Numerically adjusting Local Rotation Axis

#1

I’m trying to shove my butt back into the world of computer animation and am currently rigging one of my old characters. I’m at the point where I need to adjust the local rotation axis of the joints properly and I want to know if it’s possible to adjust the LRA’s numerically (i.e. typing in a number) rather than manually with a mouse. Here’s why:

  • I created the joints individually w/o parents. I only created joints for the left side with intent to mirror them later.
  • Once all the joints were properly placed, I connected them through the outliner so they’re original joint orientation would not be altered.
  • I manually adjusted the LRA’s of all the joints.
  • I mirrored the appropriate joints.

This process left me with LRA’s for the mirrored joints that are exactly as I need them to be…if they were rotated precisely 180 degrees on one specific axis. I want to know if it’s possible to adjust them in such an exact fashion rather than using the mouse to try and ‘eyeball it’. I had been previously told that I could go into the attributes sidebar and that the fields to be changed were under the ‘joint orient’ label, but when I attempted to adjust these values, the joint itself was rotated.

#2

Go into component selection mode and select your LRA. Then just type this in the command line:

rotate -r -os x y z
-r = relative
-os = object space
x y z being the rotate values of the new position of the LRA.

There’s lots of flags you can put in to chose how to rotate your LRA, I just prefer those two as it’s easier for me to work on in my head. Typing in the channel box will just rotate the joint as Maya thinks you have that selected.

#3

Sweet Jesus Buttercream, that’s it! Thank ya kindly sir!

#4

Also, open up the attribute editor of the joint and you’ll find the Rotate Axis channels for another way of setting it’s orientation.

#5

I actually tried that before hand, but like the ‘Joint Orient’ section, it rotated the joints.

#6

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