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

Rigging the Torso and Head

Let’s set up the torso and head. We’ll do something really simple here, but it will help you understand the power of constraints. Refer to Figure 11.2 for the bones referenced in this step.

1. Select the C_D_spine bone, press Shift, and select the C_D_chest bone. Add a Copy Rotation constraint to it. (Don’t worry if the bone gets messed up when you apply the constraint; you still need to set up the constraint parameters.) Set the two fields in Space to be on the Local Space (so the constraint affects the local spaces from the target and the current bone). Now, if you rotate C_D_spine, C_D_chest bone will rotate as well because you will usually rotate the spine as a whole, so this constraint will save you from having ...