As of June 2011
the 'Pantin rig is not fully compatible with the latest version of
Blender so you should not use this rig until an updated version of
Pantin is available.
A rig is a body
attached to a skeleton or 'armature', ready to be set into different
poses in an animation. We won’t have time to make a
very sophisticated character because it is difficult to attach the
‘flesh’ to the bones such that the character behaves realistically
set in different poses. Also, we do not know enough about setting up
'constraints' to help control the character. Therefore we will take
a look at a ready-made rig called 'Pantin'.
'Pantin' is an example of a ready-made, human-like
rig. To see more examples (explained in less detail) follow the
'Other Rigs' link above.
Pantin
is a simple rig (animatable character) available for free download
on the internet. Click
HERE to download
and save (not open) a Blender file with a simplified version of the
Pantin rig. This
file has been modified for beginners by some of the controls (bones)
being hidden. See this video for a demo
of the unsimplified version - some of the controls shown in the
video are not visible in the simplified version. Note that Pantin's controls are in fact bones but in
this text I will refer to them simply as controls. All the body
parts have been made unselectable using the Outline panel.
To adjust Pantin's pose you
should be in Pose mode and the properties panel should be
visible at the right side of the 3D window – if it is not visible
then point at the 3D window and press N.
In this Blender file the
body parts are in layer 1, the controls (bones) are in layer 11 and
the light and camera are in layer 10. Therefore when you are posing
Pantin layers 1 and 11 need be visible and but you do not need to
have layer 10 visible. However, when you are ready to render an
image or animation of Pantin layers 1 and 10 should be visible (it
does not matter whether layer 10 is visible or not since bones do
not render). If you do a render without any visible lights then you
don't get blackness but you do get a very bland, boring lighting
effect. To make several layers visible at the same time hold
down the Shift key as you click on layers. You can unselect a
selected layer without unselecting other selected layers by clicking
it with the Shift key held down. The following image shows layers 1
(top left) and 11 (bottom left) selected for animation but layer 10
(top right) is not selected and therefore not visible: 
. Layer 20
also contains some items (as indicated by the presence of a dot in
that layer) but we do not need to see or work with these items so
just leave that layer unselected and hidden.
The 'visibility' part of the
properties panel allows you to hide or show different 
parts
of Pantin's body. If you want to focus on what part of the body you may
want to temporarily hide other parts.
Pantin's hands and feet are
each controlled by a pair of controls. The red one is called an 'IK'
(inverse kinematics) control and the blue one is called an 'FK'
(forward kinematics) control. You can choose to control a hand or
foot with its IK control OR its FK control – you do not need
to use
both (it is actually possible to use both at once but we will avoid
this for simplicity). I recommend you use the FK control (blue)
for the hands and the IK control (red) for the feet. The
reason for this is that IK bones (the feet) will not move when other
bones are moved (therefore a foot bone on the floor will stay on the
floor) while a FK bone (the hand) WILL move as the body moves (an IK
hand would not follow the motion of the body,
which would usually look strange). To accept my suggestion, hide the
controls you will not be using by making this selection: 
Note that in this selection
we also hide (unselect) all the face controls ('Main' and 'Extra')
since this is not a priority for us as beginners.
It is not enough to hide the
IK and FK controls that we will not use, we also need to let Blender
know that each hand is to be FK and each foot is to be IK. To do
this select a foot control and set the Rig Property IK slider to its
maximum value of 1 as shown: 
. Repeat for
the other foot control. Then select a hand control and set the
slider to its minimum value, 0, thereby turning off the IK
functionality and making it into FK instead. Repeat for the other
hand control.
Pantin should now look
something like this (I pressed 'A' to select all the controls so
that they are in brighter colours and easier to
see):
Notice the
blue loops around his hands and the red loops
under his feet – these are the FK hand controls and IK foot controls
that I just mentioned.
To adjust a control (and its
corresponding body part) you can either select it and then use the
keyboard characters G (translate), R (Rotate) and perhaps S
(Scale) or you can use the 3D manipulator 
. If you are
using the keyboard characters you will often want to follow them
with letters X, Y or Z so that your changes remain under control.
For example, GX will ensure that the translation happens in the X
direction. If you are using the keyboard characters then don't
forget to press the left mouse button to confirm the transformation
(or the right mouse button to cancel). If you are using the
manipulator you don't need to confirm. Using standard views (e.g.
front or top) can also help you keep things under control. When you
are doing a rotation with either keyboard R or the manipulator
notice the broken black line that appears - move the mouse pointer
around the end of that broken black line to control the rotation. Many of
Pantin's joints have restricted motions so they may rotate in some
directions but not others, for example, or you may find that you
unable to use the scale manipulator. Important: we have
normally worked with the 'transform orientation' set to 'global' but
to pose a character it is better to set this to 'normal' as shown
here: 
. Don't forget
to set this back to 'global' for work other than posing.
By default, Pantin's arms
and legs can be stretched if you wish. You can turn off this
option in the properties panel if you feel it is unrealistic but it
can be helpful to allow stretch e.g. so that you can more easily
place Pantin's feet in contact with the ground.
Now it's time to experiment
with the available controls to get a feel for them. Note that you
can see the name of any selected control in the Item section of the
properties panel. Start with these controls:
for this so
you can make sure the base stays on the ground.
