Tutorial: Rigging an IK Spline Back in Maya


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In this tutorial, I describe the process for creating a basic IK spline style back in Maya. Topics include:

– Creating the back joints
– Creating an IK spline solver
– Shaping the IK spline curve with clusters
– Creating back and superMover controls
– Parenting the clusters into the control hierarchy
– Connecting the root to the lower back control (using the parent constraint)
– Making the rig scalable (using the Connection Editor)

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36 responses to “Tutorial: Rigging an IK Spline Back in Maya”

  1. Quick question. How would I parent the Backbend controller to the closest Spine controller? I need it to follow the spine as the controllers above in the hierarchy misalign once backbend is rotated.

  2. when i try and parent the root and the lower body control it wont parent. what is the cause of this problem? when i try and shift select the root it selects the entire back but leave the root unaffected once the parent constraint is there

  3. I'm a bit confused, why not parent constraint the controls to the clusters? I mean yeah parenting works clearly, but why not? To be honest i'm confused about the whole constraints vs parenting thing. I know what they do, I know the idea behind them, ie, regular parent doesn't eliminate child freedom, but when to use what is the hard part for me. Any tips?

  4. I'm trying to add a point/parent constraint to the hips but if I select the hip bone it selects everything (its root) how do I fix this so it doesnt affect the entire body?

  5. For some reason whenever I parent my clusters beneath the control curves, it groups them "to preserve position," but this isn't happening for you. Do you know what is going on with this?

  6. Great Tutorial!! Really awesome.

    For all those using Maya LT you can do all the things you need with the Node Editor very easily. Like scale constraint or connecting the twist. It is even more convenient as the connection or expression editor. Give it a shot!

  7. 11:20 question: you connected the twist attribute via the connection editor. i was getting stuck on my rig with a weird problem using the advanced twist controls to use the objects up start and end option. Long story short, my Axes are properly set, my up vectors correctly defined, but the wist is already going to all sorts of weird directions.

    what you showed here could be a workaround to my problem, but it was a 1 to 1 connection with the twist attribute. is there a way i could alternatively control the twist in the same way you did if i wanted to use 2 controllers? 1 say for the shoulders, another for the hip?

  8. Hey Jason, do you prefer Blender or Maya? Maya is a bit unreasonable for the price but I'm now so used to the modeling, rigging, animating, and know all the basic with even professional terms and skills of Maya. Any advice on the products? Should I just save up for a perpetual license of Maya 2015 or wait for Maya 2016 to come out and buy that as perpetual license? Or learn blender? Much help appreciated, I'm very skilled in what I do.

  9. For some reason, when I try to parent the back clusters to the back control circles, the body/spine/curve won't move along with the controls. I see the cluster icon follow the controls & I can select the cluster individually and then move the upper/lower back as long as they are in world space, just not patented under the controls. Did I miss something here?

  10. I'm having a problem, and I'm pretty sure that it's because of the spline and clusters.  When I rotate either the upper or lower body control, that part of the body does not rotate as far as the control itself.  This is causing problems elsewhere, which might be fixed if the rotation was on a 1:1 ratio.

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