STEP BY STEP SET UP AN ARMATURE
01 CREATE BONES
Go to the Add menu and select Armature to add a single bone into the scene, select it and move it to its location in your object. In Edit mode press ‘E’ and move your cursor in the direction you want your new bone to grow in. Do this for all the bones, and if you want a bone to extrude from the middle of a chain, just select the specific bone you want your new bone to emanate from.
02 LINK BONES TO OBJECT
Now your bones are all perfectly positioned inside your model, you’re ready to link the armature to the mesh itself. Go into Object mode and select your mesh first, then your bones second. You’ll need to use Shift to select the two objects. Hit Ctrl+p and select Armature Deform>‘with Automatic Weights’, and your bones will now be connected to your chosen mesh.
03 POSE THE OBJECT
With the armature selected, go into Pose mode and select one of your bones. Use ‘G’ to grab a bone and move it, or ‘R’ to rotate it. As you do, you’ll notice that not only does your armature move, but your mesh does too. You may find your first attempt doesn’t give you the results you either expected or wanted. There’s no harm in adjusting what you’ve created and re-parenting the mesh to the bones.
04 KEYFRAME YOUR ANIMATION
Using the timeline at the bottom of the Blender interface, you should be able to keyframe your armature so it changes over time. Hit the filled-in circle on the timeline controls to enter Auto Keying mode, and then navigate to a frame time in the future. Move your bones around before moving to another point in time and doing the same again. Getting your animation right will take practice.