Char hands - reversing hierarchy

[Rot]

If your hand is connetted to your body skeleton you can mirror your whole arm, I suppose...
Just select the root joint and go to Skeleton -> mirror joint.

E-byez

[steveblake]

thanks, it's not connected. I'll have a go, but does it work with the gemetry connected ??

(I guess I'll find out in a moment)

[wireFrame]

Hmm... I'm not that familiar enough with what you're doing but for rotational problems you can use the joint orient command. If you're used this command, you can reorient the joint orientations and play around with the options (xyz, yzx, zyx, etc.) It's in the manual.

joint -e -oj xyz -zso

Or you can use Jason Schleifer's script jsOrientJoint/jsOrientJointUI which I don't have at moment.

This will solve your problem about disoriented joints and correct them.

[steveblake]

thanks, it's not connected. I'll have a go, but does it work with the gemetry connected ??thanks, it's not connected. I'll have a go, but does it work with the gemetry connected ??

I'm an idiot - what I meant was " does it work with gemetry that's already skinned?"

thanks

[wireFrame]

I haven't tried that but I think it will even if there's a geometry skinned to it.

Give it a try/.

[Rot]

Uh...
I don't think so...

But, have you skinned a single-flying hand?
Are you working for Addams. inc ? ^_^

E- byez

[steveblake]

Addams? Hmmm, wonder if you mean Aardmans?

and no it's part of a character. But that flying hand idea sounds good, I could go with that...

[wireFrame]

I would just like to clear that it's the joints' local rotation axes. If they move a bit, you have to disconnect the geometry first and fix it.

[Rot]

No, I mean Addams. Like Addams Family ;)

E-Byez

[steveblake]

thanks for your help guys. The problem seems to be this:

The hand hierachy is scaled to - Y and the joints all rotate the other way from the way my HUD is suggesting, so if I go to Rotate X to, say +15 - it actually ends up as -15...

all very confusing...(but at the same time somehow logically correct)

No, I mean Addams. Like Addams Family

oh yeah, right.. stupid me

[steveblake]

if anyone's here's still interested I got a solution: I just grouped the joint to intslef and moved the groups pivit to the joint base.

Works a treat!

anyway here's what I was originally jabbing on about:

thanks for listening.

[wireFrame]

I'm sorry but your procedure is somewhat different from the way I rig. That's why mines would really not work on urs.

Anyway, I one thing I make sure to avoid problems with the rig is to zero out all rotation and clean up the local joint orientations. If your joints are not aiming properly to the joints next to them then you'll have problems especially in mirroring joints/duplicates.

These orientation is preserved even in mirroring so if your hand is facing the opposite direction to the original. Local joint orientation is still preserved.

That's all I can say. Enjoy!

[steveblake]

good points. do you zero out by parenting or using a script?

(hmm I think I'm being dense, freeze tranform works doesn't it?)

thanks again

[wireFrame]

Nope, it doesn't work that way. You have to use a command not found in the pull down menus. Do a research on this 'coz this is really an important issue that is not stressed out in the manuals.

Check out:

Local Rotation Axis (for joints)
Joint Orientation command (mentioned above)

[steveblake]

good stuff - I'll hit the books!

[GrafOrlok]

Check out the help (C:\AW\Maya4.0\docs\en_US\html\UserGuide\CharSetup\SkeletonBuild5.html) and the chapter "Reorienting all local axes in limb or skeleton"

This is a very important step to get your skeleton working! And for some reason AW seems not interested in making life easier here;)

The Mel-command for "zeroing out" the joints would be:
joint -e -oj xyz -zso -ch;

Staffan

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