Hello everyone.

Here's a useful tutorial for building an armature control rig:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTeHY_2Z0_4&feature=related
You can skip ahead to 2:22.
I didn't create this tutorial, I just stumbled upon it.

Why would you build an armature control rig as opposed to just animating bones? It can be easier and faster to control many bones at once. It will help to deal with the random 180 degree spins some people have trouble with. And it promotes more realistic movement.

I don't know how many people who animate and use blender already do this, but it is useful information for people who haven't seen it before. Unfortunately, the author doesn't document some of the shortcuts and tricks he uses, or explain why he is doing what he is doing most of the time, but it is still a good tutorial, covering a useful topic.


If you choose to build an armature control rig using IK bones and control bones, remember to insert keyframes for the actual bones, not the control rig, and delete the extra bones before export.

I sincerely hope that is not the best method of rigging in Blender because trading one form of Gimble Lock for another is quite possibly the worst idea ever conceived, to be honest If I walked into work tomorrow and some guy handed me a Character to animate using a rig like that one I would flip out in a rage that this moron even wasted his time creating it because 1) I am the animator and thats my job ! and 2) that thing is a complete nightmare of IK Twist Flipping and Bone Based Gimble Lock, especially considering the entire point of Rigging is to make animating easier and that rig has almost zero consolidation of controls nor does it contain any compound controls like allowing the foot to automatically arch when you raise the foot to help with foot steps simulation, IKing the small Extremities (Fingers, Wings, Toes) is never a good idea as it always leads to IK Twist Flips like what you saw at the end of the tutorial with the Arm.

Does Blender not have a Biped ? as a Biped would serve you better then that Bones rig would.
Does Blender allow for Scripted Wires ?
Does Blender have any kind of Attribute Holder systems ?
It seems to have a Bind Pose -> does it allow for multiple Poses ?

Basically the more you can do to convert Rotation to Linear movement the less you will run into Gimble Lock or Bones just flipping for no reason.

If your going to try Rigging in Blender look for ANY Blender Tut that details how you would convert Rotation to Linear Movements, that Look At Target he created with the elbow is a good example of what I mean he converted the rotational movement of the upper and lower arms into linear up and down movements of a secondary non-structure object.

Look for Plugins dealing with saving Multiple Poses, any kind of Attribute Holder so you can script movements to Rollouts/Sliders, tutorials on the Blender Web Site that detail any ways to be able to Script Rotational to Linear Control Object conversion, Look for anything dealing with animation Plugins, Scripts, Tools -> ANYTHING to avoid what that guy created will make you a happier animator !

Yes, I'm sure that an experienced animator can come up with a much better rig. That wasn't the point of the tutorial.

It was to show the techniques you can use to set up easy-to-use controls for animating. Most of the people who learn about modeling and animating when they start modding oblivion or fo3 have no idea what an IK solution is or what the point of it is, nor do they know how to set up helper bones



1. not that I'm aware of, but I could be wrong
2. yes
3. don't know what this is referring to
4. yes


Excellent advice, thank you for the help. I just liked this tutorial because it shows the technique you use to set up a control rig and some of the potential uses. Hopefully people will find what works best for them.