Rigging

If you want to bring your 3D model to life, you can use bones and animate them to make the 3D model move. Each bone has a limited amount of influence on the 3D model and it pivots on one end, just like most of our bones do.

This method of 'rigging' (creating a skeleton to animate your object) is super fast and easy. It has it's limitations, but it's good for simple poses and animations. It's based on a great and funny tutorial by Ian Hubert.

  1. Import your model
  2. Add an armature object add > armature. This adds the armature object and a single bone

  3. With the armature selected, in the Object data properties window, under Viewport display, enable the checkbox In Front. This makes the bones always visible, even when they're inside the 3D model. It's easier when you can see where your armature is.
  4. Scale, reposition and move the bone as necessary. Extrude in edit mode to create a chain of bones.
  5. When adding separate bones (shift + a) parent them to the other bones . Choose with offset when you want empty space between them, or choose connect when you want them to mesh together.
  6. create a skeleton that fits the 3D object in it's current pose.
  7. Parent the object to the armature. Choose the option with automatic weights.
  8. switch to pose mode. Now you can deform the 3D model with the armature.