How does Maya implement tie downs and reference gauges?
 

For those of you who haven't done any stop motion animation, a tie down is something that anchors the puppet to the set and, besides keeping it from falling over, allows you to move the puppet and keep some parts (usually feet) anchored.

Similarly, a gauge marks a point in space that, after positioning it next to a finger, allows you to move the hand and finger back to that point in space after moving the puppet in some manner. In the CG world I expect one could create a tiedown in mid-air, keeping the finger from moving in the first place so you don't have to move it back.

I'm sure Maya does this, but searching on "tie down" and "tiedown" in the Maya help doesn't turn up any results. I think I just need to know the right terminology...

You will need to use constraints, Point and orient constraints used along with your rig will produce the kind of effects that you want but in conjunctoin with some more advanced rigging set ups than a normal FK rig.



I know exactly what you mean, and i found a nice package called animanium for doing this style of animation which is much more streamlined for character animation which is compareable to stop motoin. right click on a join or bone to tie it down kinda thing.


Check it out its by sega.

Sweet! Thanks.