how do you remove bones?
 

Hi all,

How do you remove a bone from a skeleton. If I made a hand with 5 fingers but I then I wanted to remove one of the fingers, how can I do it? If the joints have set driven attributes already assigned to them, can I still remove a finger joint and it will remove the attributes without affecting anything else?

Thanks,
greenleaf
:)

I believe so. Should just be a matter of deleting the joints. I think the biggest issue might be trying to remove the finger geometry and filling the hole... Maya doesn't tend to like the geometry being modified after rigging.

Hi Mike,

Thanks. I made a skeleton rig with 5 fingers, but my biped has 4 fingers. I'm still working on the model but hopefully will finish it soon, so I can start start learning how to attach the skeleton. I made my original skeleton from a tutorial in a book, but I'd like to start to make another skeleton from the techniques you've shown. By the way, your video tutorials on character rigging are really excellent. I'm only half way through them but they are proving their weight in gold - same with Kurt's tutorial on the walk cycle.

Thanks again!
greenleaf
:)

Hi Mike,

one way to avoiding this, is by making some extra joints, we could e.g. call them bindjoints, which are parented to each joint that needs it...

example...

LeftHip_BindJoint parented to LeftHip...
LeftKnee_BindJoint parented to LeftKnee... etc.

then Bind the geometry to these Bindjoints, and if you e.g. need to make changes on the skeleton, you unparent the Bindjoints from the skeleton... and when you are finish with modifying the skeleton, you parent the Bindjoints back to their respective skeletonjoint... :)

regards

Strarup