Rigging Nude Female Shoulders in Blender, Early Version

Why "Nude Shoulders?" Well, when you cover shoulders with sleeves, armour, and other random assortments of items, you can't see them anymore. When the shoulder is nude, there's nothing to hide behind. If the shoulders aren't rigged properly, they look awful.

Here is a very early version of my shoulder rig (which has been updated and made more proper since then). This is how it looked back in 2021. You can copy the shoulder rig as-is, but I slightly recommend finding my more recent shoulder tutorials. This is just to show the evolution of the rig.

The video, predictably, is of a nude female character. You can see every part of the shoulder, from the upper arm through the neck, upper back, and chest. This is part of what makes the shoulder so difficult: the influence on mesh deforms is massive, covering nearly 15% of the body! There are literally dozens of muscles, bones, tendons that make the deforms the way they are.

My shoulder rig is simpler than the real human body (and therefore, not ideal) but it covers, I presume, about 80% of what normal people would notice in shoulder movement, which is good enough for a stylised character.