Is someone able to explain this to me?

Support Animation and Rigging
1

In recent rigs in blender, i have seen, aswell as bones, certain shapes that also move the rig, like the circular ones in this:
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://tuftux.netne.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/male_desert_blender_shadedview.jpg&imgrefurl=http://tuftux.netne.net/tag/modelisation/&usg=__sowkxNlPCsVpMHAxFe44tJ741ZA=&h=784&w=393&sz=116&hl=en&start=193&zoom=1&tbnid=yywxAMHsnOimKM:&tbnh=168&tbnw=117&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dblender%2Brigs%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D610%26tbs%3Disch:10,4415&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=399&ei=4vghTbe_EtDc4wbmvqSGAg&oei=yPghTdG1FMeKhQf40524Dg&esq=8&page=10&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:193&tx=54&ty=81&biw=1366&bih=610

what are these and how can i create and use them?

2

Bone shapes http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Rigging/Armatures/Visualization#Shaped_Bones
In blender 2.56 see the attached image.

Attachments

Screen shot 2011-01-03 at 16.31.10.jpg353×669 53.7 KB

3

thank you. but i am confused as what are the advantages of using these instead of bones?

4

what are the advantages of using these instead of bones?

You can make different shapes to symbolize different functions, making things more intuitive for the animator later on.

For instance, it is common to create a circle shape that has four arrow pointing out of each cardinal direction. This is used at the base of the character, symbolizing that you can move it forward, backward, left, or right.

5

I “stumbled upon” this feature some time ago, and it happens to be hugely beneficial, as are “bone layers.” If you have a complicated setup of bones (which you can wind up having both for human characters and for machinery…) …
“One bone’s … very like another one … when your head’s down over your Blen-der, buddy…”
– with apologies to “One Night In Bangkok”
This simple trick “makes all the knobs and dials look different.” I use it, not only to indicate the bone’s orientation, but to make it more obvious what kind of thing the bone controls, so I can see “which bone I should grab.”