Bones are used to animate characters. They basically work like they sound, you build an internal structure in a model that acts like a skeleton. Then you can pose your model by manipulating the bones. It might sound difficult, but in fact it is pretty simple.

 

My tutorial will assume that you already have a model that is ready for some bones. I used the robot from my desk project.

1. First you have to load the skelegon plug in, by going to modeler/add plugins, then choose thefolder plugins/modeler, and then pick the skelegon tool, or just load them all, it is easier.

2. once you have loaded the skelegon tool, look for it in the create tab. creating skelegons is sort of like drawing a curve with points, the tool stays active until it is unselected, so click on the skelegons button...
3.Start the skeleton by drawing from the back of the hips toward the middle of the pelvis. Make sure your model is on a seperate layer from the skelegons.
4.continue drawing your skeleton up through the top of the head, putting a skelegon anywhere you would like your model to be able to bend. When you are done, unselect the skelegons tool, and go to the detail tab and click the skelegon tree button. Here you should name the skelegons to their corresponding parts, for example, spine 1, spine 2, left forearm, etc. This will help you keep track of the heirarchy, and you can change which parts link to each other by dragging them around in the window.
5.Now click on the skelegon you would like to branch your arm out from with the polygon selection tool. Then hit the skelgon button and begin to add skelegons to the arm.
6.continue to add skelegons to the arm, placing them where you would like it to be able to bend, basically at the shoulder, elbow, wrist, even down to the fingers if you like. When yo are finished with your arm, you can use the mirror tool to copy the other arm across (shift V) the copied skelegons will stay linked in the same order as the originals, but the names will be the same too, so make sure you rename them in the skelegon tree
7. When you are done with the arms, select the original skelegon and draw the bones for the legs from there. Again, just put a skelegon where a normal bone would be, hip joint, thigh, shin, ankle, and a few in the foot to make sure it can bend.
8.Now it's time to move to lightwave, load your model, and then hit the add buton to bring up this dialog box, choose bones, then convert skelegons to bones.
9. now just select a bone you would like to move and use the rotate tool to pose the model.