Simple skinning question

Support Animation and Rigging
1

I am trying to rig stick figure. I have been reading the blender manual and watching tutorial videos for days, with no success. There are so many different ways to “rig” and I can’t understand which I should use or how to do any of them. Any guidance on what approach I should take would be greatly appreciated. But here is my current problem.

I attached my blender file if you want to see. The first thing I am trying to do is rig a bone to the torso of the stick figure. Here is what I do:

  1. Select the torso
  2. Select the torso bone
  3. CTRL + P
  4. Select “Set Parent To With Automatic Weights”
  5. Attempt to move the bone in pose mode

When I move the bone, nothing happens to the torso object. This would seem to be the first step in a “rig”. What I am doing wrong? How do I verify the object is properly linked? The end goal is for all the limbs to bend sharply at the joints (e.g. where upper arm meets the neck, where the upper arm meets the lower arm elbow joint, etc), or maybe have a slight “bendyness” near the joint, but not to bend in a smooth curved fashion. Each “segment” should stay stiff in the middle, except the torso and neck. I would like those to bend in the middle (like a real human can bend the spine or neck). But first, I need to get at least one bone working! Don’t know why this is so hard - sorry for being a newb. Thanks a lot!

-Steve

Attachments

stick1.blend (565 KB)

2

I wrote a long text explain the basic and then i realize that the problem was something else.
Make sure that you select the mesh first and then the armature then parent, from the pop up menu chose bone relative (because you model has separated meshes you will have more freedom).
Tip: if you feel like bones are too big for your view, you can change the display mode in the bone object data panel.
http://www.pasteall.org/blend/41941 check the torso mesh to see how i parented it and follow the arrow to see the parent child relationship.