9.5.2

406 • CHAPTER 7
OBJECTS MENU • DEFORMERS • 407
Choose Objects > Deformation > Bone to create a Bone object.
Initially, the bone points in the direction of the Z-axis. You can rotate the bone by dragging the small
orange handle at the tip of the bone. Change to the side view and position and rotate the bone to t
neatly inside the thigh (see Figure 1) with the orange handle in the region of the knee.
To create the second bone (for the lower leg), we’ll pull it out of the thigh bone. Hold down the Ctrl
key and drag the thigh bone’s orange handle to pull out the second bone. Let go of the mouse once
the new handle reaches the ankle region.
Change to the front view and ensure that both bones run down the middle of the lower leg (if you
need to correct their positions, drag the orange handle of the thigh bone then the orange handle of
the lower leg bone). When a new bone is created by being pulled out of an existing parent bone, the
new bone is automatically a child of the parent bone (Figure 2).
Figure 1. Figure 2. Figure 3.
We need just one more bone, the foot bone. In the side view, pull the foot bone out from the lower
leg bone (Figure 3). Move into the top view and ensure that the bone runs through the middle of the
foot.
The bone may spin around its Z-axis when you drag its handle. If this happens,
rotate the bone about the Y-axis of the world coordinate system using the
Rotate tool instead, otherwise problems may occur later when the bone is
animated.
Using the Limit Range option
The next stage is to restrict the inuence of each bone, otherwise each bone will pull on all parts of the
leg. For example, if you were to move the foot bone, the thigh would also be distorted! CINEMA 4D
gives you three ways to restrict the inuence of bones — the rst and most simple way is to use the
Limit Range option.
In the Object manager, hold down Shift and click all three bones to select them all and display their
settings in the Attribute manager. On the Attribute manager’s Object Properties page, enable Limit
Range and set Minimum and Maximum to 30 and 50. In fact, the exact values do not matter since we
shall be adjusting them interactively in the viewport later. What is important is that we enter a value
greater than 0 for Minimum, otherwise its handle will not appear in the viewport.