Joint Orientation - Part 5

I would buy your books if my credit card were international... thanks a lot for the tutorials!!! Will you continue making videos about rigging?

Will you do a skin weight tutorial? cause I'm stuck at that part. I would really appreciate if you do.

thanks this helps!!! I definitely have troubles with rigging!!

can you please upload more, not even for the info i just enjoy the presence of you, LOL

Hola Amigo! Quisiera saber dos cosas: Habrá futuros tutoriales de Rigging? Por ejemplo, para el personaje del Ninja? y la otra pregunta es: Cuál es tu opinión acerca de Human IK para Maya? Saludos desde Argentina!

hi, whats the difference between this script and the actual orient joint tool from maya? seems to me that they are pretty much the same, thx for ur videos very helpful

that was awesome..thank you :)

he made rigging tuts now

great tutorial! first time I actually understand joint orientation ... so thanks a lot :)

Awesome tutorial, this video answered nearly every question that's been bugging me about joint orientation :) I would like to ask, in the video when you mentioned the problems of having values in the rotation channels of your joints, what's the recommended method for zeroing them out once you've skinned? as freeze transformations is no longer usable on skinned joints. thanks in advance.

One more thing I still don't really get as to why it's a problem, using the arm example, why is it so important one axis points towards the child, I mean as long as you have one axis that lets you rotate back towards the parent what's the issue?

You can't freeze after you skinned. I typically duplicate my rig so that I can copy the skin weights from the duplicated rig. Then unbind the original rig from the joints, freeze transformations, bind it again. Now use the duplicated rig to copy the weights to it again.

Well, if you have a joint that's not pointing towards the child, means that, that axes is pointing skewed or crooked from the joint alignment. You also want to make sure that when you mirror your joints they work properly on the other side. You can facebook me an image, I can help better understand. But joints always point towards the children.

im using joints on a minecraft character but the bones are way bigger than arms does that matter

I'm somewhat familiar with animation and rigging, but when I asked my mentor about how to do this correctly, he showed me how to do this, and you can move the orientation manually. When you have a joint selected, go to the transform display and make sure that the joint orientation you want to adjust has the Local Rotation Axes turned on. Double click the rotate tool to bring up the settings, from there select "Discrete rotate". To rotate the orientation manually make sure that "Select Miscellaneous option is turned on, without this you cant select the axes. Go into object edit mode and now select the orientation axes and rotate. You'll notice that as you rotate is snaps. To get proper values, look at your Transform Attributes Rotation Axes. From there you should be able to see your orientation and correctly make the adjustments.

BTW, this is in no way to discredit you, I just thought that you should be aware that there is a way to do this without using scripts, plus it is possible to do it manually.

I'm tired make bones long but better 3ds max fast cat object (bones) or biped easy way.

Hello David.  Thank you very much for all your tutorials.  I was afraid of rigging in Maya because of this local joint orientation issue since I didn't know what should point where.  I have 2 questions however.  First, if x axis should point to a child, does it matter where y and z point?   Second, I am in a process of buying the books, but does the either of the book cover "in place" animation technique?  Sorry for such a long post.  Thank you again for all your effort in training us  :)

"i need a coffee" --i'll buy u one ~XP ,Thanks~,great tutorial~ !

You are a beast man! Great work, very helpful.

Why is stuff like this so complicated in Maya? Are they sadists?

Nice tutorial, beautiful plugin; thanks a lot man!

hmm I have a different function. If i do regular move or Pressing 'D' key the joint, the mother axis orient doesn't follow aming the child joint not like yours. mine is maya2014. But, i don't think this is cause. So anyone knows how to make them follow as the video? without using the script.

and....secondly, So is there no way to fix orient accurately without using that script whenever you moved the translate of joint?

In Maya 2014 i added 4-5 bones and automatically all my bones orients were have the x axis towards the the next bone?
Propably they have fixed it?

Your tutorials are GREAT!! Thank you for teaching this. I am in class now, Maya II, but the lesson book is harder to understand than you. I understand you COMPLETELY. You are a GREAT TEACHER!! Thank you, so sincerely, for creating these videos. I am an artist and I love animation. I created my first 3D model for class, but I could not align my joints correctly. Needless to say, my elbows didn't work. I cannot access the script you posted on your site. The page even looks different than the one you show here. Although there is a script and a video on how to download it, I cannot open it. It gives me and option to download Winzip rar for free, but I believe a virus is attached to that. So, I will not attempt to download Winzip from that site. I will have to do it at a later date. Maybe the creators of the Maya program will add the script to a newer updated program or create a plug-in for it. The fella who created the script could get paid for that, BIG TIME. Anyway, because of you and your FREE AWESOME LESSONS and HOW YOU EXPLAIN CLEARLY, I am understanding the program much much much better. I get it, what you teach. I will be creating my own characters for my stories. I LOVE ANIMATION. Thank you, AGAIN!

The script doesn't seem to be working. It always cons up with a Syntax error. Any thoughts?

Thank you sooo much ! you explain and repeat everything perfectly to understand it, repeating really helps for me !

Awsome and important.
Btw.: It's worth taking a look in the freeze transformation options and check what options are active there...
Avoids bad surprises.
:-)

isn't the "skeleton > orient joint" function in maya2015 replaceing this script? Just asking wether there is any difference... sorry, but i'm new. Maybe in Maya2013 there wasn't this function yet. :)

Anyway - thanks a lot - you helped me. :)

instead of using script can't we  use orient joint from skeleton tab

i'm asking this becoz i'm not able to install the script
when i'm opening the directory i'm not able to find the script file

is that script file only for win64 version only?

I'm so grateful for all that you are doing for people that just started learning Maya, you are helping out abnormally to the begginers and making their progress extremely fast... You are such a good man, Thank you for sharing your knowledge with all of us Mr. AnimationMethods...  I'll keep watching and following your lessons, you are the best teacher I've seen on the Internet.... Again, I'm so fkin grateful to you!!! I wish you long & happy life.. Thank you!

thanks u :)

u are awesome! thank you for the helpful videos and script.

thanx man

Would like to ask with regards to your script. How does it differ from the Orient Joint option found under the Skeleton drop down menu tab in the Animation toolset?

What problems are caused when the x axis doesn't point to the next joint?

Thanks a Ton for the hint to the script!!! Just so Awsome! As well as your well made videos! Really great!!!

This script just saved my booty. Thank you!!!

Thanks a lot for explaining the joint orientation concept in a clear way. In Maya 2016 there is a tool that fixes this. Make sure you are in Rigging mode. Go to the Skeleton menu and chose Orient Joint. Orient Joint can be set to fix different kinds of Joint Orientation problems.

Perfect Tut.

Sos un genio

and if I want to reset my joint orientation axis so they would be the same as world axis, how do I do that?

Thanks for the details on joints, and for the free script! Just what I needed.

Thanks man!

Very well explained, thank you.

when are new episodes coming out????

Thanks a lot for providing bunch of useful info and your amazing website.

Finally thank you for explaining

Super excellent video..