Complex UV Layout in Maya
Over the last couple of years UV layout in Maya has changed for the better. In this course we're going to be taking a look at some of those changes as we UV map an entire character
# 1 25-07-2005 , 02:03 PM
Subscriber
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 203

joint orientations won't stay in their correct positions

Hi there all,
For the last couple weeks now I have been struggling with rigging my cartoon dog which so far I fixed my first problem. Though now I came up with another problem. When rigging a character, I didn't know the importancy of joint orientation. I here that you can fix this problem by going into component mode, and then rotate there local axis just like you would do when changing the local axis of a surface. However, after correcting the joint orientations, and I go to export to shockwave, the exporter resets the joint orientations to their orignal local axis values as when I drew them. Meaning lets say the original joint orientation of one bone was set to x=93 y=4 z=70, and then I wanted to fix the joint orientaion so that it was set to x=0 y=-90 z=0. So now when I export to shockwave, right when it is collecting all of the data, that joint that I just gave as an example above, goes back to x=93 y=4 z =70. I know it has to be something that I am doing wrong because in my last problem that I tried asking here before which I got no response to, I found out that it wasn't the exporter causing the problem. My problem was I learned that I needed to parent all my surfaces in the same chain order my joints are setup as. So like I said before I know it has to be something that I am doing wrong but for the dear life of me I can't figure this out. In addition, I called Alias and so that they didn't charge me they told me that I could try doing a search for the aliaswavefront listserv which supports Alias to shockwave questions. I did a seach in google and found out in the google news group someone has mentioned that listserv.aliaswavefront.com has been shut down. This is really driving me nuts that I can't believe that no one is discussing issues anymore about exporting to Shockwave from Maya. So I am really asking for your help about how I can keep my joint oreintations staying in their correct position. Even if you don't know whats wrong then would you know of any newsgroups that handle Alias to shockwave support?

# 2 25-07-2005 , 05:11 PM
Subscriber
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 203
well, I am still not sure what I did wrong, but I found a mel script that allows you to correct the direction of your joint orients, and now my joint orients are all pointing in their correct direction. You can find it right here at SimplyMaya's download page which it is called ak_fixJointOrient. It is a pretty cool script cause all you have to do is click on the root bone and then use the mel script which does the rest for you.

# 3 25-07-2005 , 07:41 PM
t1ck135's Avatar
Registered User
Join Date: May 2004
Location: UK
Posts: 1,991
I had the same problem when learning rigging for the characters I'm doing in the challenge. Apparently there is a manual way (or so the tutorial I read said) but I never found out how. I ended up using a mel script too but am trying to stay away from them unless absolutely necessary (strange seeing as I'm an object orientated programmer...)

Posting Rules Forum Rules
You may not post new threads | You may not post replies | You may not post attachments | You may not edit your posts | BB code is On | Smilies are On | [IMG] code is On | HTML code is Off

Similar Threads