In the previous chapter, we saw the rigging stage, that is, how to build the character's rig (which in Blender is called an Armature) that will be used to deform the mesh for animations. In this chapter, instead, we are going to see quicker and more effective ways to do the skinning that is a necessary step to bind the bones of the Armature to the mesh's vertices so that they can be deformed.

To allow an Armature to deform a Mesh, they must be parented with some kind of relation; in Blender, usually you must select the Mesh and then Shift select the Armature and press Ctrl + P to parent them with different options.

This automatically makes the Mesh object a child of the Armature object and assigns the Armature modifier to the Mesh. In fact, the parenting would not be strictly necessary; it would be enough to assign an Armature modifier to the mesh and manually select the rig as a deforming object, but it's a good habit to use the Ctrl + P parenting to have the rig as a parent...