How do I get a skeleton's spine to be becompletely straight along the X axis?

[kathal-2]

Hey! I'm trying to align a skeleton with a character model in Maya. I made a video to explain what I'm trying to achieve:

I've posted about this here before, but the solution I found doesn't hold up. Setting the joints' X translation values to 0 doesn't solve my issue, and some joints have their pivots rotated to where their X axis doesn't correspond with the world's X axis.

For example, here's a joint that's off-center:

All of its values are set to 0, save for its X translation.

 When changing the joint's X translation value to 0, it moves up and right:

What's the simplest way to get a skeleton's "spine" to be completely straight along the X axis? I've attached the project file to this post!

[kathal-2 · Accepted solution]

I think I found a solution! I made a video demonstrating it:

In short:

1. Open Orient Joint's options panel
2. Check "Orient Joint to World"
3. Click "Orient"
4. Adjust the joint's X transformation under "Move Settings" in the Modeling Toolkit (Make sure it's set to "World")

[stephenkmann]

you can just select all the joints 

 one way to do that is select the root joint, and Select --> Hierarchy

using either the options box, or hold shift + w to get the move tool options  marking menu. 

set the space to "world" 

 then in the status bar  change the input to "absolute"  and type 0 in the X field

I am curious how you even ended up with such a crazy looking spine. and or didn't just re draw it from the side view ( which automatically places the joints along X)  

or in the front view. just placed the joints, and holding "shift" automatically created the joints in a straight line. 

hth

-=s