Animating a robot losing its arm

#1

I want to animate a robot fight and have the robots get damaged throughout the fight and I plan to do this by key framing different textures with scratches that will give some effect but I also want to animate a robot losing its arm but I’m sure about how to do this. I know the robots have to be rigged but would I have to rig the arm separately from the rest of the model? I also want to have parts of the armor fall off the robots but still not sure about how to do that either. Could I get some help? I’m still new to this so I’m not very experience but I really want to make this animation

#2

You’ll have to model the parts you want falling off etc separate from the main body, You use the same rig; you’re just moving the limbs off in space somewhere.