This blog post will the first in a series of 3 posts analysing and reviewing a 3 part rigging tutorial. The tutorial in question is:
Created by a youtube channel known as ” k3dEx.”
My initial impressions of this aren’t great. While it’s basic rigging and the demonstration is clear, there’s little to no explanation behind the actions.
- 0:00 – 2:00 -> Setting up your character
I feel like this part of the tutorial is one of the most vital, yet was wasted here, it goes through the process of deleting Maya history, placing your character on the centre of the grid (with no explanation why) and creating a separate layer for your model, which was actually quite useful. - 2:10 – 2:42 -> Creating a joint
This is showing the creation of joints from the leg to the foot of a character. Whilst seemingly self explanatory, there’s still no background as to why I need to use the skeleton menu or what it even is, or why the joints are placed where they are (again, not exactly complicated but there’s still a level of depth I’d appreciate). The demonstration is clear, the voice-over tutorial is understandable and is spoken at a calm and slow pace, allowing me to follow along.
Another thing to mention here that is done but not really expanded on, is that while you’ll use the orthographic view, having the other views visible (Spacebar) is incredibly useful to see multiple angles at once. - 3:45 – 5:04 -> Naming a joint
This timestamp explains and demonstrates the naming of a joint, reasoning behind it and helpful shortcuts to make the names short, yet easy to understand, for example: “L_knee_J.”
I found this incredibly simple because of the order that the name is set as and the simplicity of abbreviating the word in to an acronym (or just down to 1 letter, as an acronym usually spans multiple sequential, words that were shortened).
L = Left side of the body
Knee = The area of the rig on the body
J = Joint, what part of the rigging you’re doing. - The following section then shows how to view your joints through the character if they didn’t appear – while useful, it definitely would benefit the audience more by being at the start of the tutorial.
(Shading -> X-Ray Joints is how to do it, the check box needs to be ticked). - 6:00 – 6:16 -> Connecting joints
Quite simple really, it runs through selecting 2 joints and how to connect them together, with the second joint becoming the parent of the connection. Quickly said and with clear instructions. - 6:21 – 7:39-> Mirror joints
Another useful feature, a demonstration of how to mirror your joints so that you won’t have to recreate everything, and also keep your joints symmetrical.
By selecting your joint and using; Skeleton -> Mirror joints -> Options box
You’re able to mirror your selected joint (including the translation, as it’s a mirror, not a duplicate) while also replacing certain letters in each name. In this case repeating the joint while swapping all L’s for R’s in the joints name; changing L_Leg_J in to R_Reg_J.
It’s useful because now everything is named appropriately to the right side of the body, however a couple changes (reg back to leg) are sometimes required. - The next section then repeats the joint creation process for the arm, working his way down to the hand and moving the joint for the knuckles.
- 9:32 – 9:40 -> Duplicating a joint
Used for the knuckles, CTRL+D duplicates a joint, keeping it connected correctly and allowing you to manipulate it with the move tool, in this case for creating fingers and knuckles. - The 10 minute time between these timestamps are just creating, naming and connecting more joints – such as the clavicle and spine (sounds complicated however doesn’t demonstrate any new tools or techniques.
- 19:21 – 19:50 -> Outliner
The outliner is a tool used to display the thread of connections (Along with other features) of the rig. Clicking on the Parent joint will drop down with all of it’s connections, that can then drop in to other, smaller threads if they’re parent connectors. It’s good for checking everything is connected correctly, and while it sounds messy it’s similar to navigating through folders on a computer, or groups in Photoshop. - 20:02 – -> Orientation
Checking the joint orientation so they’re facing in the right direction. To do this you need to select every joint from the outliner tab, got to Display -> Transform Display -> Local rotation axis. This displays all of the orientations of the joints, with the y axis wanting to be pointing up.
A couple of ways to fix this if they face the wrong way is by either; using a script, or doing it manually.
A script used in the tutorial is called “comet joint orient” that you have to download in to the script editor. Scrolling to the bottom of the script you’ll want to select and execute CometJointOrient();
This will create a small window that allows you to make all X axis joints (on joints you selected) aim joints while making all Y axis’ point up.
To fix a joint manually you’ll want to select the joint go to – Skeleton -> Orient Joint -> Orient Joint options and then apply the joint orientation (if it’s a parent joint you should deselect the children joints from being reoriented.
That ends the tutorial. I believe it was fairly straightforward and a really good demonstration if you already know how to navigate Maya. Otherwise there will be a little bit of a struggle and extra research required to understand the reasoning behind many tools and techniques.
Jonathan's University Blog 