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Armature – In sculpture, an armature is a framework around which the sculpture is built,[1] when the sculpture could not stand on its own.
In 3D or CGI an armature is a kinematic chain used in computer animation to simulate the motions of virtual human or animal characters. In the context of animation, the inverse kinematics of the armature is the most relevant computational algorithm.
There are two types of digital armatures: Keyframing (stop-motion) armatures and real-time (puppeteering) armatures. Keyframing armatures were initially developed to assist in animating digital characters without basing the movement on a live performance. The animator poses a device manually for each keyframe, while the character in the animation is set up with a mechanical structure equivalent to the armature. The device is connected to the animation software through a driver program and each move is recorded for a particular frame in time. Real-time armatures are similar, but they are puppeteered by one or more people and captured in real time.
Vertex Groups – Vertex Groups are sets containing zero or more vertices of a Mesh Object or Lattice. A vertex can belong to zero or more Vertex Groups. The Vertex Groups could be used to tag vertices as belonging to a certain part of the mesh, think of the legs or seat of a chair, the whole chair, the hinges of a door, etc. Often they are used as a bridge between the vertices and deform bones; with a one on one relationship between the bones and Vertex groups, each vertex then belongs to all vertex groups for which it has a (non-zero) Weight Value (for example there could be a vertex group for the upper arm, and one for the lower arm, while vertices around the elbow would belong to both groups). Vertex Groups are therefore sometimes also named Weight Groups. Vertex Groups in Blender