Week 5

Week 5 saw the rigging process for the female low poly model. During those 3 days I had learnt more about rigging then I had in my entire year and a half of using maya which goes to show that once you put your mind to it, you can achieve it. However it was a crushing moment when I learnt that my rig was not going to work due to the differences between the model I had created and the model that the book was using therefore I had to miss certain steps out and as a result when I reached a certain point I could go no further. Though this was pretty upsetting it was not entirely a waste of time as I learnt ,any lessons along the way. 

If you move a joint it needs to be re-orientated as the LRA stays at the orientation in which it was created and is no longer aligned with the child joint. ( LRA stands for Local Rotation Axis)

If you scale or rotate a joint then you need to Freeze Transformation as Maya must have the correct translation values so that it knows where that joint is located in world space or in relation to its parent joint.

You do not need to re-orient the joint if the entire joint hierarchy has been moved.

Naming the joints when creating a rig is extremely important. An easy way to do this is Modify>Search and Replace names and then for eg search for joint and replace with spine.

Adding prefix to a hierarchy such as the arms and legs eg left_

Always create the FK before the IK

An essential Introduction to Maya Character Rigging - Cheryl Cabrera (2008)
The above pointers are but a few of the things that this painstakingly long process taught me and it has definately left me with valuable lessons for when I create my final rig for my low poly character. 

Note to self, always create character with arms out away from the body.




Art of the game youtube channel

3 days of rigging and its not going to work.