Maestri on Bones

Here's a step-by-step reduction of Maestri's tutorial on bones for animation:

1. Open a finished fish model.

2. Go to Create>Systems>Bones. Click and drag to create a bone. A bone is a helper object that controls deformation of other objects. Bones created in a sequence create a hierarchy.

3. Evaluate your object (fish) to decide how many bones to use.

4. Go to Front view. Click on Bones in the Create rollout. Set bone size to 2 for this fish.

5. Place first bone behind fish's neck. Make four bones, proceeding to tip of tail.

6. Make new bone in front of first bone in chain. This is the head bone. Size, then right-click to end.

7. Go to Top view. Create bones for the fins.

8. Name the bones appropriately. You do not need to name the end bones.

9. Using Select By Name, select all the bones. Right-click and bring up Properties to convert the bones to see-through.

10. Select the head bone, make the hierarchy (linking) tool active, and drag from bone to body. Repeat with all other bones. In order to select bones and not fish, first select fish and engage Freeze Selection in the quad menu.

11. Under Animation modifiers, find Skin. Add to stack. Find the Add button in the rollout. Bring up all bones in Select-By-Name and select them to add. This generates envelopes.

12. Add fins to the bones, using the rollout from the Modify panel under each bone in sequence. Resize the fins to create the appropriate envelope.

13. Test animation to see that all parts are engaged.