Hand Rig – Set Driven Keys and Extra finger controls setup

I set up a file to help a friend out with their rig awhile ago. It shows a relatively simple concept of layering a rig to allow for extra overall control. I thought this was pretty nice when I first learned it, so I wanted to share this with anyone starting out who may not be aware of this technique since it’s not something that seems so simple when you’re first learning how to rig.

The file is seperated in three seperate files, showing the steps of how to setup the fingers of a hand rig with Set Driven Keys, that control custom attributes to pose the hand, and extra finger controls that allow for tweaking of the preset poses or to make completely new poses.

The way it works is like this:

You have your basic joints for your finger. Then you have your control objects, like a nurbs circle, fitted around the joints. They will be orient constrained to control the joints after the control heirarchy is set up.

The control objects are then self grouped twice, one to set the SDK on and one as the null node that doesn’t do anything.

Then the null group of the control object is parented under the next control object (not its SDK or null group).

So the idea of layering can be thought of as having one step above that which controls something, and that one thing above controls something else or is being controlled by something else, like a custom attribute in this case.

The files are pretty easy to understand, but if you have any questions please feel free to contact me for help.

You can download the files here.

jnm_handRig_fingerTutorial

March 8, 2012 | Categories: Tutorials/Scripts | Tags: 3D, hand rig, maya, rigging, tutorial | Leave a comment