Building a Skeleton

Once the UV mapping was complete, it was time to construct the skeleton. This process was much less stressful than I thought it was going to be. One thing to remember when building each part of the skeleton was to use the orthographic views, not the perspective because otherwise it would have been harder to get the joints to line up with the geometry.

I used the "Joint Tool" to click the area where each joint would go, this was a really good tool to use because it automatically connected each joint together. The most important thing was remembering to name each joint individually to avoid complication later on.  

Once each part was built it was just a matter of joining all of it together. There was an automatic hierarchy of the joints, the first joint formed would automatically become the "Parent" because the movement of this joint would lead to the manipulation of the rest of them in that alignment. To move a joint individually, "D" would need to be held down. 

What have I learnt from this?

This process has enabled me to understand the process of building a basic skeleton, in preparation for rigging. It is now much easier for me to remember what specific buttons to hold when I want to carry out specific actions, such as snapping verts together, moving one selected joint, or joining two already placed together.