connection editor question
 

Im following a rigging tutorial. Its a human type character, and Ive got to a point where Ive created two manipulators, one for the neck, and one for the back. Following the tutorial Ive created two custom attributes for each manipulator, one called twist, and one called ikfk blend. Im now supposed to connect these two to their respective attributes on their respective IK handles, i.e, the neck and the back IK handles (there are two spline IKs - one for the back, and one through the neck.


Im unsure what exactly I'm connecting. I am assuming Im connecting the newly created twist attribute of my manipulators to the twist attribute of the IK handles. But for the IKFK blend, there are two attributes on the IK handles, and Im not sure which to connect to. One is IK blend. And the other is IKFK manipulation. Can someone help?

Hi Ben.

It's hard to say. Could you give us a link to the tutorial?

It's probably IK Blend. Connect it, and see if it works properly.

Hi nextdesign. Ah, thanks for the reply. I was up till 6 in the morning last night doing different bits and pieces and I think my tiredness stopped my thinking logically (doesn't take alot!)... Yes you're right, it is IK Blend, I checked back through the book for what happened during the leg set-up, because an Ik Fk blend was set up there too. I didn't quite get the concept of what the point of the blend was but should find out when the animating begins (fingers crossed)

The tutorial, is from "Learning Autodesk Maya 2008: The Modelling and Animation Handbook". It's an entire book length, with three characters, nurbs modelling, poly and sub, d, texturing, and the whole rigging, blend shapes, custom attributes, character sets; right up to file refencing and lip synching audio (the supporting cd-rom has audio files).

Im working through it quite slowly. I'm near to finishing the rig. Then it's onto the blend shapes. Don't know why, but I'm not really looking forward to doing them.