Maya 2013 Rigging Question

riuthamus

Say I wanted to rig a ball for animation. The ball mesh would be that of a fairy/fey type of being. What would be the best possible method for rigging such a creature and creating a control set to manage it? ( not that one would really be needed I guess )

Do i make a single bone?

fatihG_

Since you are rigging a really easy object, you could simply animate the model directly, instead of using bones. You could still use bones.

Again since its a pretty simple model, I'd say just try some stuff out, see what works.
You'll learn more by just experimenting.

BARDLER

You just need a main control for the object, and a squash deformer connected to the mesh.

riuthamus

Ah thanks. The idea is to have it put into a game so that is why I was asking about the bones. The bones could act as an attachment for effects and other such things. Again, thanks for the quick responses.

fatihG_

I have animated stuff directly in Unity before for simple meshes. If you can key transformations of a mesh it should not be a big issue. You could scale in just 1 axis to get a squash effect for example.

I animated rotating fans for example, translated cylinders and what not pretty easily.

bejkon

Whats the purpose of the ball? is it gonna have cycles like an idle, attack and stuff like that? If that's the case I recommend you to treat just like any other character and skin it to a joint.

riuthamus

Late response, but yes. I ended up creating a root called bone and attaching it to that. Animation from there was fairly simple. Thanks for the advice.