Advanced Rigging

Creating the Bind Skeleton & Connecting it to the Rig

The Bind Skeleton will be duplicated from the Rig Skeleton. The reason we do this instead of binding the Wrapped Deform geometry to the rig skeleton is because we want the outliner to be clean and we want to be able to keep the mesh completely seperate from the rig.

1: Using the Grep Rename script, we will basically duplicate and rename all the geometry joint chains that we have created. We will ignore all the FK and IK joint chains. We just need to make copies of the base joint chains. So, find the torso _1_joint chain and use the Grep Rename script with the following settings:

2: After it has been duplicated, bring the new joint chain out to the highest level of the outliner by selecting it and clicking "Shift - P". Then delete anything underneath this joint chain that is not a joint. (ex: ikHandles, empty groups, geometry, etc.)

3: Rinse and repeat for the following joint chains:

4: The clavicle joints are a little different because there's a nurbs curve that's attached to the top joint. We can duplicate it exactly the same way as the others, but we will have to do some more clean up work.

5: After duplicating the l_clavicle_anim, go to the outliner and make sure Display > Shapes is checked. Then look for the nurbs curve that's hooked up to the duplicated shoulder joint and delete it. Rename the top shoulder joint to l_clavicle_bind_joint. Take this joint chain to the top level with all the other new bind joint chains. Do the same for the right side of the clavicle joint chain.

6: Rinse and repeat for the following joint chains:

7: Group all the bind skeleton joint chains together into a group named bind_skeleton.


CONNECTING THE BIND SKELETON TO THE RIG

Hooking up the bind skeleton to the rig skeleton is basically going to take a lot of Parent constraining. Basically, every single bind_joint is going to have to be constraint to its respective join on the Rig Skeleton.

1: Select torso_1_joint in the rig skeleton, then select torso_1_bind_joint in the bind skeleton, and use Constrain > Parent.

2: Rinse and repeat for every single joint in the bind_skeleton group. Not just the top level joints, but all the joints underneath as well. If you are so inclined, you may write a script to do this for extra credit (talk to Kendal before you attempt this).