Is it possible to freeze out the translations of a skeleton to "0"?if so how?
thanksc
As far as i know it's not possible!
(maybe i don't know enough!)
The only way is to have the joint at 0,0,0 in the scene.Otherwise how would maya know how far offset one bone is from another bone.. ??
Are you wanting them all to be at 0,0,0.. what is your purpose for such a request ?
In Maya a joint's position in space is ALWAYS relative to it's parent. In PA you could freeze the transforms of a joint, but it handled translations differently than Maya. The only real workaround is group the joint to itself giving you a transform. Zero the joint translation values, and move the transform to place the joint. This is what I usually do to get zero values on the root joint of a character: move the root joint to the origin... group it to itself... move the new transform back up to reposition the root of the character.
i can't see the benefit or reason for having the trans at 0,0,0 ?
please explain why you would want to do this.
It's often times nice to be able to "zero" your skeleton... get all the values switched back to 0... to get to a default pose. For our game engine, this is a necessity. If your root joint has some random translation values to keep it in space this can be annoying to remember and enter in every time you want to have it "zeroed" (you could make a script, but I like to live by the "less is more" thought). By grouping it to a transform (or Locator for that matter), you can zero out all the rotation values AND translation values, and be certain of the results. It also gives you a nice way to see the relative translation from it's starting pose, you don't have to do the math to figure it out. This is only important of course if you actually animate the root joint of the characer. I personally like it because it makes things 'cleaner'. Anyone else?