Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 10.6
Placing the joints for
the leg. This represents hip, knee,
ankle, ball, and toe.
Warnings and Pitfalls
Be very sure that the
joints are not built in
a straight line (as in
the knee joint directly
beneath the hip joint).
We are going to animate
the character's legs
using something called
IK (Inverse Kinematics)
and the calculations are
made much easier if the
joints that are to be bent
already have a bend to
them (so Maya knows
which direction to bend
them).
Tips and Tricks
Make sure to get that “L” in there and make sure it is capitalized. Later
when we mirror one half of the skeleton, if we have carefully named
things, the mirrored side will be appropriately renamed for us.
Step 21:
In the front-view panel, move the leg chain of joints so they are
in the leg (
Figure 10.7
). To do this you only need to move AC_L_Hip and
Also note that the hip,
knee, and ankle joints
are in the middle of the
leg (where these joints
really exist in a person's
anatomy), but the ball
and toe joints are on
the ground, which
represents the axis that
the polygons assigned to
these joints should rotate
around.
