Parenting to a Skeleton


The geometry of a character made out of rigid, nonflexible parts, such as a robot, can be parented to a skeleton rather than bound. You can also use parenting for specific parts of a character, like eyes or teeth, even if the character's primary surface needs to be bound to the skeleton.

To parent surfaces to joints:

1.

Use the Create > NURBS Primitives menu to create three spheres and two cylinders, and then scale and position them to represent an arm (Figure 11.3).

Figure 11.3. These five NURBS primitives form a simple arm. Because the arm is segmented, the individual objects don't need to bend, so they can be parented to a skeleton instead of being bound.


2.

Select the Joint tool from the Skeleton menu, and create three joints to fit the arm (Figure 11.4).

Figure 11.4. Adding three joints to the arm forms two bones.


3.

Select a surface.

4.

-select the joint to which the surface should be parented.

5.

Press .

Now, when you select and rotate that joint, the surface rotates with it.

6.

Repeat steps 35 for the other surfaces. When any joint is rotated, the parented surface moves with it (Figure 11.5).

Figure 11.5. Rotating any joint rotates its child object(s), allowing you to animate the arm.


Tip

  • Because parented geometry takes less time for Maya to calculate than bound geometry, complex characters often have segmented stand-in or proxy geometry that's parented to the skeleton. You can use the proxy for faster interaction while you're animating and hide the character's actual geometry until you're ready to render.





Maya 7 for Windows and Macintosh(c) Visual Quickstart Guide
Maya 7 for Windows & Macintosh
ISBN: 0321348990
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 185

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