to follow the con-
tours of the character. Even though some of
these (such as leg bones as we'll learn later)
are really “helpers,” it's okay and even nec-
essary to include them at this point. Figure
9.3 shows the fi rst stage of construction
of the mother's rig.

MASTER

At this stage, you will set up basic parenting rela-
tionships so that unconnected parts of the rig
move properly. For example, arms and legs that
don't have a direct connection to the trunk of the
body should be made children of bones in the
spine or hips so that everything moves together.

Figure 9.3 The fi rst stage of the mother's rig

WARNING
Before you begin adding constraints to your armature, you need to remember to apply/remove
any transformations from the object. Enter object mode and use Ctrl-A to apply any rotations or
scaling, and clear any translations with Alt-G . Binding the armature to your deformers and char-
acter meshes in a transformed state can have unpredictably (but almost always) bad effects. Do
it now, before it's too late!

If you're going to use inverse kinematics (IK)
on any of the limbs, add it now, before the fi rst
round of animation testing. The last thing to
add is a “master” bone, which is indicated in
Figure 9.3. A master bone is the ultimate par-
ent of everything in the armature. For the most
part, you will not be moving your characters
at the object level. Even initial placement will
be done through bone level animation. So you
need a convenient way to move the entire char-
acter at once. Any bone that is not a child of
another bone in your rig will need to be made
the child of the master bone. Figure 9.4 high-
lights the bones in the mother rig that are the
direct child of the master bone. In this rig, all of

IMMEDIATE
CHILDREN

Figure 9.4 The master bone and its immediate children