********* Structure ********* .. figure:: /images/rigging_armatures_structure_armature-example.png :align: right Example of a very basic armature. Armatures mimic real skeletons. They are made out of bones, which are (by default) rigid elements. But you have more possibilities than with real skeletons: In addition to the "natural" rotation of bones, you can also translate and even scale them! And your bones do not have to be connected to each other; they can be completely free if you want. However, the most natural and useful setups imply that some bones are related to others, forming so-called "chains of bones", which create some sort of "limbs" in your armature, as detailed in `Chains of Bones`_. .. container:: lead .. clear .. _armature-bone-chain: Chains of Bones =============== The bones inside an armature can be completely independent from each other (i.e. the modification of one bone does not affect the others). But this is not often a useful set up: To create a leg, all bones "after" the thigh bone should move "with" it in a well-coordinated manner. This is exactly what happens in armatures by parenting a bone to the next one in the limb, you create a "chains of bones". These chains can be ramified. For example, five fingers attached to a single "hand" bone. .. figure:: /images/rigging_armatures_structure_chains-of-bones.png An armature with two chains of bones. Bones are chained by linking the tip of the parent to the root of the child. Root and tip can be *connected*, i.e. they are always exactly at the same point; or they can be *free*, like in a standard parent-child object relationship. A given bone can be the parent of several children, and hence be part of several chains at the same time. The bone at the beginning of a chain is called its *root bone*, and the last bone of a chain is the *tip bone* (do not confuse them with similar names of bones' joints!). Chains of bones are a particularly important topic in :doc:`posing ` (especially with the standard *forward kinematics* versus "automatic" *inverse kinematics* posing techniques). You create/edit them in *Edit Mode*, but except in case of connected bones, their relationships have no effect on bone transformations in this mode (i.e. transforming a parent bone will not affect its children). The easiest way to manage bones relationships is to use the :ref:`Relations panel ` in the *Bone* tab.