Maya Workshop: Biped Modelling in Maya Part 4

Joining it to the Skeleton
I then moved onto constraining the joints to the skeleton. This then meant that I had to constrain all of my control points onto the skeleton by using the constrain toolbar. For most of the joints, especially the circular ones that ran down the spine, the orient constraint can be applied making the control point control just that section of the joints on the skeleton.

I then needed to select all of the individual control point features on the face and parent them to  the head joint so that when we were connecting them all together they would all move with the head. This is the same for the rest of the body, ensuring everything is joined up together so that it all goes back to the root joint and connects up correctly.

When it came to the eyes, I used the aim constraint tool instead, as we didn't need them to be rotated around an orient point. For this we first selected the control point and then the first joint in the eye and constraint them using aim. This then allowed us to move the control points and the second part of the eyes would follow. We then did the same with the other eye, and then parented both of the them to the middle yellow control so that when that is selected both move.

Then for the eyebrows I used a point constraint as the eyebrows would only be moving up and down.

Lastly we moved onto the legs and feet as we would be using a different constraint altogether and this is a IK handle. We used the IK handle in the RP setting so that we could get slight rotating on it as well, around the knee, and used the tool to draw from the top of the leg down to the ankle to connect the two together.

I then used the single joint chain IK handle to be able to make the joints in the foot two seperate ones. I then repeated the process on the right hand side. I then parented all of those joints to the foot control point underneath so that they were connected.

I then wanted to use the twist angle that was on the leg IK and constrain it to the knee control point so that this is were it would be controlled from. To do this I selected the control point, selected the IK handle and used a pole vector constraint and this allows us to then use the control point to move the knee in a certain way.

I went back and used the parent constraint to constrain the root control to the root joint so that when it is moved everything else acts around it, even the legs.

Lastly we wanted to ensure that everything was joined up to the master control. We parented the root control to the master control and then also the feet and knee controls as these are not directly controlled by the root.