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View Full Version : Rigging a robot, questions

JasonA
10-15-2002, 05:46 PM
I figured it would be a good time to get familair with the rigging process in Maya so i thought I would try out some dimple stuff first. But I'm less than impressed with the "Instant Maya" tutorials on the rigging subject, so I thought I'd post of couple of seriously newbie questions.

So I have a basic "robot" if you will out of simple primitive shapes. I have a heiarchy setup for the priitive simlair to how one would do a bone system. And I've moved the pivot points for each limb to the appropriate place for FK type rotation. Bear in mind I'm doing this to the mesh, not to a bone structure at this point. a couple quesitons I have are

1. How do I apply a bone system to a model of this type? I don't want to have the parts "flex" so skinning seems innappropriate. I want the limbs to rotate at the pivot mpoints of each object. Do i somehow link each mesh limb to an individual bone in the bone heirarchy and make each joint line up with the pivot point?

2. How do I limit the direction/magnitude of rotation for any particular joint?

3. How do I make the pivot point rotation/translation axis line up with the worl coordinate system? Is this an advisable thing to do?
tobyWong
10-24-2002, 06:41 PM
1) Easy. Just parent it to the skeleton.

2) look up rotation limits in the help file, it's pretty strait forward.

3) I thought I know the awnser to this but after reading it again I'm not sure exacty what your asking.

Holy moley it's late.
-Toby
JasonA
10-26-2002, 07:43 AM
hey thanks for the response. I know they're real noob questions..

1. I didn't even think about that, yeah I guess that would make sense :) lol

2. Ok, I'll check it out. Its pretty important that this be possible cause the model has visual cues that show it can't move wiht six degrees of freedom. so this relates to the question above. ie if I set up IK for an shoulder/wrist, how do I limit rotation of certain joints. ok well maybe its spelt out in the help file.

3. neverind on this, it appears to be irrelevant :) thanks tho..
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