Is the gesture of moving the entire body subdued to the “a” feature to select all bones? Should I create an invisible object to parent the armature to it? What is the most practical way to move the whole character?
depends on what level you want to move the armature.
You can switch to object mode and move the armature as an object (this will take all bones, assuming no strange constraints on the individual bones)
Typically (see the riggify rig), there is a root bone that is the parent to all others. Moving/scaling/rotating that bone will move the entire armature.
If however, you don’t have a root bone, then yes, you need to select all bones and move
I don’t think i understand your question clearly but I’ll try.
- if you have a mesh that was not parented to an armature then you can either hit “A” in edit mode to select it all and move it around by hitting “G” to grab.
OR
simply exit to Object mode click on it and hit “G” to grab and move it but remember, if you do this in object mode your moving it from the center or the origin. This can be a problem when you add your armature. So make sure they both share the same origin.
- If you have created an armature, the very first bone you have created becomes the parent to all bones. Grab that bone in pose mode to move your entire model. In a human rig, it’s always the hip bone. If your rig has IK constraints then you can parent all Ik control bones to a master bone including the hip bone. Now you can move your rig or mesh anywhere on the screen by grabbing that master bone. Blender comes with a meta rig, add it and go into pose mode grab the hip bone and move it to see what I’m talking about, or find an armature somewhere and try it.
BlenderBoy55, the first bone you created isn’t necessarily automatically the parent of every other bone. It is if you built it right, but I see lots of people starting out by just adding a bunch of bones without setting parents properly. If someone is having trouble moving the whole body at once without selecting every single bone, they likely don’t have a proper root bone at all.
Also, the Rigify meta-rig is just the template for creating the Rigify armature. It’s not really meant to be a proper rig itself.