This week, I mainly learn about how to rig up character with maya tool AdvancedSkeleton.
Create skeleton
Lower half of body
- Root joint should be in the middle of the hip
- Draw a triangle on the hip, and hip joints should in the middle of the two sides of the triangle
- Knee joint should not be directly moved by changing the value of translate, only can be moved by rotating the hip joint
- From hip to ankle, the bones should stay in a straight line
Knee joint should be in the middle and a little bit close to the knee.
Rotate ankle joint till it matches the direction of foot.
Torso
Position of chest:
Neck and head
In terms of eyes, first of all we need to return the centre pivot to the eyes, and then display local rotation axes, and then pressing V key with middle click, we are able to stick the joint to the centre pivot of eyes.
Arm
Under rigging mode, go to skeleton – create joints, we are able to create custom joints.
After completing half of skeleton creating, click on the button Build AdvanceSkeleton, it will copy and paste the other half of skeleton.
Bind skin
Click on the button AdvancedSkeleton – Body – Deform (option1) – Select DeformJoints and then shift with left click select the main body part (DO NOT select ornament), and then go to Bind Skin, follow the setting below (bind to selected joints, normalise weights should be interactive).
Paint skin weights
Body
Paint operation: replace, add, smooth. Attribute: opacity, value.
Face
Follow the instruction and guides of the plug-in, to correct the joints on the face. Finally, paint skin weight manually.