Bits and Pieces I have learned 1

Every now and then I will start posting some bits and pieces that I have picked from  The Art of Rigging that was given to me to help get a good start. It is definitely helping me get a rough idea how the rig will be built by the time I get round to building them.

First thing I want to post about is the hierarchy (which can be accessed through the Hypergraph)

A screenshot of the joints in the scene in the Hypergraph Hierarchy

So, this is the Hypergraph Hierarchy, this would have all your assets within the environment in here - most cases not grouped together. So, from the picture you can see that Joints 1 through 5 that Joint 1 is the Parent of Joints 2 through 5. Which would mean you move that joint, then all the other joints will move within it). Joint 6 is on it's not, not associated with the other joints. 

A screenshot of Joint 6 now being the Parent of Joints 1 - 5

But by simply holding middle click and dragging Joint 1 over Joint 6 - the result will be that now Joint 6 is now the parent of Joints 1 through 5. This can be useful for in the instance I remember that a joint is needed somewhere else.

I also learned another neat trick which was mirroring the joints. This is handy for when you have a chain of joints that are the same (arms or legs) and it's an efficient way of make sure that . There are two functions to choose from mirroring joints in a rig - those are either the Behaviour or the Orientations.

Behaviour: with this option, the joints are mirrored to have the opposite orientation as the original as well as the opposite local rotation axis of each joint. Good for animating opposing movements in a pair of counterpart limbs.

Orientation: using this function for mirroring will mean that the mirrored joints will have the same orientation as the original joints. This is handy for animating limbs that are turning in the same direction.

A screenshot of mirrored joints

That is all for this post so far, but there'll be more posts about this stuff to come soon.