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.....  If you need to, you can download the character with the skeleton setup already here : -

Character Rigging Skeleton Setup - Maya 4.5 Only - Zip File (282kb)

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) : -

Once you've done that, select the LAnkle joint and then the LBall joint, the ikSC Solver will be created, select it and rename it to ikHandle_LBall, and then add it to the Rig_Controls layer.  Add another IK SC Solver from the LBall joint to the LToe Joint, rename it ikHandle_LToe and add it to the Rig_Controls layer.  Remembering the value you noted earlier for the LReverse_Foot, type it in and put it back to it's default position.  Select the ikHandle_LAnkle and then SHIFT - SELECT the LReverse_Ankle, and then press P to Parent them, if it's easier for you, you can do this in the Outliner.  Now do the same for the ikHandle_LBall and the LReverse_Ball, and then again for the ikHandle_LToe and the LReverse_Toe.  Select the LReverse_Foot Joint, and try moving it around, you'll find you now have control of the whole foot, try moving it backwards and forwards, and also try moving the knee controller with it, you'll see straightaway the benefit of using a reverse foot setup.  Once you are happy with what you have, repeat the whole process for the Right Leg.

We don't really want to be selecting joints every time we animate, we ideally want things as easy as possible to just visually grab and away you go. We have vsiual objects that we can grab for the Knee controls, now, let's set up some for the Reverse Foot Setups for the left and right sides.  First off, rather than this becoming a modelling tutorial, download the following scene file :- 

Feet Controllers - Maya 4.5 - Zip File (22kb)

Once you've downloaded the file, unzip it and then import it into the current scene.  Once you've imported the scene in, you will notice two new controllers at the base of the feet, note they are coloured, first thing to do is add them to the Rig_Controls layer, if you have coloured this layer, remove it, otherwise the wireframe colouring won't work, and both controllers will appear the same colour.  Note, if you load them in, and they are two different colours, just recolour them again, by using DISPLAY > WIREFRAME COLOUR, add the two colours you require, red and yellow and click on Default.  You should have something like this now within Maya : -

Now the easy part, select the LReverse_Foot, and SHIFT - SELECT the LFoot_Control, then press P to Parent it, do the same for the RReverse_Foot and the RFoot_Control, now grab either controller and try moving it around, you'll notice that we now have full control for each leg for both left and right sides.  Remember to press Z to undo the last command, just to make sure you go back to your original location each time.  Now, just some more small things to do before we carry on with the foot setup, select the LKnee_PV_Constraint, you'll notice that in the Channel Editor you have access to Translate X, Y and Z, Rotate X, Y and Z, and Scale X, Y, Z, and the only one we will be using when animating is actually the Translate X Channel, so we need to set this up so that we don't have loads of uncessary keyframes being set on the other channels, and also to keep our Graph Editor a lot more tidier, so in essence, we only want that Channel to be accessible.  So, select the LKnee_PV_Constraint, now left mouse drag over the following channels : -

The right click over your selection, and choose Lock Selected, you'll notice they become greyed out, now try scaling or rotating the object, the manipulators that usually appear for Scale or Rotate are also greyed out, now that would be fine, but let's tidy this up further, with it still selected, select WINDOW > GENERAL EDITORS > CHANNEL CONTROL, you'll have two sections, Keyable and Non - Keyable, select the same channels you had selected in the channel editor in the Keyable section : -

And then press the MOVE >>  button, you'll now notice in the Channel Editor that you now only have the Translate X channel to choose from and animate with, making things much easier and more logical for you to work with, now repeat this for the RKnee_PV_Constraint. You can now also do the same for LFoot_Control and RFoot_Control, from these two, we probably won't be using Scale X, Y, Z and Visibility, so get rid of them too.  Ok, now we can return to setting up the rest of our foot setup, please continue onto the next page : -

Character Rigging Tutorial - Fourth Page