When I try to use Auto IK to move the lamp, it works fine except the “Lamp Shade Joint” (along with all of the attached objects: shade, bulb, etc.) stays behind. It actually appears to be attached to the stem as it will rotate. I have no idea how it got this way, and I have no idea how to undo it.
Before:
After:
My lamp also appears to have acquired an extra bone (attached to the lower arm) which I cannot make go away. I don’t know if this is related or not.
It looks like your lamp shade is still connect to the base. Hence the blue dotted line.
Your shade should be connected to the ‘extra’ bone.
In your outliner (left) window, you need to rearrange objects.
First set your bones in REST position.
Then disconnect the shade from it base, watch the blue dotted line.
connect the third bone to the shade.
Give it a go.
Thank you @FedPete, your comments lead me to the solution. I had suspected that the dotted blue line was involved, but your hints had me discover that the “Lamp Shade Joint” (the physical object) was parented to the wrong bone (the “Stem”). Correctly parenting the object eventually got me back to where I wanted.
Still don’t know what to do about the extra bone (which is selected in the first picture). I think I created it by having two bones selected when I extruded the lamp share bone.
Hi @Ray_H, i thought the last bone was the bone for the shade. Because you need that one to steer the shade to shine on something. Lower arm, upper arm and shade. All need 1K bones (if you want of coarse).
Armature is still a problem to use for me, because of its complexity. As you have learned. It takes a lot of practice.
Happy rendering.
I finally found a way to delete a bone (bone insertion and removal).
Now I just have to find out why I cannot get control of the camera…
Maybe this will help;
select camera (if you have more, pick the active one).
Press 0 on the numpad. Looking through the camera!
Press Shift-F.
Now you can move the camera by mouse or keyboard (Q, W, E, A, S, D).
ESC cansel, left click accept.
But again, this will be explained to you by Michael, Church section …
That I can do, BUT the problem I have is that The camera view is a tiny fraction of the window:
This behaviour persists even when I delete the camera and create a new one. This is driving me mad.
Normally your middle mouse scroll wheel should do the trick. If you use it in the 3D-view.
Press numpad ‘.’ dot, somethimes it helps scaling problems, when you used the mouse scrollwheel a lot.
I solved the first problem, I had a render boundary in the camera view. With that gone I can zoom in. As for the second problem, I get (essentially) the same render regardless of what the camera is doing???
Not sure, if it will help you.
But in the output window, you can also, zoom in out, with your mouse wheel.
That I hadn’t known, and that was the problem. Maybe I can start animation now 
