Rigging the Marine

Rigging is the process of creating an invisible "skeleton" for a model, which will be used to control the model for animation. This skeleton, or armature if you want to be fancy, is composed of—what else?—bones. Although you can see it in the view, a bone is not a visible part of the model. Each bone has an influence on different parts of the model and when the bone moves, the corresponding parts of the model mesh will move. Here is what a bone looks like in Blender:

Fig. 12.22 – No, it does not look very much like a real-world bone

Once you have created the skeleton, you can then define the relationship each bone has to parts of the model. You may have heard the term weight-painting. This is a sophisticated technique that allows multiple bones to influence the same part of a model with differing strengths.

Rigging is a hugely complex topic—enough to have entire books and courses available to teach...