Set Up #6 Body Controls

Now going to talk about the controls I created to use for the Spline controls for the rig. In the last post I created clusters for the Neck, Chest, Abs and Hips. I will now be creating the controls so that I won't have to click on the clusters the clusters to affect the joints.

Before I could do any of that, I had to re-position the placement of where the clusters effect the IK Spline. I selected the Cluster, then pressed Insert on the keyboard - what this does is allow me to move the pivot point on anything in the scene.

The pivot point for the:

• clusterNeck: did not need to be moved. That was/needed to be at the neck joint.
• clusterChest: the pivot point needed to be moved to back3. 
• clusterAbs: stayed where it was.
• clusterHips: positioned to the hip joint.

Fig 1: The curve mainly used for the body controls.

For the controls for the chest, hips and abs - I used a circle curve and then held V to snap it to the receptive joints (Fig 1).

Fig 2: The curves positioned.

Once that was created, I then froze the transformations of all the curves so that the positioning of all those controls will now be where they were now aligned too (Fig 2). I decided to use a different kind of control for the curve for the hip control (the square) - I also had to click Insert on the keyboard to allow Maya to let me move the pivot point of the hip control to the root joint of the skeleton; this is to allow up and down movement for the model. and for the back control - I created a double sided arrow that is located at the back of the model. I moved the pivot point of the top of the IK Spline chain (Fig 3). Now that the controls where ready, it was just a process constraining these curves to the Clusters (the little C's). (Figs 4 - 7)

Fig 3: Pivot Point for the Back Control is now moved forward to the top of the neck joint. 

Fig 4: Back Control moves what it's supposed too.

Fig 5: Chest Control moves what it's supposed too.

Fig 6: Abs Control moves what it's supposed too.

Figs 7: Hip Sway Control moves what it's supposed too.

Now that these are all constrained properly, I can now hide those Clusters, to do this - I created a new layer called NO_ENTRY. I then moved those Clusters inside the layer and then clicked on the V to make them no longer visible (Figs 8 and 9).

Fig 8: The layers for the rig - will go into more detail about this in a later post.

Fig 9: Clusters now not visible and the curves in places - controls are now fully functional.

To finish off this part of the process, all I had to do is parent all these new curves to the hipControl, this now allows me to move these curves up - gives it a bit of up and down movement.

Fig 10: hipControl does what it's supposed too.

That's it for this post.