Quick Help - how do I create a global control?

#1

I’m doing a small animation, my character already have all the bones and controllers and is walking fine… but only straight!

Looking on internets i found that i need a “global control” thing so I can rotate/move/scale everything at once, so it can turn left while walking, for example.

There’s nothing about that on a textbook I have and I cant find a single non-paid tutorial on the internet. Maybe because I don’t know exactly what to look for.

Please anyone, I need to finish the animation this week D:

#2

This might be the most tricky part for someone who’s new to rigging -having everything parented under a single global control. You’ll find yourself under the situation where, some of them follows, some of them gets double transformation, translate or rotate values change after parenting and some of them wont scale correctly!

My quick answer would be try grouping all the controls under a single group(just select them all then ctrl+g so you’ll get the group pivot at the origin). Create a global ctrl curve then parent the group under it and see if any problem I mentioned rises?

hope this helps!

#3

Thanks!
Worked fine for moving and rotating. Didn’t tried to scale but I don’t need to scale anything. Seems pretty obvious, I feel dumb for not trying this before lol
Now my chikorita can run and jump all over the place C:

#4

This simple setup was thought to me and I’ve used it ever since. Has worked great for the rigs I’ve done so far.

Have all your geometry in one group. All your joints in one. All your controls in one.

Then I group them like this:
Master_Grp
–>Geo_Grp
–>Move
---->Scale
------>Joints_Grp

I have the global/master control in the Master_Grp, then parent/point & orient constrain it to the Move group. And scale constrain it to the Scale grp.

If you have more things in your rig the trick is to figure out where to put it.

In one rig I have a low-poly version of the character. I’ve just deleted edgeloops etc and cut them up so the upper arm is a single object. Then I’ve parent constrained these to their respective joint.

Since this group isn’t affected by the skinning, it’s just parented I have to keep it under the Scale group for it to scale properly.

Does that make sense? Hope I wrote something useful. :slight_smile:

#5

Hmm Probably, I would have to really try it to see if I understand C:

#6

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