The bone tool!

In class I learnt how to use the bone tool; this could prove to be a very useful tool when animating characters animals, anything which has limb like movement. The bone tool allowed me to put ‘bones’ into an object which then allowed me to move and animate the object so it gave it a realistic limb action movement.

 To do this, firstly I created a cylinder. I then went to ‘Systems’ in the ‘Create’ panel, and then selected the bone tool, once this was selected I could then draw arrow like shapes, which are the bones. In this example I drew two bones.

I then selected the cylinder by itself and went to the modifiers drop down, animation and then selected ‘skin’.

This then brought up the different options on the right hand side, this allowed me to add bones to the cylinder, opening up a ‘select bones’ window, I could then selected the bones which I drew to attach them to the cylinder.  

Once I had attached the bones to the cylinder this then meant that I could individually select a bone, and move and manipulate the movement, this allowed me to bend the cylinder like it had a joint in the middle and gave it a limb-like effect.

For ease of use, it was much more convenient to use the wireframe view so that I could easily select the bones individually.