Maya rigging question

noobwants2learn
Member
Posted 1 year ago
#

Hi all,

I'm a noob to Maya.

I need to rig a dummy controller that control 3 joints in hierarchy, where joint1 is the grandparent and joint3 is the grandchild. When I rotate the controller 30 degrees, joint1 will rotate 30 degrees, joint2 20 degrees, joint3 10 degrees, just like a finger rig.

How do I setup this in Maya?

Thanks in advance,
Cyan
Smapdi
Member
Posted 1 year ago
#

Look into Set Driven Keys. There is plenty of info on them online and in the help docs. Basically you can use a controller as a driver to other objects.

Good luck!
Chad
noobwants2learn
Member
Posted 1 year ago
#

@Smapdi:
Thanks. Btw, I have another Maya rigging question.

How do you record object orientation as default? (in Lightwave it's called Record Pivot if I'm not mistaken).

I need to make it default orientation as I'm going to create an expression for this controller object. Thanks again.
Smapdi
Member
Posted 1 year ago
#

This is a tricky bit of Maya, basically you have to make your controller match the orientation of the joint it's driving. Then you set up the mechanism to do the actual controlling.

Try this: Make you controller around centered around the origin. Group it to itself (pick the controller and use Edit>group). Name things properly, example: for the controlling object use 'my_controller' and it's parent should be something like 'my_controller_offset' or 'my_controller_group'. Than constrain the 'my_controller_offset' to the top joint. Delete this constraint. Then constrain or SDK or whatever the joint to the 'my_controller'.

Now you'll have all the orientations lined up properly.

Sounds a bit complicated, but you get used to it quickly and you can code this quickly in MEL or Python if you get to it.
noobwants2learn
Member
Posted 1 year ago
#

'Than constrain the 'my_controller_offset' to the top joint...'

Thanks, Chad. But I'm lost at this point. Which constrain do you mean?

I'm going to create expressions that link the controller object to the joints; do I still need to use Set Driven Keys?

Thanks again.
Smapdi
Member
Posted 1 year ago
#

Oops, a parent constraint would work in that example.

Maya wont let you drive one attribute via two different attributes (dont worry, later you can work around this with other tools) so either an SDK or Expression, but not both will work for now.
noobwants2learn
Member
Posted 1 year ago
#

Finally I used Grouping and Expression. Problem solved. Thanks again, Chad.
sim.On
Member
Posted 1 year ago
#

[quote]
How do you record object orientation as default?
[/quote]

hey noob ,

i am not sure if i misunderstood you , but you can change the "rotateOrder" of your joint and also of your Control ( so you will not run into this "gimbal"-issue , once you rotate on Y-axis )

maya always creates the joints and transform_nodes ( e.g. a control_Curve ) in "xyz" rotateOrder ... the Axis in the middle ( in this case "y" ) , is always the least used axis - so once you want to mainly rotate the Y_axis , change the rotateOrder either into "yxz" or "yzx" ( depending , on which axis , you prefer to be the second-most-important axis / once you say "y" is the most impoartant axis , and you say "z" is the second_most important one , one would choose "yxz" : y - important ( first ) , z -important ( last ) , x -least important ( into the middle )

some times it also makes sense to switch the first and last axis ... depends , on how you like the controls to behave in gimbal_mode ... so you could also use "zxy" instead of "yxz" .

depending on the different types of controls which you create on your rig , or there is also a difference in the rotateOrders in e.g. shoulder or elbow_joints ( as the shoulder rotates in 3 axis , and the elbow just in one axis ... a professional-rigger always chooses a wise rotateOrder on A) the controls B) the Joints , Locators and subGroups of your rig .

hope this helped a bit
sim.On
ramesh reddy
Member
Posted 9 months ago
#

hi

I have a problem in squash and stretch in spine as well as in hand and i want individual joint squash and stretch.can any one explain me about that...
Vishakha
Member
Posted 3 weeks ago
#

I wanna rig Ball with squash n stretch without but without using deformers.... so can it be possible? plz help me.
Vishakha
Member
Posted 3 weeks ago
#

Ramesh Reddi sir, may I know,Whitch specific problem do u have in squash n stretch of hand n spine so I can try to solve it?

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