Character Rigging In Maya - Part 1

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Character Rigging In Maya - Part 1

By: Steven J. Tubbrit

Hello, this is a tutorial to introduce people to the sometimes complicated world of character rigging. As with all my tutorials, I intend to take you through this with as much help and explanation of the techniques as I can

Added: 17 June 2008 Views: 4590

Path : Computers

3D Graphics

Maya

Keywords: computers design maya character rigging object

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Now, we need to place them properly, maximise your Persp view, and keep your outliner open, within it, select the Left_Shoulder joint, now, Snap to the Middle CV on the nurbs curve in that area : -

Now, select the Left_Elbow joint, and in the top view, Do Not Snap, move it into position so it roughly matches this diagram : -

Now, select the Left_Wrist joint, and again, in the top view, move that joint into position so it roughly matches this position : -

Now, the last joint will be fine, and so will not need moving. Within the outliner, select the first joint, Left_Clavicle and then add it to the Skeleton_L Layer. Now, let's place the finger joints, in the top view, using Grid Snapping, create the following joints, remember to press Enter when you have created the first lot, don't worry about where there being placed, as we'll be snapping them into place later : -

Next, maximise your Persp view, and then switch off Grid Snapping and instead use Point Snapping, and in turn snap each joint to it's corresponding Guide
Curve, when snapping to the Guide Curve, snap to the Middle CV on it. You should end up with something like this : -

Ok, we're not finished just yet, in your Top View, select the last joint in turn on each finger joints, and the Thumb joint, turn your Character_L Layer from T - Template, to R - Reference, one, and 1 by 1 snap to these points on the end of the actual mesh, see this diagram : -

And the last joint in the Thumb Joint hierarchy (Probably best placed in the Persp View) : -

Now name your joints in turn, starting from the first set you created, I recommend the following naming convention, Left_Pinky_Finger_etc, Left_Index_Finger_etc, Left_Inner_Finger_etc, and finally, Left_Thumb_etc, you can see what I've done here, ( Tip - To save the tedium of repetitive typing, type the first name, and then select it, Press CTRL + C to copy it, and then with the next joint, press CTRL + V to past it in, and then change it to what
you need ) : -

And finally, select all the new joints and add them to the Skeleton_L Layer. You can set the Character_L Layer back to template now too. Don't worry about the finger joints not being connected to anything, we'll sort that part out later. Now we're going to move onto creating the Spine joints.

The Spine

Right, let's continue the skeleton setup with the spine. Maximise your side view and create the following joints : -

Now, open up the Outliner, and rename the joints starting from the bottom up like this : -

Ok, now we need to move them into place. Within the Outliner, select the COG(I've called it COG, as this stands for Centre Of Gravity), and move it into place, so that it sits as best as you can get around the middle of the character using the side view, to make things a little easier, turn the character layer to R - Reference, and in the Persp view, snap to this point within the middle of the character : -

Now select the Head joint, and snap it to the middle CV of the nurbs guide curve which lies in the head area : -

And finally, select the Head_End joint, and snap to the middle vertex on the top of the character model, once you've done this, you can change the character layer back to T - Template, and again, once you've done that select the COG Joint and add the whole set of joints to the Skeleton_L Layer : -

Ok, let's go back to another part of the skeleton, within the Outliner, select the Left_Clavicle joint, and the Channel Box, in the translate Z box, type 1 and press Return, now with the Left_Clavicle still selected, press the down arrow key on the keyboard, it should now jump down the next bone in the hierarchy, the Left_Shoulder joint, now snap that joint back to the middle CV of the nurbs guide curve, basically your snapping it back to the location it was at before we moved the Left_Clavicle joint. Now, we've finished with our Guide Curves for the main body now, so open the Outliner and select the following curves within the Guide_Curves group and delete them, once you've done that, you should be left only with the guide curves for the eyes which we will be utilising later. : -

Right. moving on, if you haven't already done so, template the character and guide_curves layers, so that we can concentrate on the joints only. We're now going to set up the rest of the leg joints, in the side view, we need to create some more joints that will aid us in the reverse foot setup that we will be producing, so, in the side view, set up your joints like this, use Grid Snapping, it doesn't matter about the placement as we will be moving them into place later, press Enter when your done : -

Within the Outliner, rename the joints like this : -

Select the LReverse_Foot joint, add it to the Skeleton_L Layer, now we'll move it into place, turn off grid snapping, and instead, in the Persp view, vertex snap the LReverse_Foot joint to the Ankle joint like this : -

With the LReverse_Foot still selected, go into the Channel editor and within the Translate Y box, change the value to 0, this will make sure our LReverse_Foot setup lies on the ground origin. Now, select each joint and snap to the corresponding joint, i.e. LReverse_Toe Snapped to LToe and so on : -

Before we move onto the next part, the actual rigging process, we'll need to do one more thing with all of our joints, and that is to orient them. Ok, open the Outliner and select your COG joint, now select from the menu, DISPLAY > COMPONENT DISPLAY > LOCAL ROTATION AXES, you should now get something like this : -

continue on until you have done the same for all joints, you will have to do this manually 1 by 1, so just press G to repeat the last step for each joint in turn when you select it, you will end up with this :-