Using Blender 2.5

My daughter and I have been trying to learn to use Blender 2.5 to crate 3D models for use in our simple games for Benjamin.   It has proved harder than I had expected!   The main issue seems to be that most tutorials are written for Blender 2.4, and there are lots of changes to the user interfaces in 2.5.  Plus the official documentation is still for 2.4 and documentation for 2.6 is in preparation...but not 2.5.

This is a few reminders for us for how to do things.   I will add more as I work them out.

Adding an armature to pose a model:
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTyE9SGRYw for details of linking bones using inverse kinematics.  The author has a web site with a lot of additional information here.

1. Add a bone in Object Mode
2. Go to edit mode and position the bone within the model mesh.
3. Extrude the bone to add a joint (e.g. elbow)
4. In Object mode select the model mesh then shift-right click to select the bone.   Do control-P to bring up the 'parenting' menu and select Armature Deform with Automatic Weights.
5. Set the model view to solid (or texture), and in the armature properties menu, select X-Ray so that you can see the bones.
6. You can now enter pose mode and move the armature to pose the model.
7. To do a complete skeleton you should set up the back bone to be the parents of all the other bones so you can just grab the back bone to move the model.