Character Rigging In Maya - Part 2

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Character Rigging In Maya - Part 2

By: Steven J. Tubbrit

Character Rigging In Maya Continued (Part 2) - Parenting and Mirroring our final joints

Added: 17 June 2008 Views: 3460

Path : Computers

3D Graphics

Maya

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Character Rigging In Maya Continued (Part 2) - Parenting and Mirroring our final joints

Select the LHip joint, and then Shift Select the COG joint, now press P to parent the LHip to the COG Joint, a bone will appear between them : -

Now do the same with the Left_Clavicle and Neck joint, and then again with the first joint on each of the fingers and the thumb and parent to the Left_Hand joint, you'll end up with something like this : -

Ok, we've now set up and parented all of our joints, now there's one last thing to do now before we've finished with the skeleton, and that's to Mirror our Joints from the Left Side over to the Right Side. Select the Left_Clavicle joint and then from the menu select Skeleton > Mirror Joint and open the options box, within the options, select YZ as the Mirror options and Orientation as the Mirror Function : -

Select Mirror, and you should now have the right arm set up, including the parented joint :-

Do the same now for the LHip and then again for the LReverse_Foot, that's it, we now have all of our joints mirrored across. We don't need our Local Rotation Axes displayed anymore, so select each joint one by one, and then issue the command DISPLAY > COMPONENT DISPLAY > LOCAL ROTATION AXIS, or press G to repeat the last command. Once you've done that to all the joints, open up the Outliner. We need to rename our joints that we have mirrored across, essentially we need to differentiate the two sides, so Left and Right is enough to do that, so rename all the mirrored joints so that they are R - Right related, as in : -

Do the same for the mirrored reverse foot and also for the mirrored arm including all the fingers and thumb. A bit of tedious task but worthwhile in the long run. In cases where you have a number 1 at the end of the name, just remove it. That's it, we're officially finished with the skeleton setup, now we can move onto the juicy part, the rigging.....

The Rigging Process

Now we'll start the actual rigging process, now before we continue, I'd just like to point out that you should be used to saving your work quite often, and getting into the habit of creating new files, just so your not saving over the same file again and again, and if it crashes you'll have no backup. Anyway, back to the subject matter, we'll first begin with our characters legs, seeing as how we already have the reverse foot joints in place. Now, just for the rigging controls and so on, create a new layer, and call it Rig_Controls.

The Legs

First, we need to create some poly objects, select CREATE > POLYGON PRIMITIVES > CONE, and in the channel box, change the values so that they are the same as the following diagram : -

In the side view, snap the object to the knee joint : -

Press CTRL + D to Duplicate the object, and in the PERSP view, snap to the other knee, now select both objects, and in the Channel Box again, change the Translate Z for each to 5. This will move the knee controllers in front of the Knees. Select MODIFY > FREEZE TRANSFORMATIONS, and then EDIT > DELETE BY TYPE > HISTORY. Add both objects to the newly created Rig_Controls Layer, select the Cone in front of the Left Knee and rename it to LKnee_PV_Constraint, and again select the Cone in front of the Right Knee, and then rename that one to RKnee_PV_Constraint. One more thing, open your Hypershade, and create two new Lambert materials, rename them Left_LambertM and Right_LambertM, make the Left_LambertM a Red Colour, and the Right_LambertM a Yellow Colour, now apply the materials to the appropriate Knee Controllers, don't worry, it doesn't mean anything, it's just a quick visual way of determining left and rights sides : -

We're now going to create the first part of our IK Setup for the leg, select SKELETON > IK HANDLE, you now need to select the LHip Joint, and then the LAnkle joint, select the IKHandle once done and rename it to ikHandle_LAnkle : -

Now, do the same on the other side, RHip to RAnkle joints, select the IKHandle and rename it to ikHandle_RAnkle. Select both IKHandles and add them to the Rig_Controls Layer. Select the geometry LKnee_PV_Constraint, and then SHIFT - SELECT the ikHandle_LAnkle. Now select CONSTRAIN > POLE VECTOR, now select the LKnee_PV_Constraint and try moving it left and right, you'll find the knee is constrained to it, press Z to undo any movements you may have added. Do the same now for the RKnee_PV_Constraint and ikHandle_RAnkle. For the rest of the leg setup, I'm going to go through the process for the left leg, and then you can repeat the process yourself for the right leg. Select the LReverse_Foot joint, if you've been following this tutorial it's Translate X, Y and Z values in the channel box will be about X = 2.243, Y = 0 and Z = -0.44, make a note of what the X value is and then change the X value to 5, this is just to get it out of the way whilst we are working on the other joints, now select SKELETON > IK HANDLE TOOL, and open the options box, and change the IKRP Solver to IKSC Solver (Single Chain Solver) : -