8

Bones System 381
• Daylight (page 1–394) creates an assembly w ith
a sky and a sun. Using the Get location fun ction
you can create and animate a light that follows
thegeographicallycorrectangleandmovement
of the sun over the earth at a g iven location.
Systems are primarily intended for
plug-in (page
3–1089)
component software. Additional systems
might be available if your configuration includes
plug-in systems.
Procedure
To create a system:
1.
On the Create panel, click Systems.
The Systems panel is displayed.
2. OntheObjectTyperollout,chooseasystem
to create.
3. Drag in a viewport to create the system.
Bones System
Create panel > Systems > Bones b utton
Character menu > Bone Tools > Create Bones
A Bones system is a jointed, hierarchical linkage
of bone objects that c an be used to animate
other objects or hierarchies. B ones are especially
useful for animating character models that have
a continuous skin mesh. Bones can be animated
with forward or inverse kinematics. For inverse
kinematics, bones can use any of t he available
IK
solvers (page 2–421)
,orthrough Interactive (page
2–462)
or Applied IK (page 2–464) .
Dinosaur character modeled using bones
Bones are renderable objects. They have several
parameters, such as taper and fins, that can be
used to define the shape the bone represents. The
finsmakeiteasiertoseehowtheboneisrotating.
For animation, it is very important that you
understand the structure of a bone object. The
bone’s geometry is distinct from its link. Each link
has a pivot point at its base. The bone can rotate
about this pivot point. When you mov e a child
bone, you are really rotating its parent bone.
Itmightbeusefultothinkofbonesasjoints,
becauseitistheirpivotplacementsthatmatter,
more than the ac tua l bone geometry. Think of the
geometryasavisualaidthatisdrawnlengthwise
from the pivot point to the bone’s child object.
The child object is usua l ly another bone.