Scaling Rig (Maya)

pixeldamage · Mar 2009

I've gotten a Rig made by someone else in Maya. As a max user i've gotten round most of the unique names etc but i'm confused how to scale the rig and the character model at the same rate.

I tried grouping all the parts including rig and scaling but the rig scales at a different speed to the rest of the model so I end up with a model and rig that still work together but the nurbs circle controllers for waist movement are no longer around the waist. I've also tried parenting to a cube but have still have the same problem. I could just scale and then move over to the rig controls but its annoying and it'd be nice to know how to get around this.

Answers please bare in mind i'm a seasoned max user not maya so please provide details.

MoP · Mar 2009

If you are scaling the rig, you should not have to scale the model as well if it's already bound (skinned) to the joints, since scaling the joints will drive the model to deform too.

Either un-bind the skinning on the mesh and scale both the rig and the model separately then re-bind it, or just scale the rig and not the model.

pixeldamage · Mar 2009

Thanks Mop that worked. Do you know why i can't group anything in the outliner with "set" in the title? Like "CharSetMain"? Also do you know a way that i can animate a character holding an item without having to set loads of keys for that item following the hand. As everything is rigged i'm having trouble parenting it as it seems to cause issues.

Illusions · Mar 2009

Group the object to itself, then constrain the group to the hand joint. Set the constraint weights to zero when the character is not holding the object, then set them to one when they pick it up. The object should follow the hand joint around, and the constraint on the group means that you can still change translational, rotational, and scaling values on the objects inside the group. I'm not a character animator though so this might not be the most efficient or professional way of doing it.

kodde · Mar 2009

pixeldamage wrote: »

Thanks Mop that worked. Do you know why i can't group anything in the outliner with "set" in the title? Like "CharSetMain"? Also do you know a way that i can animate a character holding an item without having to set loads of keys for that item following the hand. As everything is rigged i'm having trouble parenting it as it seems to cause issues.

My guess would be that the "set" is only a container for a set of attributes, you cannot group this as it has no real transform data.

The set is used for you to easily access and set keys to relevant attributes that animates your character.

What you probably want to do instead is try to group the "master" nodes, ie. the nodes that is a the top of the rig hierarchy.

pixeldamage · Mar 2009

Illusions + Kodde - thanks guys i'm really starting to get the hang of my way round maya.. amazing how quick the transition is when you know one of the them. Will try out illusion's method tomorrow, by constrain do you mean parent? off to bed now but will let you know in the morning.

Illusions · Mar 2009

If you choose the Animation menu set (not the shelf), there should be a menu labeled Constrain. Some of the constraints you can set are Aim (the object constrained will rotate about its pivot point to aim at the object it is constrained to), Point (the object constrained will move to follow the object it is constrained to), Orient (like point, but just with rotation), and Scale (like Point and Orient, but just scaling). Check out the options under the square too so you can see what else you can do with them. Theres also a few other constraints, but I wouldn't be able to offer an explanation to you of what they do as I have either never used them, or rarely do.

It should be noted that with Point, Orient, and Scale, if you do not turn on "maintain offset" in the options, that it will match the exact appropriate value (translation, rotation, or scale) of the object it is constrained to. You may or may not want this.

Scaling Rig (Maya)

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