Setting up bones in Cinema R8 is easy, you only need to understand a few basic things to make sure everything will run smoothly. Of course there is Mocca, but you don't always need it and sometimes soft IK over complicates things. Anyway, we want to keep things simple for now, so let's get started with setting up a basic rig for the bird. What I want you to learn from this is that you don't always need to set up a complete rig, but a rig that will provide you with all the motion you need.

You can get the finished rigged file from Here

1. Import the file you have made of the bird model or (01) you the one already provided. If you have a slow computer make a copy and delete all the materials, if you have completed the texturing part of this tutorial. The reason for this is that even if you use display tags to hide materials, your ram will still be slowed down somewhat, so it is easier to have a textured file and an animated file and bring them together at the end. My advice is to do that anyway even if you have a fast computer.
   
   
2. In the Object Manager turn off everything but the Null Wing null. This contains wing and feathers meshes (02)
   
   

01

02

1. Use the top view (03) and from deformers choose Bone, using coordinates or the move and rotate tools (Don't use the scale tool!) create a bone and place it at the root of the wing name it Shoulder.
   
   
2. Using the little orange point drag out three children bones (05), Tip 1, Tip 2, Tip 3 (04).
   
   

03

04

1. Select the Shoulder bone and drop it inside the Null Wing. Bones have to be either a child of the mesh they are to effect or a child of null in which the mesh should also be.
   
   
2. Right click on the Shoulder bone in the Object Manager and choose Fix bones (06). Bones have to be fixed, that means that they have to be given new coordinates from which they effect the mesh. This is good because you can mess them around and from the same menu you can use Reset bones to return them to their starting position, edit them and fix them again in this new position- rotation coordinates.
   
   

05

06

1. You should now see a dialog box asking if sub-object should be included (07). This gives you editing freedom to fix some bones and play around with others. In this case and in most cases choose yes.
   
   
2. Your bones are now fixed and you can use the rotate tool to see your bird flapping its wings (08). Because we made the wings separate to the body we didn't need to set up vertex maps, neither do we have to be worried about distortion to the body mesh. This is a case of saving yourself from too much work.
   
   

07

08

1. Hide everything in the Object Manager except for the body mesh, on poly mode select all the polys for of the head (09).
   
   
2. From Selection, choose Set selection and in the Attribute manager call name it Head (10).
   
   

09

10

Create two more bones and call them Neck and Head (11) and put them in place (12)

11

12

1. Again right click on the Neck bone and choose Fix bones.
   
   
2. As you rotate the bones you will see that the whole of the bird is rotated (13), that is because the bones affect the whole of the mesh by default.
   
   
3. To fix this right click again on the Neck bone and choose Restriction tag (14). Type Head in the input and make sure that you type the Capitals because restriction tags are case sensitive. Restriction tags restrict the effect of the bones to a selection of or a vertex map leaving the rest of the mesh unaffected.
   
   
4. In the Object manager, Control drag the restriction tag to duplicate it for the Head bone.
   
   

13

14

1. Now the bones are working fine.
   
   
2. Use the same steps to create a Tail selection and a tail rig with restriction tags.
   
   
3. You can see the whole rig (16) posing the bird in mid flight.
   
   

15

16