Four Armed Rig.

[boomir]

I wasn't sure how much help i might get from these forums. You all seem very busy. But the situation I'm in is that my prof. took a sick leave for a week, and now we have spring break, and my prof. isn't responding to any of my emails. So i need some help.

I am using Maya 2008 and am trying to create a rig for a FOUR armed insect humanoid. The problem is...

(1) I wanted to make sure the arm JOINTS were layed out ok.

(2) Then, i am not sure what i am doing wrong with the IK handles. I am missing or skipping something, so that when i move the IK, the arm does not bend, it simply rotates.

(3) How do i combine the left and right "body" geometry so that i don't lose the constructed UV Map? I'm not sure, because when i mirror geometry, then combine... it creates a whole new UV map ?

If someone out there has atleast any information to help me, please do. I dont want to waist my entire break simply because my prof isn't responding quick enough to emails. What I'd like to do is send you my Maya Binary file (.mb) and have you take a look at it for youself. Just write to ... fjoshua@bgsu.edu ... and title it "I WILL HELP" So that i don't miss it. Otherwise simply reply to this post. I'll keep checking because i can't move forward until i figure these out.

Thank you for your time.

[animatix]

1) I am guessing by "make sure the arm JOINTS were layed out ok" you mean positioned in the mesh correctly and oriented correctly. for the mesh placement I would select the edge loop of where the mesh is going to bend, convert to selection to vertices, and then create a cluster. then snap the joint to that cluser. The cluster will be in the center of vertex selection ensuring it is the center of the mesh. Then i would get Comet's joint orient and select all the joints and orient them.

2) if the joints are on a plane and straight then you will have to rotate the elbow or knee joint skeleton-> set preferred angle. then zero out the rotation in the channel box. then add IK chain. if the joints are straight the IK solver doesn't know which way to bend, so it doesn't.

3) This I am not to sure about but, if you have the right side modeled out then just click Mesh->Mirror geometry. make sure merge original is on, and connect border edges. this should mirror and connect the geometry nicely.

Hope all this helps.