First Maya Lesson: Rigs

Our first maya lesson of the new term had us looking at basic rigging and how you can make model's move in the software to create a basic animation.
The process itself is very simple, creating parent hierarchy's between different parts of the model to make joints that can be moved and manipulated. Overall it was an incredibly interesting lesson,

I will upload my notes and the screenshots of the processes we took during the lesson, I would like to upload the finished animation today but I forgot to put the movie file on my USB stick, so that will be uploaded tomorrow.

Maya Lesson 1 Notes: 5th Jan 2015

After basic model, delete history and freeze transformations

Link model's via parenting
(Parenting Hierarchy)

Parented link between componants (Short cut "P")

Parent function (bottom of edit function)
"adult goes, child follows"


Select Upper arm joint and pair to shoulder joint. Child joint first then parent. 
Select next elbow joint (child) pair to upper arm (parent)
Wrist Joint (child) to forearm (parent) joint.
Hand joint (child) to wrist (parent)



Fingers:
Select fingers(child), select hand (parent) and group.
May not move finger joints

Pair finger(child) to joint(parent) each finger.

Animating

Setting pref: Time slider, range slider
              Playback speed: realtime
              Settings: Framerate to 25fps (Odd frames for key points)
              Save
              change frames back to 1 
              adjust time scale to 50 frames- 2 seconds

Arm in starter position (swing)
Key frames: select geometry (group all in outliner, name for first frame)
May need to parent again after, PLAN AHEAD
Expand all in outliner and choose key selected after highlighting all atrributes (attribute editor)
Key frame = Red marker in timeline

Slider up to 25fps

Select model and adjust as needed.
Afer selecting all in outliner, Key select all attributes again

(proper models, hide and lock attributes that arent needed for key frames)

Swing motion: Hand is fixed point, not shoulder

(Cheat by dupilcating the model, name it to differentiate)
Place first model on different layer

Standard dupilcation will remove all animation, locked in position that it is left at.



Expand the hierarchy for second model
Leave hand relationships alone
Break parenting for every other joint. (unparenting tool in edit menu)
Hand becomes parent, Wrist is the the child
Forearm becomes child, wrist is parent
elbow is parent, wrist is child
Upper arm is parent, elbow is child
Shoulder is parent, upper arm is child

Create new group for the second arm with parenting
Check parenting is in place

Move pivot point
Position between fingers as if swinging on an object

Start 26fps
Select all geometry and key select attributes

Select frame 50
Move model as needed. 
Key select attributes

Show model 1+2 

Between 25 and 26 one arm becomes invisible

Frame 25- model 1 visibility on
Frame 26- model 1 visibility off

reverse with model 2