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  MAYA RIGGING

  1. FK Skeleton and IK Limbs.
  2. Foot and Hand Controls.
  3. Body, Rotation, Spine and Face.
  4. Final Notes


  SOURCES FOR RESEARCH

  • Advanced Rigging Topics
  • The "Animator Friendly Rigging" DVDs
  • FINAL NOTES ON MAYA RIGGING:

    REMEMBER:

    • Always re-Skin after further cutting or merging mesh vertices!
    • Always do attribute cleanup (lock and hide all unused attributes in Channel Box): it is critical to avoid accidental/mysterious keyframes!

    POSING/ANIMATING A RIG:
    Use this Melscript to select all children of a joint: "Select -hi"

    1. At frame 0, set keyframes for all Controls in bind pose (T).
    2. At frame 10, set keyframes for all Controls in bind pose, again.
    3. With Auto Keyframe Toggle turned on, move and rotate controllers to the desired pose.

    NOTE ON FIXING ROTATION: Display/Transform Display/Local Rotation Axis to see spine joint orientations. To make them all the same: Modify/Freeze Transformations, turn off translate and hit apply. Skeleton/Orient Joint, apply.


    WHY SO MANY WAYS TO CONNECT?
    A main reason to use Constraints, Connections, and Set Driven Key for all Controllers is that only objects parented to the root joint are part of the hierarchy that is automatically Skinned when selecting the Root. The non-parenting methods offer ways to connect to the rig without being a part of the Skin.

    SHELVES:
    Click on the downward arrow to left of shelves to create a new shelf, Name it "Rigging Tools" and [Ctrl]+[Shift]+click a menu item to add the tool to the new shelf.

      ADD AT LEAST:
    • Animation Module: Skeleton Menu/Joint Tool,
    • Display/Transform Display/Local Rotation Axis.
    • Melscript "Select -hi" middle-mouse drag up (hiearchy).

    NOTE: To select all joints in a chain, select their root and rightClick for Select Hierarchy.

    SELECTION ORDER REMINDER:
    Parenting: Select child, then parent.
    Constraining: Select thing to be constrained TO, then thing to be CONSTRAINED.

    ANIMATION SETTINGS:

    • Companies sometimes use METERS instead of centimeters as their Maya world grid unit. Easy way to access and switch world units: the Animation Preferences button in the lower right corner of interface.
    • The default playback setting "Play Every Frame" is for dynamics (to calculate every particle in a waterfall, for example). It is not for displaying character animation. Set to "Real Time (24fps)" instead.

    CONCEPTS FOR FURTHER LEARNING:

    1. Most studios with advanced rigs make at least the arms (sometimes the entire body) with THREE sets of joint chains: three rigs sitting on top of each other! 1 for IK, 1 for FK, and 1 to manage "switching" (blending) between the other two.
    2. Typically, arms also have joints for lower arm-length rotation.
    3. The "Shleifer" spine continues where we left off, to allow twist along the spline length and torso stretch.
    4. A "Reverse" node is similar to a multiply/divide node, but it reverses the axis of a particular node so that they can all be the same in the hierarchy.
    5. Expressions, written in Melscript or Python, are an important part of learning to do significant rigging tasks beyond the scope of this tutorial. Give them a try!




    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Introduction to Maya Rigging:

    1. FK / IK Skeleton Setup   |   2. Foot / Hand Controls   |   3. Body, Rotaton, Spine, and Face   |   4. Final Notes

    This document researched and created using Autodesk Maya 2013