Learning Blender: A Hands-On Guide to Creating 3D Animated Characters

Rigging Process

The steps below describe the usual workflow that you need to follow to rig your character. In the next sections, we’ll discuss these steps in detail.

1. Create an armature.

2. Enter Edit Mode for that armature and create the main bone structure.

3. In Pose Mode, add constraints to set up the rig and jump back to Edit Mode as necessary to add helper bones.

4. Once the rig is working, add custom shapes to it.

5. Finally, “skin” the meshes to the skeleton so it deforms and, using weight painting, define the influence of each bone in the vertices of the model.

6. Now you’re ready to animate your character!