Animating with Blender

Summary

Rigging and skinning is the most technically demanding task in the short animation process, even if you choose to use someone else’s rigs. An effective rig consists of three sections: controls, deformers, and helpers. A rig’s controls should be simple but provide intuitive freedom for animation. When building a rig, it is best to work in stages, testing along the way. First, a bare bones rig is created. Then the rig is cleaned up and bound to the character mesh. Animation testing proceeds from there with further refinements as problem areas are identified.

Weight-bearing extremities will probably be rigged with inverse kinematics. Other portions of characters may be rigged with other tools, including both targetless and automatic IK. ...