Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Maya 2011 controller orientation workaround

I've created a simple tutorial which shows the workaround for the problem Maya 2011 has with orienting a controller to its children while remaining neutral in world-space. This is an adaptation of  Carlo Sansonetti's technique for controller orientation. In this example, I'm setting up a controller for a foot with the rotation axis at the heel for an advanced foot setup.

Unfortunately there is no voiceover for the video at this moment since I do not own a microphone, so hopefully the text will guide you through what you see in the video.

Here is the tutorial:





1.) Basically, I add in the controller, in this case a nurbs circle, then scale it up a bit.
2.) Then I name it and group it twice, one layer is SDK for whatever sdk controls for later, the top group is the offset group (l_foot_IK_ctrl_O).
3.) I Point Constrain the offset group node (be sure the group is selected, not the shape node) to the ball_jnt.
4.) I then Aim Constrain the offset group node to the toe_jnt.
5.) Next, I delete both constraints, as they are no longer needed, then I shape my controller the way I want it with the shape node CVs.
6.) Next I create a locater node, and parent it to the ball_jnt. I then zero out all the transform attributes for the locater, moving it to and orienting it with the ball_jnt.
7.) Then I go Edit>Unparent the locater, and move it into the place where I want the heel rotation to be.
8.) I select the controller (the shape), hit Insert to move its transform center and hold down V to snap it to the locater, and hit Insert again.
9.) Then I delete the locater node as it is no longer needed at this point. ( you may want to keep it for further snaps and constraints later on down the road though)