Introduction

Once your armature is skinned by the needed object(s), you can start to pose it. Basically, by transforming its bones, you deform or transform the skin object(s). But you do not do that in Edit Mode – remember that in this mode, you edit the default, base, “rest” position of your armature. You cannot use the Object Mode either, as here you can only transform whole objects...

So, armatures in Blender have a third mode, Pose, dedicated to this process. It is a sort of “object mode for bones”. In rest position (as edited in Edit Mode), each bone has its own position/rotation/scale to neutral values (i.e. 0.0 for position and rotation, and 1.0 for scale). Hence, when you edit a bone in Pose Mode, you create an offset in its transform properties, from its rest position – this is quite similar to meshes relative shape keys, in fact.

Posing Section Overview

In this section, we will see:

Even though it might be used for completely static purposes, posing is heavily connected with animation features and techniques.

In this part, we will try to focus on animation-independent posing, but this is not always possible. So if you know nothing about animation in Blender, it might be a good idea to read the animation features and techniques chapter first, and then come back here.

Visualization

Bone State Colors

The color of the bones are based on their state. There are six different color codes, ordered here by precedence (i.e. the bone will be of the color of the bottommost valid state):

  • Gray: Default.
  • Blue wireframe: in Pose Mode.
  • Green: with Constraint.
  • Yellow: with IK Solver constraint.
  • Orange: with Targetless Solver constraint.

Note

When Bone Groups colors are enabled, the state colors will be overridden.