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Chapter List
Page Two
Spine Placement
Page Three
Neck and Head
Page Five
Begin Orient Constraints
Page Six
Orients Continued
Page Seven
Pelvis, Leg, and Foot
Page Eight
Clavicle, Arm, and Hand
Page Nine
Arm, and Hand continued
Page Ten
Keeping Things Organized
Page Eleven
Character Skinning, Part One
Page Twelve
Character Skinning, Part Two
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Now it's time for some review. Once again you see to your left, the Attribute Editor.
A bone has been selected, I think it is a JEnd_1 bone, because all of it's orients are
set at zero (but it happens to other joints as well). A convienent way of seeing if you
need to move the orients around to get a bone to rotate the right directions is to;
rotate the bone the direction you want to, by hand, for example. Then you copy those
numbers out of the Rotate [boxes], put them into the corresponding Orient [boxes] and
reset the rotates back to zero. You may need to add or subtract the numbers in the Orient
to get it correct, but it's quick if you have a calculator, or a fast brain.
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Okay, this is the harder to understand part of the skeleton process. You may
have to do this a few times, to really understand the process. What you see
in the pic on the right is the Outliner again. I have concentrated on the spine
here.
Step One: Duplicate the spineJA_1 (make sure the duplication parameters are at default
settings, no instancing) this will make a new spine in the same place, called spineJA_2.
Step Two: Rename spineJA_2 to spineJCon_1(Con, for constraint) and delete the chain below the JCon_1.
Step Three: Parent the spineJA_1 to the spineJCon_1 and your joint chain should look
like the one at the right.
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------ IMPORTANT ------
All this work can be done easily in the outliner. There is no need to
even use a modeling window, because you are re-ordering things, not
really moving them in space.
Repeat the steps above for the spine, on the neck. So you
now have a neckJCon_1 at the top of your chain.
Step Four: Duplicate the neckJCon_1, rename the new neckJCon_2 to neckJOri_1.
Step Five: Delete everything under the neckJOri_1 and then, parent it to the spineJEnd_1.
Are you getting the hang of it yet?
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Okay this is where everything gets put together.
Repeat all the above steps on the headJA_1. So you will have a headJCon_1
at the top of the head chain. And you will have placed a headJOri_1
at the bottom of the neck chain.
To add the Point Constraints you need to select the parent constraining joint
first and the the object to be constrained. You will end up with two
constraints after this first part.
Select the neckJOri_1 and then the neckJCon_1 and use a Point Constraint.
Select the headJORi_1 and then the headJCon_1 and use a Point Constraint.
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You should end up with something like this.
If you select the spine, you will now see that the neck, and the head are attached
to the spine. Rotation of the spine will show you something different. The head
and neck will still be oriented in the world UP when you rotate the spine. This is
a good thing. Try it yourself and you will see. Lean backwards and stay looking straight
ahead. Then lean forward and look straight ahead. This can be nice for you animations
later on. But now we are going to add some Orient constraints and some new keyable attributes
as well as set driven keys. These will make it so you can rotate the spine and have the
choice of the neck and head following the spine, or staying with the world UP position.
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