Blender | Rigging Practice Part 2: Tail

This is a continuation of the leg rigging from last time.
This time it’s the tail.

Rigging

1｜Setting Up the Bones

2｜Create the Controller Bones

Create the IK bone.
Switch to Edit Mode and use shift + e to add a bone at the tip of the tail.
Use F2 to name it IK.Tail.

Next, switch to Pose Mode.
Select the tip bone of the tail (not the IK bone) and add IK from Bone Constraints.

Set the target to the armature you’re using, and the bone to the IK bone you just added.
Since the number of bones to link, including itself, is 6, change the value from 0 to 6.

3｜Check the Movement

If you actually move the IK bone around with g, you can confirm that it’s linked correctly.

4｜Link the Rotation of the Tail’s IK Bone and Root Bone

At this point, we’ve achieved xyz movement with the IK bone.
So next, let’s add rotation to the tail.

Add Copy Rotation to the bone at the base of the tail.

Set the target to the armature and the bone to the IK bone.
Change the rotation calculation from World Space to Local Space.

Now we can handle both movement and rotation with the IK bone.

Finally

Next time, it’s the arm.