Creating the spine

  The next step in my character rig was to create a rig for the spine. I did this by creating bones that would connect up the two legs with the two arms I had already created. This was made with four bones stemming up the body from the pelvis joint (this being the root joint in the rig) and connecting the two arms to the top of this. 

  After creating this basic spine, I needed to create controllers that would enable you to bend the spine into different positions such as leaning backwards or forwards. This I did by creating three arrows along the back slightly away from the back, one one each joint, and with pivot points on the actual joint. I then constrained each arrow to the separate joints in the spine. 

  Once I had done this, I needed to parent the arrows in the correct order so the spine would be move correctly. I did this by parenting the middle one to the top one, and the bottom one to the middle one. This meant that if I selected the bottom one, all three joints would follow, and if I selected the top one, only that joint would move.

  I also had to create controllers for the rig around the waist. These controllers are the waist control, and the root control. The waist controller is constrained to the waste to enable movements such as moving the hips. The root control is the control that goes at the very top of the heirachy. all the bones and controllers are parented to this. This helps with animations where a character is moving somewhere, so only the limbs need to be animated.