Hello everyone. I've started learning rigging in Maya and good rig can only work with a good skeleton. Since I know that building skeleton is not a trivial task and there are many things, which one needs to keep in mind I tried to search for some advices how to build skeleton in maya perfectly. I was able to find some tips, however I would like you to calrify and confirm few things. Here are things which I learned so far, however I am not 100% sure about them, so please correct me if there is something wrong:
- The thing which matter most is Joint Orient and Rotate Order, everything else is unimportant and can be ignored.
- One axis must always point toward the child joint (usualy X). If not, it is wrong. On the picture there is bad example where X axis is pointing somewhere else.
- Direction of other axes is not that strictly given, but if they are in a chain, they must be consistent and poin in a same direction
- The Rotate Order can be different for different bones depends on the primal rotation of the joint. For example for shoulder I know I will be rotating a lot around z axis primary, then y axis and then x axis, so the order for this joint shall be xyz. But this may not work the same way for other joints like elbow, where I use y over z so the order is yzx.
Is that correct?
And now few questions. How do I change an orientation of a joint and how can I do that precisely so for example if I want to point my x axis toward the child, it will not be pointing just slightly in different way (and if it does, does it metter?) ?
How can I prevent wrong bending like this? Is it even possible or at that extreme angle it always starts leaning toward the direction either on the left or on the right? There are leg bones on the picture with IK applied (Rotate-Planar Sover and Pole Vector constrain controller). When bending only slightly, they are aiming toward the right direction, but when bended more extremly, the rotation goes far to the on side (see second picture)
Are there any other things, which are really important when making skeleton and I haven't mentioned them here?
Thank you very much for all you answers.