basic character rigging
 

hi guys i have a basic character rigged in maya using the joint tool then using bind skin to bind the two together.

my questions are, if i select a joint it selects all the joints parented to it, but nothing else? can i select individual joints?? and can i select joints above the joint i selected instead of below it??? :headbang:

ps. what wud be the best way to rig a basic character, i started with the head then moved down the body, with all the joints eventually linking to the 1st head joint????

Good question, I'll answer as much as I know, and maybe someone else can jump in. I find rigging really hard and complex still, but there's a couple basic principles that might help in this case.

Joint chains are inherently hierarchies. The root joint is the first one, and all subsequent joints are children of this, as each joint is a child of the one before it, or just above it in the hierarchy. If you select a joint, you're really only selecting that joint, but it influences all its children in the same way any parent-child works in maya. You can select a joint and then shift select its child and you'll get a cool double transform that can be useful when animating (I think... not sure how useful most people find it, or if it's just bad style).

If you want to move a joint on its own, there is an option though can't remember where it is... actually I think if you go into insert mode, you can move a joint without transforming its children, hit insert, or press and hold 'd' while in the move tool.

You can go skeleton > reverse chain (or something like that) to get your chain going the other way, since it's common to rig from the base of the spine up.
So, in answer to your last question, yes the way you have it, the head joint is your root, so you'll want to reverse that.

Hope that helps.

aye that gave me some good insight stwert, somethings to think about, i shall have to give the reverse skeleton a go and hope it doesnt mess it up :)

its i want to select the top half to make my character bend, but it only selects the bottom half because of the parent child function you mentioned, haha oh well

If you select the joint that's around the area of the pelvis/waist and hit reroot skeleton under the skeleton menu set, it should make bending him at the waist work.