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Armature Modifier

Description

This modifier appears (as the others) as a sub-panel, in the Editing context which is accessed using F9 or clicking button in the Buttons window. This sub-panel is part of the Modifiers tab. For further information about the common panel components see the interface section on modifiers.

The Armature modifier is used for building skeletal systems for animating the poses of characters and anything else which needs to be posed. With the VGroup and MultiModifier options, you can use several armatures to animate a single (mesh) object.

By adding an armature system to an object, that object can be deformed accurately so that geometry doesn’t have to be animated by hand. The Armature modifier allows objects to be deformed by bones simply by specifying the name of the armature object, without having to use the (old) “parent/child” system.

For more details on armatures usage, see this chapter.

Options

Ob

The name of the armature object used by this modifier.

VGroup

The name of a vertex group of the object, of which weights will be used to determine the influence of this Armature modifier’s result when mixing it with the results from other Armature ones. Only meaningful when having at least two of these modifiers on the same object, with MultiModifier activated.

Inv

Inverts the influence set by the vertex group defined in previous setting (i.e. reverts the weight values of this group).

Vert.Groups

Enable/Disable vertex groups defining the deformation (i.e. bones of a given name only deform vertices belonging to groups of same name).

Envelopes

Enable/Disable bone envelopes defining the deformation (i.e. bones deform vertices in their neighborhood).

Quaternion

Use quaternions to get smoother and nicer rotation interpolations.

B-Bone Rest

When using B-bones (“curved” bones), deform the object according to the B-bones “curves”, even when they are in rest position.

MultiModifier

Use the same data as previous (Armature?) modifier as input. This allows you to use several armatures to deform a same object, all based on the “non-deformed” data (i.e. this avoid the second Armature modifier to deform the result of the first one…). The results of the Armature modifiers are then mixed together, using the weights of the VGroup vertex groups as “mixing guides”.