2009

Table Of Contents
Skeletons are integral to the animation of any character or hierarchical model.
Examples of characters that use skeletons are two and four legged animals.
Skeletons are also useful for animating other organic components such as the
tail of an animal, a tentacle of an octopus, or a snake.
In the following steps, you create a simple skeleton consisting of four joints
that you combine with the mechanical arm model into a skeleton hierarchy,
allowing you to pose and animate the model.
To create a skeleton for the mechanical arm
1 In the perspective view menu, select Panels > Orthographic > side.
The view updates to display the side view.
You need to view the components of the mechanical arm fully in the
side view so you can draw the joints for the skeleton.
2 Resize the side view to a larger size by dragging the border between the
side and Hypergraph panel views downwards.
3 In the side view menu, select Shading > Wireframe (Hotkey 4).
268 | Chapter 6 Animation