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Rigging
If you want to animate your 3D model, 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 too.
This method of 'rigging' (creating a skeleton to animate your object) is super fast and easy, but it has it's limitations. It's based on a great and funny tutorial by Ian Hubert.
- Import your model
- Add an armature object
add > armature
. This adds the armature object and a single bone - With the armature selected, in the
Object data properties
window, underViewport display
, enableIn Front
. It's easier when you can see where your armature is.
- Scale, reposition the bone as necessary. Extrude in edit mode to create a chain of bones.
- When adding separate bones (
shift + a
) parent them to the other bones . Choosewith offset
when you want empty space between them, or chooseconnect
when you want them to mesh together. - create a skeleton that fits the 3D object in it's current pose.
- Parent the object to the armature. Choose the option
with automatic weights
. - switch to pose mode. Now you can animate your 3D model.