Maya 2013 Rigging Question

riuthamus · Jan 2013

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_ · Jan 2013

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 · Jan 2013

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

riuthamus · Jan 2013

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_ · Jan 2013

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 · Jan 2013

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 · Mar 2013

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.

Maya 2013 Rigging Question

Replies