Claw - Bone hierarchy

To introduce bone heirachy, parenting, skinning and bone animation to us, we were tasked with creating an animated robotic claw.

To correctly create this object, all parts need to be created in a straight neutral pose, pointing in a default direction, so that the bones could influence the parts correctly.

Next I added a bone structure, using the orthographic view and snapping to points to ensure a clean bone hierarchy.

Ensuring there's a logical naming convention to the structure makes it easier to follow.

Then we bind the parts to the bone structure.

Which allows us to manipulate the arm by editing the bone positions.

I then created a simple grab and move animation, to learn how to animate objects by manipulating bones.

This entire process was relatively simple and smooth. I think it will be extremely useful when it comes to making animated assets and animating my character later in the project.