Posing Jim

After you’ve weighted all the models that need deformations by following these instructions, you’ll be able to pose Jim! Here are some things to keep in mind before and after weighting your character:

The jaw bone should open the mouth and the lower lip, bottom teeth, and tongue should move with it.

The clothing details of the arms, for example, can be deformed by bones, but you can also just parent those details to the arm bones. During the design, those details were placed where they are now because in those positions, only one bone would affect them, and that’s why just parenting them should be enough.

Enabling the arms and legs to twist can be tricky. When you twist your hand, this movement affects the forearm and, in simple rigs, simulating this is not possible. A cool way Blender has to address this problem is by using Bone Segments. On the Bone tab of the Properties Editor, in the Deform panel, there is an option for Curved Bones. You can define the number of segments, which will make the bone “flexible” and make a curve between its parent and its child. If you set the Ease to 0, the bone won’t be curved but it will twist. If you want to see the segments and how they work, you’ll have to change the display mode to B-Bones on the Armature tab. While this won’t create perfect deformations, it will simulate the twisting effect in the forearms, which would otherwise require a more complex rig and more weighting time.