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

Manipulating Bones

You can create an armature by pressing Shift + A in Object Mode and selecting Armature > Single Bone. If you want to create a skeleton from the default bone in the armature, you’ll have to do that in Edit Mode (Tab) using the techniques you’ll see in a moment. In Figure 11.1, you can see the elements of a bone.

Figure 11.1 The elements of a bone

When you have a series of bones connected in a line it’s called a chain. A bone’s direction goes from its head to its tail and that’s important because it defines the bone chain’s direction as well. A bone connected to the tail of another bone will follow the movements of the latter ...