.The rest of th rigg.

In this rigg, a spine is not needed because the character is really short, so all we need is a hip joint, one joint for the spine and one more for teh chest, this last one just to paint weights.

To make the bind we need to have everything well organized in the hypergraph, all the joints, controllers , geometry and constrains under one group..Then we select all the joints that belong to the bind and create a set. Then we select the set and the geometry, and got to Skin> Bins Skin> Smooth Bind

Now the skeleton is ready for weight painting.In weight painting one must indicate in the geometry the influence that each joint has in the corresponding part of the geometry.This controls how the mesh deform when we move the controllers. After the weight painting is done,we mirror the weights to ahve the same influence over the joints of the opposite side of the model. we go to Skin > Edit Smooth Skin> Mirror Skin Weights.After this we might need to touch up some minor details in the weights, and then the model is ready :D. yay!

.the arms.

After the joints have been created and oriented, we stars, as in teh legs, by creating the IK system. This IK is to be done with an RP solver, like the leg's primary IK handles. In this case, i created teh handle from the shoulder to the wrist. Now we create a control for the IK, parent the IK handle to it, and also we orient constrain the wrist joint to it so we can have rotation in our IK. Now we just nedd to create a control for the elbow.Create a control and put it a little bit behind the elbow( then we coudl duplicate the joints just to use them as a guide); now we have to select the control, then the IK handle and use a constrain pole vector; this will move the joints out of place, but by moving the group of the control we just made, we can fit the joints to the guide, once this is done we can delete the guide. The arm's FK is done the same way as in the legs, controlers should be in the shoulder, elbow and wrist. For the Bind we duplicate again the joints, we create controllers for the clavicles , and this time we place the joint for teh fingers, which are ONLY located on teh Bind system, The we create one more controller that wont move, it will work entirely with ."Set Driven Key" creating different attributes for predetemined movement of the joints in the hands.The IK/FK switch is also located in this controller.In this rig, i used only 3 attributes: Fist, Point, and relaxTo attach the control to the bones, we just parent constrain it to the bind wrist joint( the pivot of this control must be in the wrist, you can move it away a little with the control vertex). We connect the IK and FK to the bind as we did in the legs, the same for the switch, just that our driver is going to be this hand control that we created .

The first step for the creation of a rig is placeing the joints if the character.I created the whole skeleton from the begining and worked indivually with each part.I began with the legs because they are the part that require the most work. Joints should be placed in the center of the geometry.Here I created a join for the hip, a joint for thefemur, the knee, ankle ,another one for the ball of the foot and one more joint for the tip.After placing the joints they have to be oriented, so when the controlers are made the joint system will move in the proper direction

The next step is setting the IK handles.The IK Handle Tool can be found under the animation tab in Maya's interface.The first IK handle goes from the hip to the ankle.This first one should be created with RPsolver - this type of solver generate a Twist that controls the knee- and the two more handles, this time with an SCsolver.The first handle goes from the ankle to the ball, the second one from the ball to the toe. This IK Handles need to be made into groups.The first group contains the primary IK handle-ankle-,the second group contains the other two handles.These groups have to be grouped two more times.

Pivot Palcementes of the mentioned groups

* ankle handle group : ball

* ball/toe handle group: ball

*Group containig the previous 2: ankle

*Last group: toe

Now we can make a control.We create a curve and make sure all the attributes are set to 0.Then create a group with the control.This is how we move the control in order to keep the curves parameter in default values-zero-.Then we parent the groups to the control.

To determine the movements that the foot controller manages we use Set Driven Key.Before we use this we have to create new atributes for the control.Just go to teh channel box and right click new attribute.I used a lot of set driven keys for this rig.

To control the knee weuse an utility called "plus average",which can be created on the hypershade. But first we need to create two more attributes on the control: Knee and Offset. Then we select the primary IK handle, the control of the leg and the utility,then click the button for the input and output in the hypershader. Then we are going to connect the control in the by rigth clicking on it and selecting the knee attribute and drag it to the utility in the input 1, on cero, then the offset attribute to the input 1 on one,but to do this we need to go to the script editor, copy the command we made for he knee, and change the info, "knee" for "offset" and then "0 " for "1", after this we copy this code to the mel and hit enter. then the output 1 of the utility to the IK in the twist.

NOTE: lock and hide all the atributes the control won't be needing, to prevent confusion when animating.

Next we have to make the FK system. For this, as well as for the bind, we duplicate the joints strating at the femur.Then we create controls for each joint.For the controllers to work propperly we must orient the group of the control with the joint, using an orient constrain without MO.Then we delete the contrain and this time we make another Orient contrain-or parent constrain if what we need is translation as well as rotation-, this time using MO(maintain offset). After this,all the controlls should be placed in hierarchy for them to work as a system.If we wanted to change the shape and position of the controller using the vertex of the curve is what we should do. To make the bind, we take another copy of the leg joints, and add the finger joints.Then we take each corresponding joint of the IK with the Bind and make a parent constrain.The same with the FK.Finally we make the IK/FK Switch.

.Mattie.