Given all that, keep the
idea in the back of your mind that bones can also be used for other purposes, such as animating
billowing curtains or a beating heart. Figure 12.1 shows a bone in Layout.
Bones aren??™t difficult to use, but you must follow some rules to make them work properly.
First, and most importantly, every bone must be associated with an object. The purpose
of a bone is to deform an object, so a bone without an object has no purpose in and
of itself. So you must attach every bone to an object, even if it??™s just a Null object. Exercise
12.1 provides the steps to do just that.
Figure 12.1 A bone in Layout looks like a necktie. It does not render, but it exerts powerful
control over its associated object.
Exercise 12.1 Creating Bones in Layout
1. Start Layout, or if it??™s already running, choose Clear Layout from the File dropdown
menu at the top left of the interface. Then click the Setup tab. This is where
all of Layout??™s bone controls are located. If you look to the Add category on the
left, you??™ll see that all the commands are grayed out. You have no objects loaded,
so LightWave won??™t let you add any bones to the scene.
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