Rigging

Rigging characters has always been an area that I struggle with, maybe due to lack of practise. Therefore, since it is vital that my character has a good rig, I bought a book on animating in Maya for help.

From reading this book and working on my character, I feel that I understand rigging, as well as Maya in general a lot more than before. Although I rigged a few models in my first and second years, I now have a much deeper understanding of the tools.

For example, while I was working on my character’s foot, I learned to make custom attributes, using the connection editor. When rigging the arms, I learned about pole vectors and creating more advanced controllers than what I had made in the past.

Also, I rigged by characters spine differently than I had done in the past. I used the IK Spline tool, which is used to control a chain of joints. I also learned to use clusters and created various handles to move my character easily.