Joint Cleanup

The principal skeletons for Kila and Grae are now complete, so let's find out how many joints make up each one. In this case, I have made this easy for you; the number of joints in the scene does not match the number that will be used in the game. All of the end joints are there merely as a visual aid; the actual geometry will not use them to move.

Note

You'll want to double-check this with the relevant programmer; it may be that your game engine does need these end joints.

Contained in the GCDM shelf is a button labeled jntCnt. Running this will give you an accurate joint count. It will not, however, include any of the end joints (such as the eyes), so you will have to add these to the count.

Using the jntCnt tool, we can see that Kila uses 57 joints, plus another 4 for her eyes and chest, bringing the count up to 61. Grae uses 66, plus 2 for his eyes, making the total 68.

In the next section, we will need to check how the skeleton will moveor, more accurately, rotate.

Depending on how you constructed the skeleton, there may be some values in the rotation attributes. Because the majority of the skeleton is controlled by its rotations, it's vital that these are zeroed out before checking the rotational axes. Having them all at zero will simplify animation and control.

Before we continue to the next task, quickly select all the joints and freeze the transforms, making sure to freeze only the rotations.