3D Rigging System: Wk10 further SDKs

Soon enough it was time to break out the old SDKs again, this time in positioning the fingers and thumb on the hand. It required the addition of several new attributes on the wrist controller, one for each finger and two for the rotary motions of the thumb and then positioning each joint in the finger and keying them at the maximum and minimum of their rotation, or in the case of the thumb the translation as well.

This process needed to be done for each joint and by the end each attribute controlled between 2 and 4 individual joint positions. The end result was enabling individual control for each finger and culminating in a clenched fist. This task was long and tedious but had to be done for each hand, it is becoming clear to me however that with practise a lot of these processes become very quick and easy to do, which is a bonus.

3D Rigging Systems: Wk9: Rigging with Bone, controllers and IK Handles

When starting work on the character it quickly became apparent that this task was far more complicated than initially anticipated. It required a keen eye and a general sense for anatomy, who skills that I struggled with initially. Luckily enough the model was provided for us and the exaggerated proportions made identifying the locations for certain joints far easier. While theoretically complicated, practically the task of assigning bones was rather simple and required naught more than simple clicks in places that joints should go using the Joint Tool within Maya.

Soon enough I had a decently rigged arm and it was time to add an IK handle and a controller. The IK handle is designed to allow joints to have influence other other joints, for example in the arm the IK handle links the shoulder joint to the wrist and allows the wrist to have influence over the position of the elbow and shoulder joints. A controller was added and were point and orient constrained to the IK node in the wrist to give a full range of motion for the wrist and the arm joints. Finally a locator was added with a pole vector constraint to the elbow, which in essence controls the position of the elbow.

3D Rigging Systems Wk8: Finishing touches and locked attributes

Locking attributes is the act of locking certain functions of an object to prevent them being manipulated accidentally or intentionally in an undesired manner, for example I have locked certain controller attributes to prevent rotating controllers being translated and vice versa for translation controllers.

I also introduced limitations to the controllers limiting the amount that they could rotate or translate where appropriate, for example the bonnet should be unable to rotate negatively in the x axis or the wheels should be unable to rotate at all in either the z or y axis.

Finally I created a parented move control placed at the top of the outliner hierarchy that allows the entire car and controllers to be selected and moved as a group.